Two children are dancing together, holding hands and skipping around in circles, singing a refrain and throwing their heads back, laughing. It's a beautiful video to receive from our training team. My first response is relief.
The camera pans out, showing 10, then 20, then 30 children, all dancing in pairs, smiling and laughing to each other, singing and spinning in circles. My second response is to laugh. The camera angle turns, and continues to turn, showing an entire huge school courtyard filled with 500 children, moving together in joy. The third response is tears.
In the middle of the courtyard flies a yellow, red and sky-blue flag, a red diagonal line from bottom left to top right, and a yellow star in the top left corner. It is the only indication that the footage is shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Goma, North Kivu, a context beset by war, violence and displacement on a massive scale.
The humanitarian crisis in North Kivu continues to worsen, with massive repercussions for the immediate and long-term psychosocial and mental health of children. It is a crisis described as the ‘epicentre of child suffering in war’, topping the world list of grave violations against children (Save the Children, 2023). Two million people are displaced by conflict; 20% are children. Over 2,000 schools have been closed, with UNICEF declaring: ‘School-aged children are paying an unacceptable price for the growing conflict and insecurity in eastern DRC. Hundreds of thousands of children who should be safely learning in the classroom have instead been displaced by violence and are living in desperate conditions, and in vast and overcrowded camps.’ In this context of chaos, children are placed at high risk of being recruited by armed forces (Save the Children, 2024).
We began Kivu Youth Music in 2021 with the aim of helping children and youth who are directly affected by conflict in DRC. Our Rwanda Youth Music team developed the collaboration and ran a training course for young community leaders, equipping them to run music workshops with children living in orphanages and Internally Displaced People camps. Those young leaders have now made music with over 7,000 children and youth.
As the children continue to dance and sing on my phone, the cameraperson focuses in on four young music leaders at the centre of the courtyard. Their eyes are alight, catching the attention of the children all around them. They dance just like the children, while counting into choruses, and offering small indications for the drummer to shift volume, rhythm and speed. My fourth response is awe.
Today is an ‘experience day’ following four days of training for new music leaders, given by a brand new Congolese team of trainers, in Musicians Without Borders' music leadership methodology. And they are brilliant. They are leading music with 500 children. The fifth response is pride.
Often the videos and photos we receive from DRC show workshops in displacement camps. Tents with Red Cross logos are the backdrop. Sandy, barren, exhausted environments betray the harsh realities of food insecurity. Children dance, sing and play, led by inspirational music leaders who visit the camps every week. Heartbreak is a reasonable response.
DRC is officially the world's third-most neglected displacement crisis, based on three criteria: lack of humanitarian funding, lack of media attention, and a lack of international political and diplomatic initiatives compared to the number of people in need (Norwegian Refugee Council, 2024). This neglect stands in bleak contrast to the global extraction of billions of dollars worth of wealth from the same region. The minerals fuelling global technology, and fuelling the burgeoning green transition, are extracted from mines in DRC by Congolese hands – often Congolese children's hands. The world offers no response to blatant exploitation, and deliberate neglect.
Our response is music. Music provides respite, moments of asylum and refuge, within an environment of danger (DeNora, 2015). It allows children to be themselves as children, expressing, experimenting, and being recognised for identities that are not defined by conflict (Nicholson, 2020). Kivu Youth Music leaders are trained to understand how music affects us all on physical, emotional and psychological levels, and how our life experiences also affect us on those levels. With this understanding they harness music to provide moments of grounding, expression, creation, community, and joy.
Links and references
- Save the Children: tinyurl.com/5anrcyxd
- musicianswithoutborders.org/programs/kivu-youth-music
- DeNora, T. (2015) Music Asylums: Wellbeing Through Music in Everyday Life. Routledge.
- Nicholson, C. (2020) Doctoral Thesis. tinyurl.com/54b85yaa
