Music, both as a form of arts and a cultural element, is considered a powerful tool of peacebuilding, and the peacebuilding activities incorporating music in such form are widely popular at local level in post-conflict societies. In Nepal, such peacebuilding activities gained popularity during the post-conflict phase when a significant growth in local level peacebuilding activities was observed. However, scholars argue that such peace-building initiatives have not been adequately studied to examine local people’s understanding and engagement in such programs. In this context, this paper presents a case of a music education program in a village in Udayapur district in Nepal to explore local people’s experiences and engagement with the program. The music program, initiated in 2009, is run by a local community school with financial support from an international non-profit organization. Based on the study of this particular peace-building initiative through participant observation and in-depth interviews with music students, their parents, music teachers and the organizers, this paper highlights complexities involved in implementing and practicing a global discourse of peace-building such as ‘Music for Peace’ at the local level. The findings show that local people’s understanding of the underlying concepts such as music, peace, and the perceived relationship between these two concepts are largely influenced by their assessment of the effectiveness of the music program and the associated discourse. While giving a significant level of emphasis on such local interpretations, this study also focuses on how different actors involved in this music program engages with it. In particular, this study finds that the local community school which is the local partner and implementer of the music program faces a major challenge in bringing changes in larger socio-cultural aspects of the community that lie beyond the liminal space of the music education program. This paper further concludes that any study of a local level initiative influenced by a dominant discourse of development should consider how such discourse is negotiated and interpreted by local actors in their own ways.
This paper is derived from a MA Thesis titled ‘Music for Peace’: A study of participants’ experiences in a music education program in Udayapur district of Nepal submitted to Department of Conflict, Peace and Development Studies, Tribhuvan University in 2014 December.