News

by Stuart BAILIE and Gent MEHMETI
15 November 2024

When the sound of war has ended, positive notes have a chance to be heard. In Northern Ireland and Kosovo, music is giving voice to new stories. Songwriters and performers are stepping forward to talk about lives that have changed or flourished during 25 years of relative peace.

Music also has the potential to repair damage and bridge different cultures. New arrivals to cities like Belfast and Pristina are bringing their own songs and traditions. At best, the sound of post-conflict is about artistic connections, empathy, and harmony.

Amita Ravikiran came to Belfast in 2010. She is a native of Mundgod in southwestern India.

She sings in various languages, mostly Kannada but also Hindi, Marathi, Awadhi, and Punjabi. Often, she accompanies herself on a traditional one-stringed drone instrument called an ektara.

She has just recorded a track in a Belfast studio, Start Together. It is a traditional Indian wedding song about “ancestral wisdom and the intimate bonds of sisterhood”. In the Kannada lyric, a community helps the bride to prepare for her important day. Amita has titled it “Embracing Tradition with Every Note”.

She is also an academic, with a Masters in Folklore and Heritage. Since arriving in Northern Ireland, she has worked on community relations workshops and art sessions, even forming a female choir before the pandemic.

She works closely with a Belfast project called Beyond Skin, a pioneering organisation that works through music to develop “a more peaceful, equal and intercultural society free from racism and sectarianism”.

“When I came here,” Amita said, “I used to struggle to communicate with others. I had a knowledge of music in me, but I didn’t know how to present it. And Beyond Skin gave me all the freedom. Artists need freedom. They stood like pillars to me. They allowed me to sing whatever I wanted. Because of the organisation, I have met so many artists.”

“I still get overwhelmed by Amita’s creative skills,” says Darren Ferguson, who founded Beyond Skin 20 years ago. “The impact hasn’t faded and when she bursts into song it is always like hearing her for the first time. With Beyond Skin, she has used her skills to make the world a better place. This has shaped, changed, and saved some lives.”

Darren leads an impactful, diverse mission, working with incoming artists from places such as Iran, Somalia, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. Often, these individuals have fled from warzones, or societies that have banned secular music. Darren and his team give these exiles a welcome and a sense of purpose.

“Everybody’s got quite a tragic story in some ways,” says Darren, “but it’s the story of resilience and just trying to start over again… It’s always about people that have been through challenges.”

One of Darren’s talents is to bring the newly arrived musicians together with existing musicians in Belfast, including members of Protestant marching bands:

“We’ve done projects where you have a band of musicians that politically have some views that are complete opposites. But they’re on stage, performing together and celebrating what they’ve done together.”

An infinite passion for refugees

Rita Ora and Dua Lipa, world-renowned singers and actresses, are of Kosovar origin. Their early lives were marked by conflict and displacement. Rita Ora became a refugee in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Dua Lipa was born in London. After the Kosovo war (1998-99), she moved to the family homeplace of Pristina as an 11-year-old.

Rita Ora has often spoken about feeling like an outsider during her childhood in the UK. She fled Pristina due to the persecution of Albanians during the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Along with her family, she moved to England in 1991. Rita Ora grew up in Notting Hill and attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School.

In an interview with Elle magazine in 2022, Rita Ora spoke about her life as a refugee and how music helped her cope with the emotions and challenges she faced:

“I think the real challenge was that I felt like an outsider, and that I didn’t have a place of belonging. Yes, that was the hardest thing for me, but, as I’ve emphasised before, music helped me greatly to cope with those feelings.

“Whether it was listening or acting, it was my way of being connected to the world. That’s the ultimate power of music: it allows us to make connections with people we wouldn’t otherwise have, it gives us a sense of community and the feeling that we’re not alone on this planet.”

Rita Ora emphasised her pride at her heritage, saying that while London was her home, Kosovo is “still very close to my heart”:

“For the rest of my life I will feel an infinite passion for refugees because I am one and always will be.”

Meanwhile, Dua Lipa has talked about the duality in her cultural life. Rather than a negative issue, she stresses the benefits of spending her formative years in two different countries:

“There was always the idea of being from two places at once.

“I understood the duality of my heritage from an early age. People would always ask where my name is from.

“I was really proud of it, but when I was younger, I wished my name was, say, Hannah — something ‘normal’ and English.”

When Dua Lipa moved to Kosovo, she discovered The Castle/The Siege by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, set amid a conflict in the 15th century:

“The memory I have of reading it is that it was really difficult, it’s a big book, but it was a gateway into my Albanian roots. It was like another milestone moment in my life that really shifted things for me”.

Because Kosovo was a country in transition and had just ended the conflict, many young people did not have the opportunity to follow their dreams, but “I was quite determined,” Dua said.

Welcome to Sunny Hill

Music can help to change negative perceptions of a place that is emerging from conflict. It can even bring value to the economy. A recently published UK Music report revealed that in 2023, an impressive 345,000 music tourists attended gigs, festivals, and concerts in Northern Ireland. These music tourists supported £135m in spend and 1,110 jobs.

Belfast City Council has tried to build on these cultural assets, making a successful application for UNESCO City of Music status in 2021.

Sunny Hill Festival, the biggest music festival in Kosovo, is named after the neighbourhood in Pristina where Dua Lipa’s family lived. It was launched in 2018, putting Pristina on the festival map.

With each event, Sunny Hill Festival hosts more than 100,000 music lovers from around the world. It has featured well-known performers such as Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, J Balvin, Calvin Harris, Martin Garrix, Afrojack, Hardwell, Stormzy, Skepta, AJ Tracey, Action Bronson and Gashi. This past summer, Sunny Hill Festival announced two new events, one in Pristina and another in Tirana.

Dua Lipa’s father, Dukagjin Lipa, created the festival with the aim of promoting Kosovo and the potential for tourism in the area.

But in 2018, it was difficult to convince other major artists to perform. The following year, the star of “New Rules” turned to her friends Miley Cyrus and Calvin Harris and asked them to be the headline acts. The pair performed that year for the first time in the region.

This changed how the festival was viewed by other artists and their management teams.

“We really outdo ourselves when it comes to the cast of performers,” Dukagjin Lipa told BBC News, adding, “When I talk to artists, I invite them to come, I tell them: ‘Trust me, you will have the best sound equipment that money can buy.'”

His latest data estimates that about 40% of visitors are from outside Kosovo. The visitor figures are strongly influenced by the country’s diaspora, as those with family connections bring friends with them.

Reconciliation rocks

Music is a tool for reconciliation in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo. The Serbian population mostly resides to the north, while the southern municipality is chiefly Kosovo-Albanian. A river divides them. The NATO-protected Ibër/Ibar Bridge has come to symbolise the obstacles that remain in Kosovo. However, an organisation called Community Building Mitrovica (CBM) was founded in 2003, with an aim “to restore the previous confidence and even friendship that war and politics have destroyed” between citizens in the whole of the Mitrovica municipality, through facilitated contact and dialogue.

Alongside the NGO, Musicians without Borders, CBM managed the original Mitrovica Rock School project, teaching young people from north and south Mitrovica the art of rock music. Over 1,000 young people have attended Mitrovica Rock School, producing dozens of ethnically mixed bands across southeastern Europe.

CBM continues to organise art collaborations and, together with Mitrovica Rock School, songwriting sessions to bring together young people in Mitrovica.

According to Executive Director Afërdita Sylaj, the themes that come out of these sessions are positive and the young songwriters respond well:

“With the songs, they are careful. [The lyrics] are more towards the future and not so much on what happened.”

The song of the snowflower

Lyudmila Makey is a recent arrival to Kosovo. She left her homeland of Ukraine after the Russian invasion, 22 February 2022. After travelling through four countries, she arrived in Pristina, on17 April. She was supported by the Journalists in Residence in Kosovo initiative and continues to write about Ukraine issues from her adopted city.

She also uses art as self-expression. An exhibition of her sunflower paintings, ‘Flowers Against War’ was held at the National History Museum in Pristina. Singing is another important outlet for her:

“Ukrainian song is part of our culture and part of our soul.

“In Pristina, we have a small community of Ukrainian journalists. Sometimes we meet students and journalists, and we tell them about Ukraine and about our culture and of course, we sing. I sing my favourite Ukranian song, “Chervona Ruta”. It’s about a red flower. Men give this flower to a lady when he falls in love.

Remarkably, Lyudmila sang in public at the Pristina International Vocal Festival, 11 October 2022. She was onstage with Arta Jashari, the world-famous soprano. This was a breathtaking moment, a rendition of the Kosovan folk song, “Luleborë”. Lyudmila said:

“It was my first experience to sing in the Albanian language. When I arrived in Pristina, I did not understand Albanian at all. But I had some courses, some lessons and some words, I know. For example, ‘Luleborë’ is a flower under the snow. A snowflower. I was inspired because it was a reminder for me about my last life, my happy life.

“I would like to express my feeling for the Kosovar people. So, I did it. And I was inspired. I was very happy. I thought about Ukraine and my family and about my kids. Music is much more than just words. It’s a conversation of the soul, of the heart.”

Many people in Northern Ireland and Kosovo will agree with Lyudmila’s sentiments. There may be obstacles on the bridges or the so-called “peace walls” that divide communities, but music has the capacity to transcend problems. It has a unique, restorative power.

* * *

This article is part of a series co-authored by Kosovo and Northern Ireland participants in a peace journalism project, Reporting on a Troubled Past, initiated and organised by the Association of Journalists of Kosovo in partnership with Shared Future News, with funding from the British Embassy Pristina and the National Union of Journalists Belfast & District Branch. The facts presented and views expressed are those of the authors and editorially independent of any funder.

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