School Music Programs
Creatively Resisting the War
 

Bringing Music and Creativity to Schools
I am available to come into school classrooms and assemblies to perform peace concerts and/or my original eclectic mix of blues/rock/folk/country compositions.

Performances can be for entertainment purposes or the music can be used in conjunction with a brief program on the use of creativity as a means of telling the truth, using art as a tool to reconnect to our own humanity and advocate for leading lives of non-violence.

In an age when we are inundated with information, it is important for students to develop the means of discernment and critical thinking. This can be done by offering an introduction to the uses of music, language, and visual arts and how these elements give us clarity and hope in life.

 
INTRODUCTION:

Celebrating Art and Opposing Violence
A Program of Song & Word
by Tom Mullian
In any society, hopelessness can be defined as the loss of creativity. In his Defense of Poetry, Shelley proclaimed, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The voices of the young must be encouraged and nurtured. Silence, most of all, perpetuates injustice in the world. Creativity is our artistic and spiritual path towards unity and reconciliation. From an age of information, we must make an age of wisdom.

Hopelessness is to bury oneself voluntarily in the rubble of 9/11 or the daily reports of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, genocide in Darfur. Or worse yet, hopelessness is to turn away from the chaos to retreat into a life of consumerism and gratification. Creativity is the creation of a hope that transforms lives by allowing us to engage in our collective evolution.

As people giving expression to our experience, we are bound to the truth of our poems, our songs, our palettes and paint. In times of war, people seek the comfort of absolutes. The nuances of basic compassion and understanding can be lost. We are susceptible to lies and propaganda, vulnerable to the authoritarian voices of leaders who would misguide us. In telling the truth through art, we recover our humanity, our language, and our consciousness.

Creativity Is Our Antidote
Those who plan and execute wars contrive lies as to dislodge our own common sense of rightness. Their job is to make violence not only palatable but respectable.

A lie must downloaded for mass consumption and a cooperative consciousness must be created and maintained among our citizenry. Lies, glittering generalities, appeals to fear for personal safety, distrust of “the other,” euphemisms, ethnic and religious stereotypes, all are employed to delude in the belief that the only response to violence is only more of the same in a blind repetition of lessons unlearned from history.

In Creativity We Recover Our Humanity
The artist’s work is to transform, expose, recover, rebuild in an act of creative resistance to violence. We can withdraw cooperation from both physical and verbal violence. We can offer our gifts of verse, melody, message, all grounded with an effective education to do work in the world that is creative in spirit and in practicality.

Celebrating Art and Opposing Violence
A Program of Song & Word - Program Highlights

• Understanding the link between sound/music, language, and mind
• How language conforms mind and behavior
• Authoritarian vs. Authority, the Lie
• The Importance of Art to Social Movements
• Recovering Ourselves and our Humanity in Song and Art
• Telling the Truth in our Expressions
• The Journey of one singer/songwriter in the Peace
  Movement
• Engaging our lives with history, we are history
• Performance of assorted songs and explanations of each
• Encouraging others to believe and trust their creativity
• Having the students create a poem, drawing, short song to share with others
• No work of art is complete until someone else sees it
• Closing song

Tom Mullian's Bio

Songs performed in the program are drawn from the following partial list (We can pick and choose topics):

• Rivertown - chronicle of the struggles of a young man who quits his job in a refinery town, joins the army, and is seriously injured in Iraq
• Boots - the rising number of deaths expressed in the number of empty boots
• Outlaws of Peace - dedicated to Brandywine and the Freedom Riders
• Avalon - whimsical wish for a better world based on Arthurian mythology
• Bombs Away! - humorous piece on the universal belligerence of American foreign policy
• Civil Disobedience - humorous piece on the application of civil disobedience
• The Day We Ended the War - written for Phil Berrigan & Brandywine’s 25th anniversary
• Hymn from the Underground - prayer of a slave on the underground railroad
• The Good American - indictment of American exceptionalism and lack of regard for others
• We was just Boys - Civil War Song referencing Walt Whitman’s ”O Captain, My Captain”
• My Way Home - Soldier in Iraq turns against the way
• Ain’t Gonna Fight No More - for the Vets for Peace
• Pledge of Resistance - rally song for the Pledge day of nonviolent action and for a way of life
• Streets of Justice - the faith of an innocent man on death row
• Six Strings Against the War - a love song from a Conscientious Objector to his disapproving father
• The Marching Song - sing along rally song
• A Cross for Pablo Sanchez - tribute to the ”disappeared” in Central America
• One White Dove - song for Rachel Corrie, nonviolent activist killed in Palestine
• Benditos son los Creadores de la Paz - blessed are the peacemakers
• It’s Your World Now - song for all the young peacemakers

Fees for school concerts and programs are on a sliding scale

Contact me for further details at tommullian@aol.com

All material copyrighted by Tom Mullian