Music as Ambassador for World Peace: Ideal or Reality

Abstract

Music is usually divided into two main types:  liturgical music to encourage people’s faith in God and secular music for people’s entertainment, including music accompanying dance.  Musicians and composers have developed their skills and musical abilities through the ages resulting in music of high quality, complexity and theoretical sophistication.  Music masters of each school transmit their music heritage continuously. The growth of science and technology resulted in social change from agricultural to manufacturing economies and finally business services and music became a commodity. Businessmen produced music to suit people’s needs and tastes without awareness of musical value, good or bad.  The question is “what is music for?”  Music is supposed to be a beautiful object for appreciation, and should shape people’s minds and morality.  Over 50 years of my experiences as a musician and teacher, I have learned that music is a good tool for breaking the ice between international colleagues and me, leading to us becoming good friends.  But I still don’t know how to make friends with people who are fighting and bombarding out there, especially the weapons-makers and war-creators who are completely filled with greediness and selfishness. In term of “music as ambassador for world peace,” music itself must be good and powerful enough to reach the deepest mind of people to reduce their greediness and selfishness and help them become lovers of humanity and nature. This job cannot be accomplished by any one individual, but by composers, musicians, music educators and music education.