I am personally baffled as to what I can do. Send money, yes, but haven’t people sent a great deal of money already and still nothing changes. Put pressure on my representatives in Congress? Write to the President? The President has already stated, a very long time ago, that what is happening in Darfur is genocide. Both my senators have spoken out loudly about what is happening in Sudan and have demanded action. My representative, Congressman John Olver, actually participated in civil disobedience to bring attention to what is happening in Darfur. Everyone, it seems, agrees. So what is the problem? Where is the distance between words and action? If we all agree, why are people still dying?

I think the lack of attention by most Americans is more about confusion and helplessness. We are at war, our soldiers are dying every day in Iraq, we are helpless to stop that either. There was a time when the words of an American president mattered, where the declaration of a situation as “genocide” would have meant we needed to take action to stop it. Clearly, that is no longer true.

Perhaps, while listening to Verdi’s Requiem, as that great space of darkness fills with music, the people sitting in those plush seats will ponder the gates of hell into which we have fallen and consider what they can do to spur action and change.

I just heard the Weekend Edition piece on Requiem for Darfur. Your words about responding in the silence that follows catastrophe were very compelling. I remember you from the UMN as a very thoughtful musician. So glad to know you are continuing to find purpose and hope–as well as artistry–in the art.

–David Evan Thomas

Thank you so much for putting this together. I’m unable to attend in person, but I am hoping your performance will be simulcast and available for purchase as a recording. I know that I am only one of many who would like to participate, even if it is only by listening to a cd, in this wonderful event you have organized. Best of luck tomorrow night!

Thank you for your beautiful response. Soltrekker, your unease at my posture and indeed the posture of the whole enterprise is a microcosm of our own struggle to find a proper response to the scale of what is going on in Sudan and elsewhere in the world. It is a struggle is that laden with stumbling, recovery, pulling together of people, more stumbling, greater recovery and compassion, some great great music. On one thing I agree with you completely. Stephanie, my wonderful colleague and partner in REQUIEM FOR DARFUR and on OPEN SOURCE, is not only the heart of the show on Thursday, but the heart and battery off our entire operation.

This is an effort to bear witness to what Leonard Bernstein called “our boastfully held little blue pilot flame of Humanity” — our ability to love no matter what our own flaws are, no matter what the cirumstances, no matter how large or small the context is.

The response to Darfur has been tied up in knots by our well-meaning commitment to legality and an old-fashioned, perhaps even Old Testament notion of justice. Our effort with these concerts is not just to bring great music to the service of people in need by raising money for them and by raising awareness for them but by creating an enterprise which is driven by love, by inclusion, by embrace not only in the beautiful velvet-seated environs of Carnegie Hall but in the sweaty, hectic, deadline driven of the everyday life whereever we might be.

George Mathew

Artistic Director
requiem for darfur

I have always kept this quote near my desk. It reminds me how moods play into this whole crazy deal.

Ego is always involved. To say that we are in service of ego is to say that we are human. We are not angels. If we were we would be living in a different existential domain.

Stephanie was the heart this night. But one thing I did connect with that George Mathew’s said that the human spirit is indomitable.. and we know that when we read accounts of the Holocaust. We need perhaps to get some of those Darfurians here to tell their stories… a string of them ongoing…

The nagging feeling is that if this were happening practically anywhere else we would not stand for it. The “tipping point” would have been reached. This we noted years ago when this started. Years!

This show may give new meaning to the notion that music is “moving.” In this case: moving to action. To be effective any art needs to move us on an emotional level. Aestheticism drains art of the vital force that makes it potentially moving.

A question nags though. Through history some of the most “moving” music has been quite shoddy artistically. I am thinkning of everything from military marches and national anthems to overtly manipulative soundtracks in movies and television.

On the one hand, aestheticism can be limiting. On the other, we must not abandon our critical faculties, for fear of being led astray by propaganda disguised as art.

Bless you for your thoughts. This is all about GIVING A DAMN! Grass-roots has always been what made awakenings and action possible. We have seen this vividly manifest in the initiatives of Gandhi, MLK, Havel and even these last US midterm elections. The humanitarian effects through great music in these concerts is important but the larger context of our work is an awakening of the larger social psyche to action, to reflection and most of all to interaction that we can be a more dynamic comunity at every single level. We have the fantastic opportunity in the fact that Verdi, Beethoven and Duke Ellington among countless other great artists were profoundly interested in this very selfsame awakening and left blueprints in all their works for us to have and to use.

The most vital response to art is the creation of dynamic community on every level — and that is almost larger than a human principle.

George

For others it’s the Blues…and still others a hug…and still others…

In terms of confronting an ongoing tragedy, art has the power to remind that humanity’s wickedness made flesh is not the only possibility for human potential and creativity. Perhaps not the problem solving nugget Chris is seeking. Art can unask the question and create room for re-examination without relying upon a historical context as the precondition of human understanding; a polite way to suggest shedding baggage may be the best approach to framing issues and exploring possibilities. Perhaps this is paradoxical given the context for which Henryk Gorecki’s symphony was conceptualized and delivered.

In terms of generating the necessary urgency to repair and improve a tragic situation, it will take more than music, mathematics, evolutionary science, social systems, ngo’s, communication technologies, celebrities, religion, My-Beliefs-Trump-Your-Beliefs, etc. to crack this nut. There is no answer awaiting in the back-of-the-book.

Optimistically, as long as this problem is not ignored, there is still potential and hope for an end to the crisis that doesn’t involve mass slaughter and attrition. Any and all pressure should be brought to bear upon our collective wits.