Let's Talk Music - A Model for Enhancing Intercultural Communication: Trying to Understand Why and How Music Helps

Abstract

This article presents the Let's talk music model, in which people from different cultural backgrounds work in a group setting to address and resolve cultural and identity conflicts. The model is based on musical activities and the goal of this article is to understand why and how music helps to promote this cause. To do this, a careful analysis of the components of "musical identity" was conducted (My music, My culture's music, Other's music I do not like, and Other's music I do not know) and thereafter ways by which music was used to bridge the musical identities of people from different (sometimes opposing) backgrounds were found. The Let's talk music model is then described and examples are given to show how this model enables the interplay within the components of one's musical identity and between the musical identities of different people. It is shown that this interplay eventually enables Let's talk music participants to gain a more developed, more tolerant identity. The article concludes with remarks on the importance of such processes to enable a better society.