The Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State presented a musical event on Oct. 17 called , “The Songs of Sarajevo: Music of the Jews, Muslims and Christians,” showing music has the power to connect people despite religious and cultural differences.
The concert was the closing event for the five-day symposium, “Survival in Sarajevo: Jews, Muslims, and Christians Working Together During the Bosnian War.” The event displayed the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herze- govina’s capital, during which Sara- jevans – Jews, Muslims and Christians – helped each other survive because access to food supplies, wa- ter and electricity had been cut off.
Award-winning violinist and author Yale Strom and other musicians held the concert with other performers, playing Jewish, Roma, Turkish and Serbian tunes, with many other pieces sung in Romani and Ladino, a Jewish language with Spanish origins.
“The beauty of Sarajevo is bring- ing all these people together and showing how music for all these various minorities really was their common language,” Strom said.
During the siege, a group of Holo- caust survivors created a Jewish hu- manitarian aid group called La Benevolencija, which brought together Jews, Muslims, Serbian Orthodox and Catholic Croats in their mutual struggle to survive, not concerned about their ethnic differences.
“We can have differences but we have to find another way to have dialogue and understand our differences rather than resorting to a fighting force, which ultimately results in killing and murder,” Strom said.
Strom, who is Jewish and has family in Israel, said he is familiar with the great difficulties facing Israeli Jews and Palestinians and that music is a good in- strument to help people turn away from violence and build something positive.
“I think that music really can be a portal into how we should treat all humanity,” he said.
Strom cited orchestras in Israel, which have been created with both Palestin- ians and Jews performing in them.
“In an orchestra, one can’t say, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’ You have to work as a team or the composition breaks down,” Strom said. “In society, we need to work together as a community.”
Strom said he hopes the music from the event will stay in the audience’s memory, as a reminder of this culture in Sarajevo.
“Everyone can do music because everyone has a voice,” Strom said. “Ev- eryone has a rhythm – their heart and their lungs, if you didn’t then you’d die, so music to me is the most natural thing.”
