Abstract:
The literature on music and conflict transformation has grown in recent years, providing a
look at the myriad ways in which music can foment violent conflict, promote resilience in
the midst of conflict, and facilitate reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict. Yet, the
literature is overly focused on claiming the successes of music in conflict transformation,
while remaining sparse on the particularities of how music interrelates with conflict
dynamics. Taking the music of two reconciliation-focused bands in Turkey—Kardeş
Türküler and Bajar—as a case study, this research draws on the theory of social identity
construction and on a new matrix around the function of narrative genre in conflict to
triangulate the ways in which Kurdish identity is constructed in the music of these two
groups. Through a social identity and narrative genre analysis of a sample of songs from
each group, supplemented by interviews with three musicians from these groups, this
study elaborates how music functions in conflict transformation. Specifically, this study
finds that narratives of social identity and ingroup–outgroup relations can play out in both
conflict escalatory and conflict de-escalatory genres while still holding the potential to
move away from denigrating outgroups and instead toward constructing generative
intergroup relationships.
