Arn Chorn-Pond survived the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in part through music. Now he uses music as a means of peacemaking and trauma healing, both personally and for his country. Raised in a family centered in Cambodian opera, when the Khmer Rouge came to power he was taken away from… Read more »
Category: Asia
Mai Khoi
Vietnamese folk singer Mai Khoi was arrested in March 2018 after returning from a tour in Europe (click here for the BBC report on her arrest). She has a pop song about Vietnamese girls and her love for Vietnam, but has turned into a searing critic of repression of freedom of speech. With her new… Read more »
Saboi Jum (d. 2017)
Saboi Jum was a Kachin Baptist leader from the north of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. He was an ordained minister, serving from 1990 to 2000 as the General Secretary of the Kachin Baptist Convention, one of the larger ethnic groups within the Burma Baptist Convention (later Myanmar Baptist Convnetion). Most of the Kachins in… Read more »
Masao Ohki (1901-1971)
Japanese composer Masao Ohki was profoundly moved by The Hiroshima Panels painted by Iri and Toshi Maruki (See the article about the Marukis in our Peace Art Festival). Inspired by their first six panels which had been completed by 1953 he composed his Fifth Symphony. The six movements of the symphony follow the themes of the six… Read more »
Ira Maruki (1901-1995) and Toshi Maruki (1912-2000)
The Maruki Gallery is a small art gallery outside of Tokyo. Iri and Toshi Maruki were a married couple, both artists. The grounds of the gallery include both their home and an exhibition of their work. The major exhibit is a collection of fifteen wall-sized paintings on folding screens of the experiences of those in… Read more »