In 2005 a short film debuted taking one of the hottest conflicts in the world and bringing a message of peace and hope through a musical comedy. The plan for West Bank Story as a take-off of the classic musical “West Side Story” sounds like a recipe for disaster. Two competing falafel stands, Kosher King… Read more »
Category: Music Festival
Rafael Schäcter and the “Defiant Requiem”
During World War II the Jewish inmates of the Terezin Concentration Camp (sometimes known as Theresienstadt) under the Nazis found a nonviolent way to resist, to claim their own identity and find a place of freedom amid the horrors of the Holocaust. The key was music. The initiator was Rafael Schäcter, a Czech Jewish composer… Read more »
Edwin Starr (1942-2003)
Edwin Starr was one of the singers to come out of Detroit’s Motown Records. Born in Tennessee and raised in Ohio, he moved to Detroit to become part of the dynamic music scene. He had many Soul and R&B hits, but his big #1 hit was “War.” Those powerful lines immediately jump to mind and… Read more »
Stan Rogers
Stan Rogers was known as the folk singer who captured the lives of Canadian people from the Maritime Provinces to the Great Lakes and Plains. He certainly wasn’t a pacifist as one of his songs (“Harris and the Mare”) sadly celebrates a conscientious objector who reaches his breaking point when a drunk assaulted the “conchie’s”… Read more »
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan was the first musician to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, quite the recognition for the poetry of his lyrics and his global impact. Though he has put out a huge repertoire of songs and covered many topics, some of his folks songs from the 1960s have become standards for singing about peace. … Read more »