P.P.: I have started to play violin when I was very young and it was a very natural thing, I was not forced by my parents. I just continued to follow my great passion for music in different ways. I started to play violin then I became musicologist because I was very curious to better understand what I was playing, the meaning of the music. Then I realized that I was very attracted by the management, the organizational side of the music business. So I became a manager. I still work in music management collaborating with the orchestras, opera houses, agencies. 

 

Then the positive ambition was to play a small role in my community and in Italy because I was noticing that people like me who wants to choose music or art as a reason of life they are not so much involved in the development of their local communities. I wanted to support my community and also to make voice be heard in institutional context. That’s why I started collaborating and finding the opportunities of collaborations with national and international organizations like UNESCO, UN, World Economic Forum. It was very interesting to see the interaction between my vision and ideas and the ideas that many other colleagues from my generation have. Since then I started realizing it could convert a part of my job in this kind of institutional activity. I have also started to understand that music, culture have amazing potential to make huge impact in our communities in many different ways. Now I am talking about cultural diplomacy, musical diplomacy. The idea behind that is very simple - use music as a universal language to interact with different cultures and countries. So I collected around this idea the commitment and energy of many artists, many other organizations. We launched this project that is World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in 2013.

 

 

Paolo Petrocelli delivered a lecture at TUMO Center for Creative Technologies.

 

 

P.P.: Music diplomacy as a concept is something relatively new. There are not proper organizations that are promoting music diplomacy in a structured way. However, we actually experienced music diplomacy since maybe 15th century, from the very beginning of music in European or Western sense. Music has the power to go beyond different barriers of language or culture, and musicians are experiencing this power from the very early age. So when you enter an orchestra you do experience music diplomacy because it's clear that you can sit in a room with other 80 musicians coming from different parts of the world, different religions, different political values, etc. If you are there to make music those differences don't mean anything to us. 

 

The more elaborated idea behind music diplomacy is how you can use music education to spread certain ideas of harmony or solidarity around the world. Many organizations launched different kinds of initiatives that used this concept of music education as a real accelerator for not only educating young people but also in some cases to really use music and music education as a process to destroy some barriers and some cultural conflicts. This is very common in the Middle East, you can find many projects, and they are working quite well. 

 

 

P.P.: When I started this project I knew we were going to face a lot of challenges there because of many reasons but I was very surprised and was quite unexpected to see actually there is a huge gap, not only between certain countries and communities of those countries but even in very cultured people. I am talking about musicians who are supposed to be very open-minded because they travel a lot or used to interact with other artists. For instance, musicians from Lebanon or Egypt were not used to collaborate with European musicians. The first idea was to create common opportunities to interact, to work together. The results were amazing. It's clear that through their collaboration you can actually send different kinds of message out there, not just bring European musician in the Middle East and organize a concert (this is quite common in fact) but this is about the process. In order to make a concert or workshop together we have to interact, we have to know each other, to spend time together and understand how we can collaborate. So music diplomacy is also about the process, it's not about playing music or teach music.

 

 

P.P.: Correct. Ultimately to promote peace. Peace is such a huge word. When I started the project I thought should we add peace or not and then interacting and talking with other colleagues we decided to call it EMMA for peace because everything we are doing ultimately is to promote peace, harmony in these countries, which is very ambitious thing. Of course we know we can have very small impact but it's important to do it anyway. It's important to remind these artists that they have a duty to do something for the communities. Because you have this talent you have to use a part of it to benefit the communities out there. 

 

Paolo Petrocelli

S.K.: The state of peace is not getting any better in the world. Doesn't it disappoint you? How do you get the inspiration to do your work? 
 

P.P.: Especially my generation (I am 32 years old) is facing a choice to really do our best to save this world in every field. I am neither a politician, nor a diplomat. I don't have the ambition to use my knowledge, my skills to approach that level. It's just about the fact that I feel responsible to contribute in a small way. It gives me a lot of strength. I think it is very important that our organization (S.K. - EMMA), your organization (S.K. - Aurora Humanitarian Initiative) start to spread more and more self-responsibility in the young generations. Otherwise, during the next 10-20 years we will lose control of this situation also from the cultural point of view. 

 

 

P.P.: What we are trying to do is not only make music for itself. Every time when we organize a workshop, a concert we try to involve organizations like you. To create this kind of new and unique interaction between music world and humanitarian work. We are doing this with UNICEF with UNHCR. We are not so arrogant to say we can stop a bullet with a violin or let's bring musical instruments in Aleppo. But we did something unusual in Italy, an opera performance 2 years ago with UNICEF. We informed the audience about the situation in Syria using the opportunity when thousands of people are sitting there and reminding them that there are a lot of problems.

 

 

Yes and I think it will be extremely meaningful. I am working on that speaking with some artists from Armenia. We already organized a concert in Azerbaijan. From my point of view those projects are relatively easy to do. When I speak with musicians, cultural organizations from these countries everyone has positive reactions and willingness to make these projects happen. They all are aware about the potential they have to make positive impact in their own countries. I am quite positive that very soon we could also start doing some initiatives here.

 

 

P.P.: Absolutely. Every time when I start a new master with a new class in the university, the first thing I do - I try to shock them really strongly saying some very basic true things. I think our generation has fear in the future, in a lot of things. They are losing the courage, they are losing the positive ambition to make a difference in the world, now the only problem is to find a job. I think the priority list that we have in our mind is a little bit wrong. It's sad to see 20 years old girls and boys without the fire. What I am trying to do is to help them finding trust in themselves because we need this kind of fire in the society. We are missing this fire, this courage that actually every one of us can make a difference.