Music Education Research

ISSN: 1461-3808 (Print) 1469-9893 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cmue20

Creating bridges: music, play and well-being in the

lives of refugee and immigrant children and young
people

Kathryn Marsh

To cite this article: Kathryn Marsh (2016): Creating bridges: music, play and well-being in the
lives of refugee and immigrant children and young people, Music Education Research, DOI:
10.1080/14613808.2016.1189525

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2016.1189525

Published online: 23 May 2016.

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 MUSIC EDUCATION RESEARCH, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2016.1189525

Creating bridges: music, play and well-being in the lives of refugee

and immigrant children and young people
Kathryn Marsh
Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
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ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In contemporary society, global population movements, global conflict Received 15 June 2015
and ensuing migration have resulted in the presence of bicultural Accepted 18 April 2016
children in many nations, with multiple possibilities for musical
KEYWORDS
engagement emerging within their home and host cultures. For these Refugee music; music and
children, issues of social integration, identity construction, and cultural immigrants; musical play;
maintenance and change must be negotiated on a continual basis. This refugee children; forced
paper explores some of the ways in which music participation, and more migration; music and
specifically, participation in musical play, contributes to the well-being of well-being
bicultural children. In particular, the paper addresses the contribution of
musical activities to the well-being of newly arrived refugee and
voluntary migrant children and the ways in which these musical
activities provide new musical and social beginnings for these children
and young people. Drawing on research from the fields of music
education, ethnomusicology, evolutionary musicology, anthropology,
psychology and refugee studies, this paper focuses on my current
research involving newly arrived forced and voluntary migrant children
in Australia, but also on my previous cross-cultural study of musical play
in a number of countries. Specific reference is made to Iraqi, South
Sudanese and Sierra Leonean refugee children and young people in
Australia, Punjabi children in the UK and newly arrived Central and
South American immigrants in the USA.

Introduction
For more than 20 years, I have investigated children’s musical play, especially that found in the inter-
stices between formalised school activities, in playgrounds and waiting spaces, in the margins of
adult-endorsed pursuits. I have endeavoured to illuminate aspects of musical meaning, musical per-
formance and the ways in which music is taught and learnt by children themselves, by observing and
talking to children, mostly beyond the confines of organised school activity, though often within the
geographical boundaries of a school. I have conducted ethnographic field research in urban, rural
and remote schools in Sydney and the Northern Territory (Australia), Norway, the UK, the USA
and South Korea. Nearly all of these schools have been multi-ethnic in nature and intercultural
play activity has been a major focus of my research (Marsh 2008).
Since 2009, I have been exploring the place of music in the lives of refugee and newly arrived
voluntary migrant children and have conducted research with culturally diverse populations of chil-
dren and adolescents in schools and community groups, including playgroups, a primary school,
Intensive English Centres (IECs) for secondary school students and a Sierra Leonean youth
group, in Sydney, a city in which people from more than 100 birthplace nations have settled

CONTACT Kathryn Marsh kathryn.marsh@sydney.edu.au Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Building
C41, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 2 K. MARSH

(Marsh 2012, 2013). In all of these contexts, music plays a significant part in children’s lives. This
paper addresses the contribution of musical activities, in particular, musical play, to the well-
being of newly arrived refugee and voluntary migrant children and the ways in which these musical
activities provide new musical and social beginnings and avenues for agency for these children and
young people.
Worldwide, many traumatic events may result in the forced migration of children, and their
families. Refugees face a range of psychosocial and cultural challenges related to geographical and
cultural displacement and trauma experienced both in the country of origin, en route and during
relocation and resettlement (Barwick, Beiser, and Edwards 2002; Couldrey and Herson 2012;
Fazel and Stein 2002; Hamilton and Moore 2004; Hart 2014; Jones, Baker, and Day 2004; Loughry
and Eyber 2003; Machel 2001; Rutter 2006; Stewart 2011).
Although the level of trauma may not be as marked, many similar issues of social integration,
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identity construction, cultural maintenance and change and associated stresses are also experi-
enced by newly arrived voluntary migrants (Grizenko 2002). Indeed, for immigrant children,
there may be little choice in their relocation because of their hierarchical status in the family
so the voluntary nature of their migration may be less certain (Bhabha and Crock 2007;
Hjern and Jeppsson 2005). In their final place of settlement, both refugee and newly arrived
voluntary migrant children must adapt to a new country and culture, despite culture shock, poss-
ible language problems, racism, social isolation and changes in family structure and roles (Berry
1997, 2001; Fazel and Stein 2002; Frater-Matheison 2004; Hodes 2000; Rutter 2006; Stewart
2011).
Over the past two decades, studies have investigated the role of music activity among refugee
populations to assist in developing resilience; a sense of belonging and empowerment; forms of com-
munication where verbal communication is limited; and to enhance stress relief, cultural mainten-
ance, identity construction and integration within the host country (Diehl 2002; Jones, Baker, and
Day 2004; Ladkani 2001; Marsh 2012, 2013; Osborne 2009; Pesek 2009; Reyes 1999, 2010; Sutton
2002). Studies of children’s intercultural transmission of music within a social framework, the
role of music in the creation of transitional identities for immigrant and bicultural children, and chil-
dren’s uses of mediated music within these processes also represent an emerging field of interest
(Campbell and Wiggins 2013; Green 2011; Karlsen 2013; Lum 2008; Marsh 2008, 2012, 2013;
Minks 2006, 2013; Saether 2008).
In this paper, bicultural children are defined as those who have ‘experienced and internalized
more than one culture’ (Benet-Martinez et al. 2002, 493) through the process of migration, and
who must negotiate cultural meaning systems that relate both to their family’s culture of origin
and those of the country in which they reside (Benet-Martinez et al. 2002; Berry et al. 2012).
Such cultural meaning systems may include music and movement, as found in musical listening
(and viewing) preferences, musical performance, dance and musical play. It is argued in this paper
that, while engagement with the cultural meaning systems embodied in these forms of musical
practice may be unpredictable (Karlsen 2013), they provide a safe space in which aspects of
dual, or, more accurately, multiple, complex and fluid cultures1 can be explored and expressed
(see Ramnarine 2007).

Play as social and cultural learning

What, then is the place of musical play in contributing to the well-being of refugee and immigrant
children? For the majority of children, play provides a means of engaging with the world around
them, through observing and playing out patterns of behaviour and other social and cultural
phenomena. Children’s play may be solitary, but often involves interaction with others (Bruce
2011). Although very young children may initially play with adults, with increasing age and widening
social sphere, children’s play is more likely to be undertaken with other children. Jarvis, Newman,
and Swiniarski (2014) contend that
 MUSIC EDUCATION RESEARCH 3

peer collaboration in play-based activity is crucially important in the intricate interconnectedness of children’s
social, emotional, intellectual and linguistic development. In such activity, children develop an ability to con-
tribute, which in turn produces an emergent sense of competence and, within members of a highly social
species, feelings of ‘belonging’, ‘usefulness’, and subsequent well-being. (56)

In addition, children use play as a major way of accommodating new knowledge, melding it with
previous understandings in order to make sense of ‘their new, rapidly evolving world’ (Johnson
2014, 4). Children’s play can be seen as a vehicle for social and cultural learning, reflecting children’s
development within a culture and their understandings of social reality shared within and between
cultures (Bruce 2011; Jarvis, Newman, and Swiniarski 2014).

Transitioning from old to new: border-crossing through play

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I will illustrate this initially with several examples from my fieldwork in the UK, Australia and the
USA. Bicultural children’s musical play may utilise cultural practices from their birth countries while
adapting them to their host country environment. One instance of this was the Punjabi clapping
game Zig Zag Zoo which I observed in a West Yorkshire town in the UK (see Table 1).
Children frequently learnt the game from female members of their extended families in their
home environment in Anglo Punjabi enclaves. However its acceptance in the playground was influ-
enced by a number of prevalent conditions in the school, including the relative size of dominant and
minority ethnocultural groups. At ‘Ellington’ Primary School2 one of the West Yorkshire field sites
where I observed this game, Anglo Punjabi and Anglo Bengali children were dominant in the school
population. As a result, Zig Zag Zoo and a number of other Punjabi and Bengali games maintained a
continued popularity in this playground, with multiple variants resulting from its approved status.
Such games exemplified children’s comfort with their bilingual and bicultural world and were used as
markers of identity, constantly endorsed by the maintenance of cultural heritage by adults within the
school and by the regular replenishment of the children’s game repository through frequent visits to
Pakistan, as attested by a number of children in interviews.
However, the ease of transfer and acceptance of this particular game in the UK playground could also
be due to the recognition of familiar rhythmic and movement formulae (the building blocks of play-
ground games) in playgrounds of both home and host countries. Similar kinaesthetic and rhythmic
game formulae were evident in variants of this game, known as Tic tac toe, found in several of my
field schools in the USA and Australia. An example of one variant, played by two primary-aged Sierra
Leonean sisters in my recent study, who had been in Australia for less than two years is shown in Table 2.
These girls told me that they had learnt the game from a friend of the younger sister at school in
Australia, but it is possible that some of the formulae (including the culturally and geographically
pervasive ‘scissors, paper, rock’) were already familiar, at least to the older sister, so that their adap-
tation to, and participation in playground play in the new host culture could be reasonably fluent.
The culturally and socially transitional nature of these girls’ play was also enacted through the
performance of bilingual games, with texts vacillating between English (the official national language
of Sierra Leone) and Krio (the lingua franca of Sierra Leone), demonstrated in the game which the
girls called Mary. In this game, the rapid shifts between English and Krio were followed by a formula
commencing ‘Can you spell your name?’ in which each player was required to state her name and
spell it out in full.

Table 1. Text and movements of Punjabi game Zig Zag Zoo.

Punjabi (transliteration) English translation Movements
Zig zag zoo Zig zag zoo Hands in prayer formation. Flip backwards & forwards on beat.
Kabhi ooper Sometimes on top C/O, clap partner’s right hand above central point.
Kabhi neechey Sometimes underneath C/O, clap partner’s right hand below central point.
Kabhi oonchey Sometimes high Clap partner’s hands
Kabhi taley Sometimes low Clap partner’s hands back to back
Kabhi mukkey Sometimes punches Punch each other in stomach
 4 K. MARSH

Table 2. Text and movements of Tic Tac Toe played by Sierra Leonean sisters in Sydney.
Text Movements
Tic tac toe Hands in prayer formation. Flip backwards & forwards on beat.
Going up up up C/O, clap partner’s right hand above central point.
Going down down down C/O, clap partner’s right hand below central point.
Going three three three Clap partner’s hands back to back
Three in a row Shake own hands fingers spread 3 times
Scissors paper rock (varied number of times Shake own hands 4 times followed by movement depicting scissors, paper or
dependent on outcome) rock (SPR)
Once a certain number of SPR defeats/victories have been achieved, the victor
pinches each side of the loser’s cheek then taps both cheeks at the end.

The English text and easily transferable name-spelling formula enable its relocation into an Aus-
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tralian context. At the same time, the Krio elements act as a form of cultural maintenance and a
reminder of pleasurable play with friends in the homeland, so that the game forms a bridge between
old and new forms of belonging. Within this game, the girls demonstrate a competence in the
language of the host culture (through ability to spell) and also articulate a personal identity held
within a name strongly linked to the home culture. The meaning of the initial part of the text, calling
on Mary for a blessing, though connected with a global Christian religion, is rooted in a culturally
based and locally recognised message of communality in the home culture.
The mixing of languages within a single verbal exchange is known as code-switching (Milroy and
Muysken 1995). In discussing similar examples of linguistic code-switching within play, Minks notes
that ‘borrowed words enable children and other speakers to integrate knowledge from different
spheres of social interaction’ (2006, 125), as a way of encoding their histories of intercultural social
relations and inflecting resulting language with other contexts of use. Even though the English com-
ponent of this game originated in Sierra Leone, the inherent nature of the borrowing promoted a
culturally labile disposition to switch between linguistic and performative codes within the new cul-
tural context.
Bicultural children may use musical play as a mode through which identity and cultural practices
from their birth countries can be supported, but may also use it as a way of adopting new cultural
practices and for transitioning between the two. In children’s playful intercultural interactions, com-
plex and multi-layered meanings emerge, as forms of border-crossing (Minks 2013). This process of
both figurative and literal ‘border-crossing’ was in evidence at a culturally diverse school in Seattle,
where there was an English Language Learners (ELL) class, comprising Spanish-speaking children
aged from 5 to 9 years. Recently arrived from Central and South America, these Latino children
formed a closely knit group within the playground. They played clapping games, ring games and
line games, all of which were originally learnt in their countries of origin, in their first language
of Spanish. Many of these games retained certain textual formulae that were linked with previously
known cultural practices, reinforcing a sense of belonging to this micro community, within the larger
community operating in the playground. This was in contrast to the skipping or jump-rope games
which had all been learnt from English-speaking peers in the Seattle playground. The Latino children
appeared to be enacting a transition into a new form of cultural and linguistic practice by adopting
this novel genre of musical play in its linguistic and kinaesthetic entirety.
The transitional act of migration itself was encoded in several of the Latino children’s singing
games. One game, with antecedent forms in many parts of Central and South America, was
Melon y sandia (Melon and watermelon). This game had identical movements to those of the English
game Oranges and lemons,3 with children passing in a line under an arch formed by the uplifted arms
of two players, until at the final text line the arched arms descended to catch the child moving under-
neath. The caught player was then asked to decide whether she would become a melon or waterme-
lon, and joined on behind the relevant side of the ‘arch’.
However, in the rendition of this game by the newly arrived immigrant children in Seattle, the
first part of the game text in this performance was varied from the usual forms found in the second
 MUSIC EDUCATION RESEARCH 5

half of the song. In the new text these children’s (or others’) recent experiences of immigration were
recounted, with travel and border-crossing achieving prominence in the first few lines, as shown in
Table 3.
Expectations that work would be found in the USA are evident in the middle of the text, and the
plea for the ‘golden bell’ to ‘let me pass’ may symbolise a US or border landmark known by immi-
grants from Central America.4 The final lines explore the fracturing of families that may occur
during the process of immigration. Most disturbing, however, is the reference to being left behind,
which, in several entry points in which literal border-crossing into the USA occurs in desert areas,
may result not only in failure, but also death (see, for example, Editorial, New York Times, June 16,
2014).
There are a number of characteristics of importance in the performance of this game. The ‘ebul-
lience and resilience, spontaneity and creativity of play’ (Broadhead 2014, 2) moves the locus of con-
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trol to the players. The game involves the catching out of a player, but instead of being excluded from
the game, the caught player joins with another member, thereby ensuring her continuing social
inclusion. All players are secure in their group membership, kinaesthetically joined in supporting
each other through this verbal enactment of migration.
The ability to deal with such confronting subject matter is also promoted by the nature of play
itself. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson discussed a number of
psychological aspects of play that are pertinent here. He noted that:
play is a phenomenon in which the actions of ‘play’ are related to, or denote, other actions of ‘not play’. We
therefore meet in play with an instance of signals standing for other events. (1973, 153)

A prerequisite for play is children’s capability to utilise what Bateson terms ‘metacommunication’,
that is, to be able to exchange signals which carry the message ‘This is play’ (1973, 152) rather
than ‘this is real’. Such a signal is provided by a ‘frame’, a message or meaningful action by which
one person organises the perception of the viewer to ‘Attend to what is within [the play] and …
not attend to what is outside’ (1973, 160). In children’s musical play, this signal is typically a move-
ment or set of movements, sometimes accompanied by chanted text. In the case of Melon y sandia,
the frame is the formation of the symbolic arch through which the players will move, followed by the
chanted vocables: ‘A la piporo piporo’. Within this framed play, unreal versions of events or
emotions (such as fear) can be enacted, so that the danger of the real event or emotion can be experi-
enced and accommodated without harm, often defused by humorous text or movements. Bateson
draws attention to the commonalities between play and therapy and the potential for play to be

Table 3. Melon y Sandia (Melon or Watermelon) Seattle version.

Spanish text English translation
A la piporo piporo (Vocables used as a count in)
De la mar, de la mar From the sea, from the sea
Por aquí por el pasar From here to pass the time
Lo delante corre mucho The ones at the front run fast
Lo de atrás se quedaran The ones behind get left behind
Tras tras tras Behind, behind, behind
Una mexicana con blusa bonita A Mexican girl with a pretty blouse
Se fue a trabajar Went to work
¿Melón o sandia? Melon or watermelon?
Verbena, verbena Street party, street party
La vieja gatena The old woman with cat’s eye
La … … cae arena Sand … … … . falls on her.
Campanita de oro deja me pasar Golden bell let me pass
Junto a mis hijos Together with my children
Menos los de atrás But without those behind
Dame los otro día, Give them to me another day
Otro día, Otro día, día, día, día, día Another day, another day, day, day, day
¿Melón o sandia? Melon or watermelon?
 6 K. MARSH

therapeutic. In this game, the terrifying event culminates in a cathartic climax that engenders laugh-
ter and relief, and the social safety of then choosing allegiance with another player, confirmed by
physical bonding.
Fear of the real or the unreal is thus subsumed in this way, and can be clearly demonstrated in
another active and suspenseful game, Lobo (Wolf), played by the recently arrived Latino immigrant
children at the Seattle school. Here the nature of the threat posed by the wolf was very evident and
the wolf was both real, in game terms enacted by a real child exhibiting some wolf-like behaviours,
but also imaginary, as the ‘wolf’ was, indeed a child, moreover one who engaged in some ridiculously
non-wolf-like behaviours. The call and response game (played throughout South America) entailed
children of both sexes dancing in a circle, and calling out to the ‘wolf’ in sung form to determine her
location and thus immanence of an attack.5 The ‘wolf’ responded with an evolving list of activities in
preparation for her emergence from the tree (her ‘home’) where she was hiding, as outlined in Table 4.
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With each step of preparation, the wolf became more visible, gradually increasing the impending
tension and threat. After calling out ‘Estoy abriendome la puerta’ (I am opening the door), the wolf
leapt out to chase and catch the children, leading to a frenzy of running, screaming and violent ‘eat-
ing’ of victims. In order to escape this onslaught, children ran to a different tree that signified a safe
house, shouting ‘close the door’ once safety was secured. Victims who had been caught joined the
wolf in the tree and the game commenced again. An interesting point to note in this recorded version
was that a boy who was part of the ELL class but who had been absent from the playground, was
immediately welcomed into the game as soon as he approached after observing for a short time.
The circle formation operated as both play frame and a mechanism for instant inclusion within
this small community of players. As with Melon and watermelon, the game provided enjoyment
and emotional release for the participants.
Another notable feature of the game as performed in the Seattle playground was the multiple call
variants (Table 5), because each of the players sang their own version, brought from their place of
origin. Regionally contrasting forms from various parts of Central and South America therefore
co-existed in a single game performance.
Different variants were dominant in different iterations of the game, depending on who remained
in the circle and who was singing more loudly, but all were equally accepted.

Social synchrony in situations of social uncertainty

It is evident, then, that in musical play there is often a level of semantic variability, semantic ambiguity
and lack of semantic importance. Literal ‘meaning’ in play is therefore of secondary importance. What
is important is the social nature of the play and the ways in which its rhythmic and kinaesthetic aspects
work together to produce a sense of group cohesion, what Turino terms ‘social synchrony’ (2008, 41),
‘a crucial underpinning of feelings of social comfort, belonging and identity’ (2008, 44) which Turino

Table 4. Text of Lobo (Wolf), Seattle version.

Spanish text English translation
Group call Juguemos en el bosque Group call We play in the forest
Cuando el lobo no esta aquí When the wolf isn’t here
¿Lobo, lobo estas aquí? Wolf, wolf are you here?
Lobo answers: Wolf answers:
Estoy poniendo me … I am putting on …
… los zapatos … My shoes
… mis pantalones … my pants
… la camisa … my shirt
… los calzones … my underwear
… los guantes … my gloves
Estoy bañando me I am bathing myself
Estoy abriendo me la puerta!! I am opening the door!!
 MUSIC EDUCATION RESEARCH 7

Table 5. Call variants in Lobo (Wolf) as performed in the Seattle playground.

Spanish text English translation
Group calls (variants): Juguemos en el bosque Group calls (variants): We play in the forest
Cuando el lobo no esta aquí When the wolf isn’t here
¿Lobo, lobo estas aquí? Wolf, wolf are you here?
Buscaremos en el bosque We look in the forest
Preguntamos al lobo si esta aquí And ask the wolf if he is here
¿Lobo, lobo estas aquí? Wolf, wolf are you here?
Jugaremos en el bosque We play in the forest
Mientras el lobo no esta aquí While the wolf isn’t here
¿Lobo, lobo estas aquí? Wolf, wolf are you here?

associates with ‘participatory performance’, defined as ‘artistic practice in which there are no artist-
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audience distinctions, only participants and potential participants performing different roles’ (2008,
26), the primary goal being the involvement of the maximum number of people in the activity. Rep-
etition of musical and kinaesthetic formulae in children’s musical games provides what Turino calls
‘security in constancy’ (2008, 40) and the repetitious forms and rhythms allow children to join in
and interact, through synchronised, interlocked sound and motion. Turino notes that ‘At such
moments, moving together and sounding together in a group creates a direct sense of being together
and of deeply felt similarity, and hence identity among participants’ (2008, 34).
Ian Cross, investigating music cognition, has also postulated that music exhibits an essential
ambiguity that facilitates social interaction, particularly in ‘situations of social uncertainty’ (Cross
and Woodruff 2009, 113). Situations of social uncertainty include many experienced by refugee
and immigrant children, for example:

. significant life transitions for individuals, and for individuals as part of a wider community;
. circumstances where the integrity or stability of a community is perceived to be threatened or is
felt to require re-affirmation;
. the affirmation … of propitious relationships between the social order and that which sustains it;
. the management of inter-group relationships, e.g. by constituting a mutually accessible frame-
work for non-conflictual between-group interactions;
. those involved in the formation of individual, and collective, within-group identity;
. instances of personal crisis (excerpted from Cross and Woodruff 2009, 113–114).

Cross suggests that

Music’s powers of entrainment [synchrony], together with its ‘floating intentionality’ [semantic indetermi-
nacy], fit it for use as a medium for communicative interactions in which meanings are under-determined
to the extent that participants are free to develop their own interpretations of the significance of their own,
and others’, contributions to the collective musical behaviour. At the same time its potential for group entrain-
ment [equivalent to Turino’s ‘social synchrony’] provides a framework for co-ordinated action that guarantees
the integrity and continuity of that collective musical behaviour. In effect, it allows participants to explore the
prospective consequences of their actions and attitudes towards other participants within a framework that is
likely to align participants’ sense of goals. (Cross 2007, 660)

It therefore provides a form of social interaction in which participants work concertedly to achieve
shared musical goals and in which social risks are considerably lessened. This has particular benefits
for refugee and newly arrived immigrant children. Nigel Osborne, who has written extensively of his
therapeutic music activities with refugee children in Eastern Europe concurs, stating that ‘Music may
also entrain, co-ordinate and synchronise movement between individuals, offering the excitement,
satisfaction, security, comradeship and cohesion of playing and moving rhythmically together’
(2009, 344).
I will illustrate this further with a description of a special interest dance group that I witnessed at a
Sydney primary school with a very high population of refugee children. The group brought together
 8 K. MARSH

boys and girls of varying ages and very culturally diverse backgrounds, including Anglo-Australian chil-
dren and a considerable number of refugees, especially those from South Sudan and other sub-Saharan
African nations. This group performed energetic and virtuosic dance routines to popular songs, with
considerable dexterity and expertise, and was therefore in demand for special occasions within the
school and local district. The movement routines were influenced by media-disseminated styles, par-
ticularly hip hop, and the members of the dance group always seemed to focus on and enjoy the rou-
tines, despite frequent rehearsals. Such enjoyment and dedication were attributable to the pleasurable
and socially synchronous nature of the dancing activity itself but were also fostered by the collaborative
way in which the choreography for the dance group was developed, with children being invited to devise
dance moves and sequences for inclusion in the performance. Creative collaboration between children
and between children and the teacher promoted a sense of agency in refugee children for whom oppor-
tunities for agency in their lives were very limited prior to arriving in their final host country.
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Syncretic music and dance as multimodal and cumulative memory

The nature of the migrant experience with music and dance has an inherent capacity to engender crea-
tivity. In their book, The Globalization of Musics in Transit, Krüger and Trandafoiu (2014) note that
Migrants do not just take music along, like Desert Island Discs, but they reach out, appropriating, mixing and
matching, and ultimately producing something anew. Migrants can therefore be placed at the heart of musical
innovation, not just appropriation or repetition. … (16)

This was clearly evident in the syncretic dance forms drawing on multiple styles, that were created
and eventually publicly performed by members of a diasporic Sierra Leonean youth group in Sydney.
This group had been created by two Sierra Leonean former refugees in order to provide a safe and
social space for Sierra Leonean young people, aged from approximately 5–18 years, many of whom
were refugees and voluntary migrants, who had experienced varying degrees of trauma in their past
and present resettlement. The group met weekly on Saturdays in a Salvation Army hall to engage in
drumming, dancing and drama activities that provided avenues for emotional release. Max, the
initiator and co-ordinator of the group, was employed as a School Learning Support Officer, a bilin-
gual and bicultural staff member who assisted students and teachers within the IEC that was also a
focus of our study and which some members of the group also attended (or had attended during their
initial months in Australia).
Several of the girls in the group were accomplished dancers and took the lead in dance rehearsals,
modelling dance moves for both female and male participants to learn. During a break in an early
dance session, one of the youth group members attached her mobile phone to a speaker, playing
some favourite songs as a form of relaxation. The initial song, Awilo Longomba’s ‘Karolina’
(2004), immediately galvanised the group to dance in a much less inhibited way. Each young per-
son’s dance was completely idiosyncratic, comprising quite contrasting dance steps performed at
a differing pace, reflecting a wide variety of stylistic influences, gained in home and transit cultures
and mediated sources in the final place of settlement. Max described as influential dance steps learnt
from their parents, dance in Guinea (a transit country), mediated performances by Beyonce, JayZ,
Lady GaGa, and the Nigerian movies popular with the Sierra Leonean diaspora. The videoclip of
the song, an example of the soukous dance music genre that originally emanated from the Congo
but which is now popular across sub-Saharan Africa (Stewart 2004), and the associated Kwassa
Kwassa dance style with specific hip and hand movements was also influential. The song was a
focus of considerable enjoyment, despite being sung in a combination of a Congolese language (Lin-
gala) and French, neither of which was understood by the young people. In the spontaneity of their
dancing, all of the group members were responding to the music individually and in ways that were
self-determined but as part of an enjoyable whole.
This initially spontaneous dance formed the nucleus of a more formal dance performance by mem-
bers of this group who combined with students of the IEC as part of a large collaborative concert held at
 MUSIC EDUCATION RESEARCH 9

the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to celebrate Harmony Day, an annual celebration of Australia’s
cultural diversity, which aims to encourage community participation, inclusiveness and respect. Over
a six-month period, teachers from the IEC, members of the community and the research team worked
with the group to assist in transforming what had been predominantly social activities into musical
activities with an additional performance-based outcome. Students from the IEC (who came from a
variety of cultural backgrounds) joined the Sierra Leonean Youth Group sessions on Saturdays to
rehearse these performances, which included drumming and hip hop routines developed at the school.
Other activities such as the Sierra Leonean ‘culture dances’6 with drumming accompaniment involved
only the Sierra Leonean Youth Group members. The two groups combined for several performance
items, most notably a joint choral rendition of the Michael Jackson song ‘You are Not Alone’ (Kelly
1995, Track 9), the planned culmination of the concert.
As the sessions proceeded, what had initially been conceived of as participatory musical activities
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became more directed and goal oriented presentational performances ‘where one group of people, the
artists, prepare and provide music for another group, the audience, who do not participate in making
the music or dancing’ (Turino 2008, 26). This difference in perspective caused considerable conflict at
times, with an experienced group of Sierra Leonean girls who had created and were leading the dance
performances resenting teachers’ efforts to polish the performance and parents having varying levels
of acceptance of what was seen by some as a non-educational activity. Nevertheless, despite the diffi-
culties created by conflicting values and priorities, it seemed that the power of music and dance to
transport the performers into a state of social synchrony, negating the effects of previous disagree-
ments and affronts, resulted in developed performances with great vitality, highlighted in the final con-
cert at the Conservatorium. In this, both the contemporary soukous-influenced fusion dance and the
so-called culture dance were equally syncretic, representing a kinaesthetic map of the music and dance
experiences of the young people, before, during and following their respective journeys to Australia,
thus constituting a form of cumulative and multimodal memory.
Similar transitions were experienced by the two younger Sierra Leonean sisters whose games were
discussed earlier in this paper. On several occasions, they sang for me a number of gospel songs,
often concatenations linked together in through-composed form. These songs were learnt in Con-
akry, in the transit country of Guinea where many refugee camps have been set up across the border
from Sierra Leone, though some might also have been transmitted by televised evangelism within
Sierra Leone. These songs, incorporating the syncretic popular music styles, choreographed move-
ment and drumming accompaniment of West African Pentecostalism (Bartolome 2013; Kalu
2008) were sung in Sydney by these sisters with their family at home as a form of communal prayer,
rather than in the very different church environment that they experienced in Sydney.
While one example of this genre, Good morning Jesus was bilingual and more clearly rooted in the
home or transit culture, another example, Joy joy joy, was performed entirely in English (see Table 6)
but with toy microphone, evocative movements and drumming. Both text and movements evinced
messages of joy and freedom provided by religious belief, in contrast to the arduous conditions of
flight which they had experienced.
Although they were unable to continue their expression of belief in this culturally specific way in
Sydney congregations, they were able to share this expression, an integral part of their identity, both
in and beyond the home. The oldest sister had been invited by her teacher to sing the song at a school
assembly and felt confident enough in her musical and cultural identity to do so. At the same time,
she and her sisters were learning and accommodating new forms of musical religious expression in
the Sydney church that they attended.

Mediated music as collective imagination of a remembered community

The previously discussed examples have predominantly related to interactions with real commu-
nities, in home, transit and host countries, but contemporary media enable interaction with virtual
and remembered communities. Some refugee and voluntary migrant children used the Internet as a
 10 K. MARSH

Table 6. Joy, Joy, Joy, as sung by Sierra Leonean primary-aged sisters.

Text (partial rendition)
Joy, joy, joy,
In my heart is ringing
Joy, joy, joy,
Jesus set me singing
See what your love has done for me
Ah it just set me free
Freedom is my melody
Be Joy, joy joy …

source of musical and performative materials derived from home and host cultures from which to
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fashion syncretic performances reflecting aspects of both cultures but also creating a new cultural
space that was entirely their own (Marsh 2013). Others used both new and older media to link
with communities that exist within a collective imagination.
Perhaps the most poignant example of this was the fervent singing of a song learnt from satellite
television in Iraq by an Assyrian 11-year-old girl, a longer version of which was also sung on a differ-
ent occasion, by her 12-year-old sister. When asked the meaning of the song, both girls alluded to a
girl whose father had died and was left alone far from her country. The younger girl, Shamiran,
described how she sang the song every night and cried, because her father had died. We later dis-
covered that the girls’ father had been kidnapped and killed in Iraq and that, having recently
migrated, they were living in difficult circumstances in Sydney with their mother, a single parent
with health problems that contributed to the uncertainly of their lives. It was not until we had the
song translated that its full import became evident. The song was not titled ‘I wish I lived with
my Dad’, as stated by the younger girl, or ‘O people feel my pain’, the title provided by the older
girl, but Baa’ed a’enee el Iraq, ‘My dear Iraq’, an Iraqi song that appeared after the US invasion
and sectarian violence and which described the sad status of the country, as outlined in the following
translation of the lyrics (Table 7).
Baa’ed a’enee el Iraq uses a profoundly subjective, emotive voice to illustrate the overwhelming
upheaval that armed occupation has brought to the narrator’s life. In singing this song, these girls
were referencing the expression of collective pain and loss of a nation in order to express their
own highly personal feelings of grief and loss associated with the Iraq war and sectarian violence,
and the concomitant isolation and longing for a lost homeland experienced as a result of moving
to a country at such a geographical and cultural remove from this homeland. For the younger
child, the ritualised performance of the song provided a regular form of emotional release, and
for both girls its reiteration enabled an invocation of the homeland and a connection with a virtual,
remembered community through expression of a shared and collective pain.
It is heartening to realise that this level of pain, often evident in the younger girl’s demeanour in
the school classroom, was subsumed into much more pleasurable emotions at other times as she
demonstrated a large range of Arabic and Assyrian musical games, dances and popular songs
with her friend in the playground, her delight in the socially synchronous and enjoyable activity
and the sharing of the songs, games and dances that were such a strong part of her musical and cul-
tural identity having transformative social and emotional power.

Conclusion
To conclude, in this paper I have touched on some of the aspects of music, musical play and related
movement and dance that contribute to the well-being of refugee and newly arrived voluntary
migrant children and young people. Children’s musical play exhibits inherent characteristics of soci-
ality and social synchrony. Additionally, children’s disposition both to adopt and adapt music
enables them to use the changing sources of music found in their environment syncretically. Both
 MUSIC EDUCATION RESEARCH 11

Table 7. Baa’ed a’enee el Iraq (My dear Iraq), translated lyricsa.

Text translated into English
O people feel my pain
O Iraq what have you done to me!
My heart cries loud
Iraq, without you we die
Iraq is dear to me and my soul
O people feel my pain
O Iraq what have you done to me!
My heart cries loud
Iraq, without you we die
Iraq is dear to me and my soul
Had my dad been alive and seen my condition
I am far away from my dear country
Alas what has happened to us?
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Passing nights are drenched in sadness

His soul calls upon you
Iraq will be under the guardianship of my children
a
I am indebted to the translator of recorded Iraqi songs, Dr Faiq Issa, for providing a great deal of additional contextual information
regarding this song. A YouTube clip of one version of the song, performed by the Iraqi duo Rahma Riyad and Haythem Yousif:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUeoicAD4xc, closely resembles the version sung by the two girls.

of these characteristics are especially important for refugee and newly arrived immigrant children
and young people who must negotiate situations of social uncertainty on an almost continual
basis. A variety of technologies, particularly the Internet, are used by children to assist them in main-
taining contact with the music of the home culture as well as that of the host culture, and can provide
a virtual and extended diasporic musical community, sometimes in the absence of a real one in the
host environment.
In addition to its spontaneous occurrence in a variety of settings, the presence of music, musical
play and dance in regular planned activities in schools and community facilities can enhance
language development and social integration within the host culture. Creative involvement with
music and dance in both formal school and informal out of school settings can give highly disem-
powered refugee children some form of agency, enabling them to mediate the negative effects of
forced migration in ways that are active and of their own choosing. For many refugee and newly
arrived immigrant children in the process of resettlement, music, movement, dance and play, as inte-
gral forms of human experience, offer important ways to connect with others, draw comfort, express
emotion and develop self-esteem, identity and resilience.

Notes
1. Refugee migration patterns may entail the traversing of, and residence within, more than one country en route
to the final host country. For this reason, in addition to the malleability of culture itself, the culturally diverse
nature of many host countries and their musics, and access to a limitless range of music from multiple countries
on the Internet, musical forms encountered by bicultural children and young people may be highly varied.
2. For ethical reasons, all names of people and institutions in this paper are pseudonyms.
3. Descriptions of this game, its possible origins and variants found in the UK, can be found in Opie and Opie
1985.
4. The latter part of the song is commonly found throughout the Americas, in Venezuela the landmark being a
river, in other places a bridge (C. Derwent, personal communication, 31 January, 2005). Thanks to my Spanish
translator Clarita Derwent, for her insights into meanings of texts in these games.
5. This game also has an equivalent in English, What’s the time Mr Wolf. It was recorded at Ellington in the UK
and is played in Australia (though not recorded in my Australian field schools). In the Australian version, chil-
dren stand in a line and gradually creep up towards the ‘wolf’ who is facing in the opposite direction. The text is
spoken and relates to time rather than activity.
6. ‘Culture dances’ was the term used by the Sierra Leonean young people to denote dances deemed to be more
traditional in nature, even though some of these dances had movements derived from multiple traditions,
especially as the dancers came from different parts of Sierra Leone and had differing tribal affiliations.
 12 K. MARSH

Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to the Sierra Leonean youth group and the staff and students of all field schools for their warm
welcome and for allowing the research team ongoing access to their activities for extended periods of time. I also wish
to thank my research assistants, Samantha Dieckmann and Laura Corney, whose contributions to the current project
have been invaluable. The insights and contextual information provided by translators Clarita Derwent (Spanish texts)
and Dr Faiq Issa (Arabic and Assyrian texts) have also been of significant benefit to this study. Earlier fieldwork dis-
cussed in this article was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP0211601.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Funding information
Earlier fieldwork discussed in this article was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant
[DP0211601]. The Refugee project was supported by two Sydney Conservatorium of Music Research Grants and a
University of Sydney Bridging Support Grant.

Notes on contributor
Kathryn Marsh is Associate Professor of Music Education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Syd-
ney. Her research interests include children’s musical play, children’s creativity, and cultural diversity in music edu-
cation, most recently exploring the role of music in the lives of refugee children. She is editor of Research Studies in
Music Education and has written numerous scholarly publications, including The Musical Playground: Global Tra-
dition and Change in Children’s Songs and Games, published by Oxford University Press and winner of the Folklore
Society’s Katherine Briggs Award and American Folklore Society’s Opie Award.

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