Egremont — Nonprofit organization Music in Common will hold a free concert at The Egremont Barn on Sunday, October 6, at 5 p.m. The concert, which will include performances by Wanda Houston, Rees Shad, Katherine Winston, Jackson Whalen, and several other performers, will benefit the organization, and donations will be accepted for the performance.
Musician Todd Mack, a friend of journalist Daniel Pearl, started Music in Common in Berkshire County October 2005. Pearl worked for Berkshire County newspapers The Berkshire Eagle and The North Adams Transcript before working The Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming its Southeast Asia bureau chief.
On January 23, 2002, while working on assignment in Karachi, Pakistan, Pearl was kidnapped by Islamist militant groups working in collaboration. He was murdered by the militants one week later.
Mack was a bandmate of Pearl’s and started the Friends of Daniel Festival (FODFest) in Berkshire County in 2005 to honor his friend’s memory. He met Pearl, a fiddle player, back in 1990 in Atlanta, Ga., and played with him in several bands. “Daniel was a pretty special dude,” Mack told The Berkshire Edge. “He was one of the most accepting and welcoming people I’ve ever met. As a musician, he was incredibly talented. He could have made a career as a musician, but he chose to harness his musical skills in a way that helped him with his reporting.”
Mack said that, as a journalist, Pearl would travel around the world with his violin. “He would sit in on jam sessions to immerse himself in the local community and its culture,” Mack said. “He played music with others to learn about where he was.”
The annual FODFest, held yearly in October to commemorate Pearl’s birthday, eventually grew into the nonprofit Music in Common organization, which is now based out of Atlanta, Ga.
FODFest encompasses a series of concerts all held throughout October. While the concerts are free, donations are being accepted for the organization which operates multiple music-based programs worldwide. “The organization curates experiences for people across social divides to find common ground,” Mack said. “Music, even in its simplest form, is a universal language. Whether you are a musician or not, music can be a powerful and effective bridge to bring together people in conflict. This includes communities and people who don’t normally come together. Our programs are a combination of interactive musical performances and facilitated conversations around pressing issues of the day, including problems that are at the heart of the conflict.”
Mack said that the organization has worked extensively over the years with Israeli and Palestinian communities. The organization started its work in the Middle East in 2010. “We’ve used our programs to create spaces where Israelis and Palestinians find common ground through music,” Mack said. “Music is the vehicle that brought both sides to the table, and it’s a vehicle that helped them see each other as human beings.”
The flagship program for the organization is JAMMS (Journalism As Music, Multimedia, and Songwriting). The program is described on the organization’s website as a “culturally immersive, experiential intensive for youth and adults.” As part of the program, participants choose a theme to collectively write a song about and create a multimedia production around the song. Since the JAMMS program started in 2010, 60 songs have been written and performed by both musicians and non-musicians around the world.
Back in 2014, 18 teenagers ages 13 to 18 gathered at Bard College at Simon’s Rock for the MiC International Youth Summit. The teenagers, who are American, Palestinian, and Israeli in origin, created the above song and video within eight days.
“JAMMS is our flagship program, and there are threads of that in pretty much everything that we do,” Mack said. “We’ve operated 30 JAMMS programs in the Middle East region and many more here in the United States. Sometimes, we bring together communities that are not necessarily in conflict with one another, but are at risk of conflict.”
Another program offered by Music in Common is Amplify. While JAMMS offers programs to both musicians and non-musicians, Amplify offers a summer residency to skilled musicians throughout the United States and the Middle East to learn and record songs created in the JAMMS program.
The organization’s Around the MIC program includes performances from musicians playing songs composed at various Music in Common programs. “The Around the MIC program uses the conventional ‘songwriters-in-the-round’ format, but it is very intentionally curated to bring together artists on stage who are from different racial, ethnic, cultural backgrounds and musical styles,” Mack said.
Music in Common also has several continuing projects, including its Black Legacy Project, Abraham JAMMS, and The United Songs of America.
Click here for more information about FODfest at The Egremont Barn on October 6, along with Music in Common’s various programs.
