Music, Art, and Trauma
A story about a Piano in East Timor
My piano was born in Japan (Yamaha), shipped from Indonesia (Surabaya), and migrated by ship to the island port-city of Dili where some people do not usually expect to find a piano, let alone one thriving in a post-conflict environment, and surviving hopefully for generations. After the last Indonesian ship with soldiers departed the port of Dili in October 1999, it was time to build a new independent future.
The piano weighs 275 kilograms, a heavy instrument that requires long-term commitment. Since we left East Timor, my piano was adopted by different families and recentlty moved to a new home. The current adoptive family are from Spain and England and curious about its life history, so here is the story.
During Covid-19, global surveys have been conducted on whether or not artists and musicians are “essential” or “non-essential”. In certain countries, the majority of the population deemed them “non-essential”. In the post-war country where my piano lives, some powers that be are thinking of evicting artists from the Arte Moris (“Art Lives”) building (formerly the National Museum that was home to indigenous, traditional art and sculptures), in order to make space for Veteran’s Affairs. Artists and war veterans are pitted against each other, in competition for space and hierarchy of what are “essential” needs. But there is another perspective.
One of my beloved mentors, Benedict Anderson, once told me that the problem with our Sistema is that we became Independent, but the old colonial wiring remains in place. Decolonization means re-wiring, un-wiring, and de-wiring. Art gives us the capacity to re-wire and imagine another world as possible. Ironically, the colonizers knew this only too well, and that’s why the most important thing they looted first was the National Museum in Dili (more than 600 art and sculptures were stolen by the Indonesian soldiers on the last ship, some of the art work ended up in the hands of private sellers in Bali and Kupang). The remaining traditional sculptures are stunning and phenomenal in their beauty and the histories they tell of the villagers and craftswomen and men who produced them. The story is that during the occupation, Indonesian soldiers went in to all the rural districts and “collected” sacred sculptures and art from uma lulik, promising to compensate the villagers. They were never compensated. It is a privilege to know one of the technical conservationists who worked with Timorese museum curators (who were also war veterans) and UNESCO to keep the art and wood sculptures alive.
As a music educator and Humanities advocate, I never doubted the value of music and the arts. And I never imagined that I would have to continually convince certain people that it is not about artists vs. veterans, but both. In the interdisciplinary courses that I teach, we examine how experiences of violence, colonialism, slavery, war, conflict, extremism and misogyny, racism, poverty, inequality, social exclusion, and sexual abuse shaped and expressed artistic visions. In “Music lessons as life lessons”, Human rights, Art and Trauma, we explore research on memory and trauma, the impact of music in conflict and post-conflict environments, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and how music, art, dance, and tactile activity impacts our brain.
As one of my students, Suzanna Shattuck, writes in an essay submitted for our UC Davis Human Rights course:
“Trauma steals time…Trauma steals identity. Trauma steals light…Trauma steals stability. Trauma steals innocence. The saying that ‘hurt people hurt people’ alludes to the cyclical nature of abuse…Trauma creates identity. Trauma steals rest…The flashbacks do not end, and I wake up exhausted again. Trauma steals focus. Trauma steals community…Trauma steals connection. Trauma steals opportunity. We cannot know how many futures have been dulled by abuse…Standing up to trauma creates healing…Trauma heals in the light.” Suzanna Shattuck, May 29, 2020, UC Davis.
Neuroscience research shows that war veterans, political prisoners, and victims of torture and sexual abuse can re-wire their brain when they create music and produce art. Practicing music shapes our character and human nature.
I remember one conversation I had with my late husband, an indigenous Mambai from Ainaro, a Literature student who studied Poetry, war veteran, political prisoner, and survivor of torture about one of his friends. In an era of competitive nation-building when war veterans jockeyed aggressively for political positions and “who suffered more”, I asked him about the character of one of his veteran friends. He replied: “Oh him…he’s different…because he’s a musician. He’s not like the others at all. He’s very calm. Even during war or prison, he sings or plays his guitar. He’ll stay positive and create something beautiful no matter what.”
A story about a piano and how a kindred spirit community nurtures it to survive…
In 1999, after East Timor voted for Independence and the Indonesian military decided to burn down most of the country, I knew that the only thing that would keep me sane and help to rebuild and re-wire what was broken was to keep playing music. That’s how we brought the piano to Timor Leste.
At 14, as a new immigrant living in inner city Oakland, raised by a single mother who had three jobs in order to support five kids, my dream was to become a pianist, even though almost every single “practical” person I knew told me to “get another dream” (i.e. something more “relevant” and “income-generating”). But my wise mother decided to buy me a piano through small monthly installments and pay for piano lessons with Helen Vourax-Birch, one of the best teachers I’ve ever had in my life.
My favorite composer is Bach (1685–1750, German) and my favorite music his “Arioso” (Catata 156). Bach and Pablo Casals (from Catalunya, Pau Casals, 1876–1973, cellist), have given me and my son so much love, pleasure, and comfort during times of adversity, keeping us tuning our instruments and tuning ourselves, practicing even at 2am. What could we possibly have in common with a white male from Germany and a Catalan? Musicians, poets, and artists cross and free us from borders. I’ve learned a lot from Bach and Casals about counterpoint and contrapuntal voices, polyvocality, dissonance, synchronicity, resistance, and cooperation without domination (see for example, Eric Siblin, The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, Grove Press: 2011).
In 2014 before my son and I left East Timor, in the midst of grief and trauma, my late husband asked me about the piano: “Where is the piano?” I replied: “After everything that’s happened in this nation-building process where artists and musicians are so marginalized and undervalued, where we are reduced to fighting for space, you’re suddenly asking me about the piano?” He answered, his voice filled with sadness: “I hope you haven’t sold it.” Then I replied: “Aren’t musicians and artists supposed to be non-essential and irrelevant anyway in this political economy?” And then he said: “All I ask is that whatever happens, you never give it up.”
In the middle of the night, I received a text message from one of my best friends, a Timorese woman whose home was less than a mile away from mine. We both started building our homes together around the same time, after the war ended. “I’ll keep your piano for you, Joy. I’ll take good care of it. When you return someday, it’ll still be here.”
I’ll also never forget that conversation.
Six years after we left East Timor to live in California, when I look back at those conversations, I realize that inspite of everything, my late husband knew that the piano symbolized love, building communities of action, healing from trauma — and that if it was collectively nurtured, then we would always be connected to Timor Leste, to my son’s cultural heritage and roots. Inspite of its “outsider”, “foreign”, and hybrid roots and routes, the piano and the musical communities it engenders touches a universal chord that connects war veterans, former guerrillas, trauma survivors, and artists without borders. We have more in common than we think; contrary to what hyper-nationalism and toxic masculinities tells us. At a time when our life-spaces are increasingly militarized and isolated in silos, we need more of these creative, imaginative, artistic spaces. I’ve seen directly how music and art programs in struggling schools and communities in Woodland, California have transformed the lives of students in disadvantaged communities. El Sistema, the revolutionary music education program founded by the economist and musician Jose Abreu from Venezuela (another oil-rich country crippled by corruption) has become an inspiration throughout the world. Art, music, rituals, dance, and performing arts are as essential to the survival of veterans with trauma as it is to the future of the youth. The best music concert we ever gave was for war veterans like Maun Eti Uco.
This is a story I’ve been meaning to tell all these years to the kind friends who have cared for our piano. If the piano could speak, it would tell stories about heartbreak, displacement, ultra-nationalism and misogyny, several moves and tunings (in a post-war country where there is only one piano tuner, from Korea). It would also tell a story about disability, as during one of the piano moves, the piano fell on me, and broke my left toe. I couldn’t move, was in a wheelchair for 10 months, and had to go on leave from my job. One of the Timorese doctors, who loves music, and is also a veteran, helped care for me. It can tell stories about loss, mistakes, and failures, but also courage. Simultaneously, it will also tell stories about openness, tolerance, solidarity, belonging, kindred spirit networks, cosmopolitanism, global citizenship, and love beyond reason. For some of the piano’s stories, see: https://studio.youtube.com/video/m392XEalz6M/edit/basic
A society with art and music is a society with hope.
Mr. Donghee Lee, piano tuner, also a musician, from South Korea, his son, and Timorese colleagues moving my piano to its new adoptive home. Photo credit: Jacqueline Bowes Franklin
See part two: On war veterans and youth: https://medium.com/@joy_siapno/how-to-compete-for-victimhood-787d2ea833b1?source=friends_link&sk=3a38ed6a4670e7c31416b013a0577bdb
