Building Empathy Through the Sounds of ‘a World in Motion’

Building Empathy Through the Sounds of ‘a World in Motion’

Building Empathy Through the Sounds of ‘a World in Motion’ In February 2025, in the shadow of the Israel-Hamas War with its rising death toll and humanitarian crisis, a small audience in a library in Chicago experienced the war’s heartbreak, one note at a time. A classical string quartet played Lao Rahal Soti (“If My Voice Departs”) with the lyrics: If my voice departs, your voices will not / If the singer dies, the songs will remain / bringing together the broken and suffering hearts. “I’d composed this a very long time ago and this seemed like such an appropriate time to share it,” Shireen Abu Khader, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Canadian musician, composer and educator, says. “The words are powerful just from a human perspective … anybody can connect with it.”  Rohingya refugee musicians and Crossing Borders co-director Tom Clowes gathered together for cultural exchange and learning. Courtesy of Crossing Borders Music This universality of music, its ability to elicit the same emotions in di…