During Global study at Tuesday, Mr. Gromack talks about their experience of founding the Khmer magic music bus in 2012. It surprised me that it only takes 35 days for them to achieve their 35,000 dollars’ goal. I thought it is really hard for small organizations to found this amount of money, but Mr. Gromack and his group only used a month to reach the goal. What also surprised me is that the planning of this fundraising took more than a year. The first fundraising seems like a magic for me because of its efficiency, but the second one drags me back to the realistic because the second fundraising ended up failing. I think the falling of the second fundraising showed the problem that there are still many people who are not paying enough attention to helping people around the world, and this is truly something everyone should be paying more attention to.
The Global Study on Wednesday interested me a lot. I got to see instruments that I have never seen before and listened to a totally different kind of music. But what interested more is the stories of how music and the magic music bus influenced their life after the genocide. Cambodian music was forbidden during the Khmer Rouge time, and masters gave up playing the Cambodian traditional music. But after the magic music bus appeared, masters started to reappear and began to sing and play the music that they gave up for decades. People from villages came together and the relationship between people goes closer together. I never think that a single bus could have such a big influence on the local people and the masters. Kids who had never listened to live music before can get to hear music, and masters will have the chance to push their instrument to the public and pass it to further generation.
For the Cambodian Living Art activity at night, we further dig into the significant of music to the master’s life. I like the combination of music and them telling their stories of the past, it makes the whole night interesting and fun. After talking about all the heavy past, the enthusiastic and cheerful music towards the end raised the hope of Cambodian music again. What I was also interested in is the masters’ connection with traditional music. The speaker (I don’t know how to spell his name) told his experience during the Khmer Rouge period and how he started to play the flute. He talks about how playing the flutes let him forget the memory of the past, and release his sadness. For him, music is something that represents him, it is a symbol of who he is and it represents his nation. Music is not only important for the Cambodian masters, but it also brings people together. Music passes love to people and creates a lovely atmosphere that is hard to retrieve after the genocide, and that is why I think music can heal the wound of the Cambodians. It is a unique experience for me to listen to the music masters talk about their past, and I really enjoyed it. For me, music is just a spiritual support to release stress or a way to enjoy, but for these masters, music is everything. Without the Magic Music Bus, they might never reunite or started to play music again.