WHERE AND WHEN IN HISTORY YOU WERE YOU BORN MATTERS.

By Deryn

Feb 19, 2021

Sibelius monumnet Helsinki showing organ pipes that are tree trunks of the forest

Photo Pixabay, Sibelious Monument,

Music becomes a voice for change

I have long believed that the arts serve purposes far beyond decoration. A painting can tell a story. A poem can preserve a memory. A novel can give a forgotten person a voice. Drama and dance are transient vehicles for storytelling. And music? Music can bring people together.  have seen something of this for myself in my travels. I have stood before the monument to Jean Sibelius in Helsinki, Finland, and I have visited Estonia. Standing in those places, knowing something of their history, gives a different meaning to the music. You begin to understand that these were not simply composers writing beautiful melodies. In times of oppression and uncertainty, music can become a vessel carrying the identity of an entire people.

Music when a nation finds its voice

Consider Finland. For more than six hundred years, Finland was part of the Swedish realm. In 1809, it passed from Sweden to the Russian Empire and became an autonomous Grand Duchy. During the nineteenth century, a growing Finnish cultural movement sought to strengthen a distinct national identity. The Kalevala compiled from Finnish oral poetry, became an important expression of that identity. Artists, writers, and musicians began to give Finland a language of its own, not necessarily a political language, but a cultural one.

Sculpture of Sibelious Head, Helsinki

Photo Pixabay, Sibelious Monument

Then came Sibelius. In 1899, during a period of increasing Russian pressure and attempts at Russification, Sibelius composed the music that would become Finlandia It was originally part of a series of historical tableaux presented at the Press Celebrations in Helsinki. The final section, known as “Finland Awakes,” stirred something deep in the Finnish people. Finlandia became a symbol of Finnish nationalism. When I stood before the Sibelius monument, I wasn’t just viewing a memorial to a famous composer. It reminded me of what happens when art helps people remember their identity. Sibelius helped give Finland a sound, and sometimes people need a sound before finding a voice. Organ pipes represented the trees of the forest; forests go deep into the psyche of the Finnish people, a voice that resonated with them.Estonian Music Festival Stand

Estonia sang its way toward freedom

I experienced a similar feeling when I visited Estonia. Domination by powerful neighbors has marked Estonia’s history, and during the Soviet period, language and national identity were under pressure. Yet Estonia had an extraordinary cultural treasure: its singing tradition.

The Singing Revolution of the late 1980s demonstrated just how powerful that treasure could become. Hundreds of thousands of Estonians gathered at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds and sang traditional and patriotic songs together. They sang Mu isamaa on minu arm, “Land of My Fathers, Land that I Love,” a song that had become deeply associated with Estonian identity. They also sang the patriotic songs of composer Alo Mattiisen.Music of Estonian Dancers

Estonian Folk Dancers, Video - Deryn van der Tang

This was nonviolence; they were not taking up arms, they were raising their voices. By 1989, the movement had grown into the remarkable Baltic Way, when people in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined hands in a human chain stretching across the three Baltic countries. Music had helped people remember they belonged to something larger than the political system that governed them.

The music that defied ruins

Then there is Sarajevo. During the terrible siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, cellist Vedran Smailović became known as the “Cellist of Sarajevo.” After twenty-two people were killed while waiting for bread, Smailović returned to the devastated area and played Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor in their memory. Picture a city under attack. Amidst the broken buildings and people living in fear, a man sits with his cello and plays. The music could not stop the bombs, nor could it bring the dead back. But it declared something profound:

Beauty had not been destroyed. Human dignity had not been destroyed, and the human spirit had not been destroyed. That is the power of the arts.

Why do the arts matter?

When we talk about social change, we often think about politicians, protesters, legislation, and movements. And, of course, these matter. But underneath every movement is something deeper: a story about who we are and what we believe is worth preserving. Artists help us tell that story. A composer can give a nation a melody. Poets can preserve a language. Painters can capture a landscape that becomes part of a people’s memory. A storyteller can take the ordinary life of one family and reveal something universal about courage, suffering, and hope.

Perhaps that is why oppressive regimes have so often tried to control language, literature, music, and art. They understand something we sometimes forget: culture holds memory. And memory gives people identity.

The Bible tells us, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver” (Proverbs 25:11).

Sometimes someone speaks, paints, sings, or writes that word.

The arts may not change the world overnight. Yet, they have the power to shift how people view the world. And once people see differently, they may begin to think differently, hope differently, and eventually act differently.

As I think about Finland, Estonia, and many other places I have traveled, I remember that the arts form a vital part of human society. They are part of our inheritance; they carry the stories of those who came before us. They inspire courage in those struggling today and plant seeds of hope for future generations. Perhaps that is why music has such extraordinary power.

A single voice may be silenced, a single instrument broken, yet a song alive in people’s hearts proves much harder to destroy.

And sometimes, when a people begin to sing together, the world begins to listen.

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Victoria Falls Bridge

Does it matter where you were born, the place, and time in history?  Time, location, and culture affect the way we view things and how we think. We often make assumptions based on our values shaped by that time and place and our groups' influences. It can have a lasting impact on your life, where you were born, also the time slot in history.

The prophecy of where Christ would be born was made centuries before.  Messiah would be born in Bethlehem in Judea, not in Jerusalem or even Nazareth, his parents' hometown.  His birth centuries later was a turning point in history, with our calendar becoming AD and not BC. The prophets inspired by the Holy Spirit thought it necessary to record this in Scripture so that people could pinpoint that moment and KNOW that Jesus was the Messiah.

William Wilberforce

Other important people were born into history who took their place as people who changed society, transforming it through their life and work. One of these was William Wilberforce, who stood alone at times in the British Parliament advocating abolishing slavery. Yet his stand was the beginning of the dismantling of slavery as it was then. Another reformer born in that era was John Howard, who reformed the British prison system after being imprisoned in a French prison.  His personal experience drove him to advocate for humanitarian reforms of the British prison system. Each century has had people who were critical catalysts for change in their lifetimes.

Each century has had people who were critical catalysts for change in their lifetimes.

Two people born into modern history have also influenced society and brought about changes to unjust systems. Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela both fought for and brought about changes in the laws governing racial injustice in their lifetimes. Others were born into time slots in history that brought about chaos and suffering for people during their time and position in history, like Napoleon and Adolf Hitler. Leaders who held the upper hand often created a time of trials and suffering for another group of people that they may not even have known or cared less.

Rhodesia Collage DvdTang

Two such people influenced the times I was born into, Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister, and Ian Smith, a farmer. Ian Smith became Prime Minister of Rhodesia and declared Unilateral Independence in 1965. At stake was a small landlocked country in the heart of Africa, founded by Cecil John Rhodes in 1885, only sixty years before I was born. Part of the colonial push into Africa by the British Empire during the Scramble for Africa. The European nations were greedy for Africa's vast mineral wealth and resources to rebuild their economies after wars and a long depression. These colonies were ideal places to send the unemployed population and explorers who would, in turn, remit valuable resources back to their home countries. Initially, the country was under the British South Africa Company's occupation. It became the self-governing British Crown Colony of Southern Rhodesia in 1923, just twenty-three years before I was born.

Both sets of my grandparents ended up in Rhodesia: my mother’s father, an engineer, after the First World War, and my father’s parents, South African farmers who wanted a new life after the Boer War, WW1, and personal farming failures. My parents met and married in 1945, just after the end of WW2. This vignette sets the stage for the time and place in history I was born into the following year.

A limited education system had been put in place in the few towns by the time I was due to go to school.  'School on the Air' was broadcast over the local radio station, with study material sent through the post and once a term visit to the town to meet the Headmistress, to meet the needs of children further afield. It was a Homeschooling system for most children who had access to the radio. Not unlike today, when children are educated at home through the internet, those who do not have access are disadvantaged. There was no socialization for children, and being the eldest, no friends for play. The arrival of next-door neighbors with school-going children facilitated me going to school in town for a year as our parents could do lift share to get us to and from school. I did not know how to socialize with other children but having a neighbor my age helped me settle down, and we become lifelong friends. Another influence was my parent's fundamentalist church, giving me a skewed view of God and Christianity.

Ian Douglas Smith (photo Ministry of Information)

Our education was always in the pioneering stage, as we moved to a new school being created the following year in our area. The school started in a church hall on the bare concrete floors, a class in each corner of the hall.  The Headmaster, a Welshman, his wife, and a Scottish lady were our teachers. By the time the school building was ready the following year, we were behind in English and Mathematics. After we moved into the new school building, the Headmaster continued to teach our class and do his job as Headmaster at the same time. He told us to go to the stockroom, take out a book, and sit under the trees to read! We spent most of our Primary School years reading books under the trees. By the time we got to high school, we were very well-read but not necessarily educated in grammar or mathematics matters.

My formative years were the years that the Winds of Change were blowing through Africa, with political unrest in the former colonies.  I was taught to view the world through this lens.

Through travel and living in other countries, and meeting people of different races, cultures, and languages, I learned there were so many ways to look at social issues applicable to their time and history situation.  I have learned to question a lot of the assumptions and ideas that I had been taught. I attended churches with different approaches to God and Christianity.  I allowed God to show me who He was so that my experience could align with what the psalmist says "God alone provides security, safety and prosperity" Ps 147:13-14. My image of God no longer mirrored the paternal teachings of fundamentalism.

I allowed God to show me who He was so that my experience could align with what the psalmist says "God alone provides security, safety and prosperity" Ps 147:13-14. My image of God no longer mirrored the paternal teachings of fundamentalism.

We may not make the impact that great men like Wilberforce and Nelson Mandela made during our lifetime, but there is a reason that we were placed in this time in history and born to our parents in the place we were. Like Paul mentions in Acts 13:36, “after David had served his generation according to the will of God, he died….."  How can we best serve our generation? For me, that is to write and paint, sharing the compassionate, caring heart of God, through nature, through contemplative prayer and meditations.  I hope I can inspire others in their life's journey through my journey and what is required to get to this place of respite.

How can we best serve our generation?

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