Turning guns into musical instruments !

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From: Najma Sadeque <najma.sadeque.ns@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 1, 2014 at 9:14 AM
Subject: Turning guns into musical instruments !
To: Najma Sadeque <najma.sadeque.ns@gmail.com>

      You've heard the saying 'turning guns into ploughshares'. Now see how a group of musicians converted discarded weapons into fine musical instruments to get their message across -- forwarded by a peace-lover in Canada.

      Only a couple of photos are posted here of the converted instruments -- one a flute from the barrel of a gun. Please go to the website to see a range of remarkable looking musical instruments they made and which now form part of an exhibition.
      You can also watch a short video clip of the musicians performing on these instruments. Its on VIMEO (not U Tube) so there's immediate access. - NS

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From: Sharmini <sharmini.fernando1@gmail.com>
Date: 31 January 2014 17:49

http://www.blog.pedroreyes.net/?p=151

Imagine

Imagine is a set of 50 musical instruments fabricated out of destroyed weapons – revolvers, shot-guns, machine-guns, etc. This work is a progression of Palas por Pistolas (2008), where 1527 weapons were melted and made into the same number of shovels to plant 1527 trees. In April this year I got a call from the government who had learned about Palas por Pistolas, they told me a public destruction of weapons was to take place in Ciudad Juarez and asked me if I was interested in keeping the metal, which would otherwise have been buried as usual. I accepted the material but I wanted to do something new this time. 6700 weapons, cut into parts and rendered useless, were given to me and I set out to make them into instruments.

 

A group of 6 musicians worked for 2 weeks shoulder-to-shoulder turning these agents of death into instruments of life. The task was challenging but they succeeded in extracting sounds, from percussion to wind and string. It’s difficult to explain but the transformation was more than physical. It’s important to consider that many lives were taken with these weapons; as if a sort of exorcism was taking place the music expelled the demons they held, as well as being a requiem for lives lost.

This is also a call to action, since we cannot stop the violence only at the place where the weapons are being used, but also where they are made. There is a disparity between visible and invisible violence. The nearly 80,000 deaths by gun-shot that have occurred in Mexico in the last 6 years, or the school shootings in the US are the visible side of violence. The invisible side is that one of gun trade-shows, neglecting assault rifle bans, and shareholder profit from public companies. This is a large industry of death and suffering for which no cultural rejection is expressed.Guns continue to be depicted as something sexy both in Hollywood and in videogames; there may be actors who won’t smoke on the screen, but there has not been one who would reject the role of a trigger-happy hero.

 - See more at: http://www.blog.pedroreyes.net/?p=151#sthash.kgvMWxKK.dpuf

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Najma Sadeque

http://najmasadeque.wordpress.com/

http://denebsumbul.wordpress.com/

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