Growing up in Lebanon during the country\u2019s civil war, Christiane Karam says music was \u201ca safe space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But she says she also had to reconcile with how the beauty she was hearing could coexist with the violence she was seeing. That question has followed Karam throughout her life, leading her to seek connection wherever she could find it: improvising with Bobby McFerrin, singing with grandmothers in villages, and even stepping into the boxing ring. Some of those experiences eventually found their way into the Berklee Online course Vocal Styles from Around the World<\/a><\/em>, where Karam shares the musical traditions she has spent much of her life exploring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this Q&A, Karam discusses how finding her own voice taught her to help others find theirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christiane Karam:<\/strong> I remember music playing a really big role in my life from when I was very little. I remember coming home having learned a nursery rhyme in French and singing it over and over again while skipping around. It\u2019s one of my first memories of just complete childlike fun. The song was the story of a man who loses the tip of his nose and an airplane comes by and retrieves it. I remember I cried every time because I thought it was so sad.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n Christiane Karam:<\/strong> I have so many diverse interests. I\u2019m so in love with so many different cultures in the world, different textures, different sounds, different scales, different ways to understand rhythm, and the ways to understand ritual. This is why I spent such a big part of my life traveling and getting to know what I affectionately call \u201cthe music of the people.\u201d\nWhat\u2019s the first song you remember hearing?\n <\/strong><\/h2>\n
What are you listening to these days? We can skip this question if it\u2019s still the French nursery rhymes. <\/strong><\/h2>\n
\nI love going to villages. I love singing with grandmothers, understanding how communities celebrate and mourn. It is essentially that work that inspired the Vocal Styles from Around the World<\/a><\/em> class because to me, it\u2019s a testimony to the richness and just the exquisite tapestry that is our world and what music started out as.\n
\nAnd I feel like we\u2019ve isolated ourselves from that. We focus so much more on the virtuosic aspects at times or the industy aspects at times. We forget that music started out just with the voice, with the body, and with rhythm, as ways to just celebrate our humanity and to come together in times of joy and in times of sorrow.\n
\nI found that everywhere in the world there\u2019s that shared aspect of what music does and the role it plays in communities. Sometimes it\u2019s more exuberant, like if you go to Cuba or to Latin America, you\u2019ll find exuberance even in sorrow. If you go more east, you will find just more nostalgic sounds and more melancholy even in joy.\n
\nIt\u2019s very interesting how that varies, but underneath it all, there\u2019s this beautiful and poignant truth that binds us all in the most beautiful ways. My sense is that we\u2019ve come to forget that a little too much nowadays, and as artists, I feel like it\u2019s our responsibility to remember that and to have the courage to embody that, give others permission to do the same and connect.\nBecause it is my deepest belief that so much more connects us than divides us, and I feel that that is a lived-in truth in that course.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n