Another Video From The Arichives - Shifaa Women's Drum Circle !☮️🎵

Published: Thu, 12/14/23

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Friends,

Here is a another story from the archives for you!

In 2012 Musical Ambassadors Of Peace began training women in the local refugee community of El Cajon, California, to lead therapeutic drum circles. Musical Ambassadors Kristina Sophia and Christine Stevens teamed up with Dilkhwaz Ahmed of License To Freedom and began hosting drum circles and drum circle leadership training sessions for Afghan, Syrian and Iraqi female refugees. Together they formed the Shifaa Women's Empowerment Drum Circle. Shifaa means healing in Arabic, Kurdish and Persian.

As I was digging through hours and hours of video footage from this program, I heard countless stories about how the drum circles changed the women's lives. They had suffered severe trauma and found the sessions to be very healing. The drum circles also brought members of the local refugee community much closer together.

In 2016 Ari Honarvar came on board and continued the drum circles twice a week, adding the much needed element of dance to the experience. In 2018 Shifaa Drum Circle was invited to participate in the San Diego Center for World Music's inaugural season of Songs and Stories: Refugee Artists in San Diego.

I found this wonderful video from that event in the archives, spruced it up and posted it on our new YouTube channel.

Check it out!

Shifaa Women's Empowerment Drum Circle - San Diego Center for World Music

I also found this potent article in the Chicago Tribune that talks in great detail about the Shifaa Drum Circle project. The powerful testimony of the women involved amplifies the importance of this work and its ability to change lives for the better.

Drum Circle Helps Refugee Women Heal From Trauma

About thirty refugee women sat in a circle at a church in El Cajon on a recent Monday morning, thrumming the pulse of a heartbeat on hand drums and with shakers. Under the guidance of Ari Honarvar, they played first for a member of one of the organizations involved in the drum circle who had recently had surgery. Then, Honarvar told them to play for women in Syria who were suffering from escalations in violence there. The thrumming became loud throbs....

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With Gratitude,

Patricia Irby

Executive Director

Musical Ambassadors Of Peace

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Mission Statement:
We train and fund musical ambassadors who travel the world to build cross-cultural bridges, honor and preserve indigenous musical traditions and help heal those traumatized by war.
We believe:
People who have learned and sung each others’ popular love songs together are less likely to war with one another than those who have not.
World Music Cross-Cultural Celebration and Bridge-Building.
We have learned to perform musical styles of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Peru, Greece, Turkey, Tajikistan, Mexico.

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