Safe in Sound Uprooted, vilified and misunderstood, asylum seekers are at the bottom of the social heap. But now refugees are being given the chance to celebrate – and integrate – their distinct identities through music, as Tim Homfray discovers In October, a celebration of ‘street music' tours the UK . Streetmusic Arabe – which champions traditions, innovations and street-music influences from an Arab perspective – is being trumpeted as a strike against cultural imperialism and an ‘inspiring live project'.

It's the latest evidence of the massive popular appeal world music has developed over the last 10 years. Now compare world music with asylum seekers. One is a boom area. The second is often heard with the prefix ‘bogus', a phrase too often associated with rejection and mistrust.

But many of the places in the world where world music comes from are dangerous, whether through war, persecution or tyranny. The asylum seekers in a holding centre in Kent may come from the same culture as the music on your CD rack – and some of them may even have performed it. They are also likely to be frightened, possibly traumatised by their experiences at home and the journey they have taken and speak little or no English.
For both those newly arrived and those in established refugee communities, music can be a powerful force for integration, for reinforcing cultural identity and for therapy.But while many agencies and organisations exist to help refugees with the essentials of survival – the nitty-gritty of paperwork, accommodation, money and work – until recently there were few that provided artistic support services.

In the last five years, a burgeoning if still patchy network has developed of organisations using music and the arts to help refugees to settle into their new homes, come to terms with past traumas and connect with more established refugee communities.
Music for Change works at the sharp end with new arrivals. Katherine Rogers, community projects officer with the organisation, talks about an induction course for recently arrived adults: ‘These are people who are in the centre the whole time. Their liberty is taken away while they are processed and they are just treated like numbers. It's a very frightening process, whether or not they're escaping persecution.'

Music for Change held a drum-ming workshop in Kent and saw the benefits: ‘Staff commented on the effect it had. This kind of work connects with them as human beings, which is very much how we see what we're doing.'
Work with children also shows benefits: ‘We haven't got statistics on how music affects people yet but its therapeutic effect is clearly one of the benefits,' Rogers points out. ‘You can see the children start to come out of themselves, especially the more withdrawn ones who are clearly very traumatised. They start to smile and to interact with other children, including British ones.'

In Kent it is difficult to do in-depth arts work as most refugees disperse around the country. ‘What we do here is almost emergency work, receiving them and making them feel welcome,' says Rogers . Many of them will go on to join already-established refugee communities and it is in these centres that most arts provision can be found. Once there, community leaders can become involved in musical projects. Rogers considers such collaboration to be vital, particularly in the context of working with children. ‘A lot of projects up and down the country have found it is very important to have adult musicians from the children's communities involved in the projects as support workers and where possible as artists,' she points out.

Rogers has worked in schools on projects bringing together a number of different immigrant communities. One of the essentials for children is developing language and literacy skills, an area in which music can be particularly valuable. She describes encouraging children to sing songs in their own languages and then make up new ones. She has had them create songs based around the word for ‘hello' in their various languages and then to work on others in English. According to teachers, literacy skills improved markedly.

Some projects involve working through past traumas, something adults are often keen to do. For children, Rogers believes this can be counter-productive: ‘They have been through the trauma once and risk being re-traumatised. Children are trying to get their heads around a new country. They often adapt much more quickly than adults. ‘A lot of what we do,' she adds, ‘is common sense. It involves things such as cultural sensitivity, having translators in place and working over a long period of time. There's no point looking for quick-fix solutions because you won't get them. You have to build bridges between the new culture and the country of origin. Where there's trauma, you need conflict resol-ution or some form of counselling.'

Others have had far grimmer experiences. Music therapist Matthew Dixon has worked with torture victims as young as five and has found that music is particularly valuable as a first stage in helping those in most severe need. When Dixon worked at the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture, he ‘would often be sent people whom nobody else could deal with, particularly the ones who weren't talking, who weren't communicating with anyone, people who were very severely traumatised'. For these, music is a way of engaging them and making them respond. Language here is scarcely necessary.
‘Often I don't talk much at all,' Dixon says. ‘Many of them are very withdrawn. What I am doing may seem very strange to them and it has to be obvious how they can respond. Music does seem to be a particularly good way of making first contact with people who are extremely isolated. Groups too, benefit from such therapy, those who are more able to interact, even though they may come from several different countries and not be able to talk to each other.'