Do they know it's Christmas?

Seen here are just two of the images that have appeared On An Overgrown Path over the past nineteen years celebrating different cultures and music traditions. That CD by the Music Ensemble of Palestine comes from a 2010 post titled - rien ne change - 'Music from a war zone'. Hezy Levy who represented Israel in the International Music for Peace Festival in Paris, and his album of traditional and modern songs of the Jewish people featured in a 2009 post titled 'Music as the last bulwark against barbarity'.

Those celebrity musicians and self-appointed classical influencers who have rushed to show their support for one side against the other in the current Israel-Gaza War should remember that music is a bulwark, not a weapon, against barbarity. In the present conflict there will be no winners, just far too many victims on both sides. As that great humanitarian Jordi Savall tells us in thes introductory essay to his album about the tragedy of the Cathars, absolute evil is always the evil inflicted by man on man

I wish my readers and all other sentient beings a pleasurable Christmas and a better new year. But we shouldn't be too optimistic. Because, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us, the total quantity of disorder in the universe must always increase, or at least can never decrease.

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