JazzDay 2024 April 30th

Dear friends,

Thanks to your support, our event marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights(UDHR), was appreciated in a good number of places. And MUAC remains
very grateful to CEIN (Creative Educators International Network) for contributing SO
MUCH in our last two events!! So we cannot take all the credit 😉

Our JazzDay event is exactly one month from now, on 30 April, and like last year, all the
videos, texts and images will be put up on our MUAC Facebook page before 18h Paris-time,
under the banner of : “Let’s explore Human Rights and Peace Education through Music & and
Arts”.
https://www.facebook.com/AssoMusiqueUniverselleMUAC

The event is registered on the UNESCO JazzDay website, and it is still evolving. For the
moment our artists and speakers include:

• Professor Maria Guajardo, Ph.D. who will speak on Peace Education & Jazz in
  leadership contexts. She teaches at Soka University in Japan.
• Two New York City artists: Composer-pianist Barry Olsen, peace activist and world
  citizen and his wife Valerie Naranjo, accomplished singer and percussionist.
• Political science professor, author and poet Sean Howard of Cape Breton University,
  and peace researcher with Canada Pugwash Group will be present through some of his
  poetry.
• British author of “The Evolving Buddha” J.D. Gilbert expects to be contributing
  some creative contributions in AI and video form, related to his published writing.
• In one form or another, we will be presenting the work of a young Italian woman Elisa
  Gazzotti, deeply involved in Human Rights Education (on the level of the U.N.)
  including an initiative she helped launch in Jordan in February of 2021 : MUSIC
  BRINGS US TOGETHER (Al-Musiqa Tajm’ana) This was done in conjunction with
  the Netherlands-based MUSICIANS WITHOUT BORDERS.

Note: We expect to have even more things to share with you on JazzDay, profoundly
hoping to enlarge the dialogue world-wide regarding the tremendous impact Human
Rights and Peace Education can have on our world that we believe is in the process of
re-creating itself.

We think of, with much emotion, powerfully important pacifists who have passed
away in the last couple of years, including Dr. Daisaku Ikeda in November of 2023
who was a foundational inspiration for our association. The event of 70 000 youth
from SGI and other NGOs in Tokyo Stadium on 24 March 2024 would have
overjoyed his heart…
As well as his friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who wrote about one
year before he passed away, that from now one, the world itself needs a GLASNOST
and PERESTROIKA (“New Thinking for Restructuring and Transparency”). – How
incredibly far-sighted he was !

A kind of “theme song” we have chosen for this year’s event comes from Nordic
cultures called “To the Youth”, from an ancient Norwegian poem. It is one of the most
moving songs for peace we have ever heard… titled Til Ungdommen in the original.
And two persons from that corner of the world have confirmed that they sang it daily
at school for years… That really gave me something to think about !

To conclude, we’d like to add a couple more inspirations for us this year : The first
one is the 1998 Peace Proposal of the late Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, titled “Humanity and the
New Millennium – From Chaos to Cosmos”. We find the long-range
vision/perspective of this work deeply reassuring from the standpoint of creating
change gradually…

This proposal is attached to this email as a PDF file, as is the letter from Herbie
Hancock to thank MUAC for our participation in the 2023 JazzDay event, which
expresses their hope that we will be present in 2024. (It was a big encouragement for
us, I can assure you !)

We’d like to leave you with this quotation from the Frenchman of another era, who
devoted his life to creating peace and avoiding war, which I discovered thanks to a
dear MUAC friend. It is by Jean Jaurés :
“The human race will be doomed if it is destined to kill forever. Courage today is not
about keeping the dark cloud of war above the world; a terrible, though dormant,
cloud which we delude ourselves will only burst over others. Courage is not about
putting conflicts which reason can resolve into the hands of violence. Courage is about
celebrating humanity not denying it.”
And also :
“Courage is about seeking truth and speaking truth, not about submitting to a great
triumphant lie or echoing ignorant applause or fanatical jeers with our hearts, our
mouths or our hands.”

Warmest and best regards to all our MUAC friends and supporters,

-MUAC Team

PS PLEASE do not forget to tune into the JazzDay Global event with Herbie
Hancock and the ALL STAR artists, which will be live streamed – for the
first time Ever – from the African continent at TANGIER in Morocco !
www.jazzday.com, and on their social medial platforms such as Facebook
and others. You will be glad you did !!!