For Ukraine, this week’s NATO summit was both disappointing and encouraging, a reality check and a boon to national aspirations and long-term security prospects – part cold shower, part warm bath.

The dose of realism came when the 31-nation, U.S.-led defense alliance declined to formally invite Ukraine to join the club – instead offering in a communiqué Tuesday that NATO “will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”

That clumsy wording infuriated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who in the run-up to the summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, had lobbied NATO members for an invitation and timetable for joining the alliance. Many Eastern European members concluded with Mr. Zelenskyy that the statement was only slightly more encouraging than one issued at NATO’s 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania.

But on Wednesday, things brightened considerably when the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations – six of which are NATO members – declared on the summit’s sidelines their “unwavering” support for Ukraine. They pledged to extend bilateral security assurances to Kyiv aimed at building a strong and deterrent national defense.

It was the first time the G7 – set up in 1973 to address global economic issues – had committed to defense cooperation with the aim of enhancing another country’s security capabilities.

As such it was a clear signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, some regional analysts say, that henceforth Western powers consider Ukraine – whether or not formally invited at this summit to join NATO – a member of the community of Western countries.

“The cruel takeaway [of the week’s events] for Putin has to be that a lot of countries want to join NATO, and not that many want to join” with Russia in any security arrangements, says Matthias Matthijs, senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Noting that the internal NATO debate on Ukraine membership is “mostly about speed and not about direction,” he adds, “It does look like Ukraine is lost to Russia” for any kind of future security relationship – a dramatic turn of events for the Russian leader from just over a year ago.

Ukraine’s broader aspirations

Russia was quick to blast the West’s pledge on security assurances to Ukraine, warning in a Kremlin statement Wednesday that the move was a “dangerous mistake” that would threaten Russian and European security alike.

U.S. officials were not shy about describing the security assurances as a clear message to Russia that the West’s commitments to Ukraine are not losing steam, contrary to what some Kremlin insiders have said Mr. Putin has been expecting.

Pavel Golovkin/AP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy leaves the stage after addressing reporters at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 12, 2023.

“This multilateral declaration will send a significant signal to Russia that time is not on its side,” said Amanda Sloat, the White House National Security Council senior director for Europe, at a briefing with journalists in Vilnius Wednesday.

The United States and other G7 countries are committing “to help Ukraine build a military ... capable of defending [itself] now and deterring Russian aggression in the future,” she said.

Moreover, she said the commitments will help Ukraine build “a strong and stable economy and ... advance the reform agenda to support the good governance necessary to advance Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations” – a reference to Ukraine’s bids to join both NATO and the European Union.

For some international security analysts, the G7 declaration with its commitment to provide Ukraine with security assurances was ironically the high note that saved the NATO summit from coming off as a disappointment. Just a day earlier, many were interpreting NATO’s communiqué as ambiguous and suggesting that Ukraine membership might never come.

The NATO communiqué “offers Ukraine something, but not much,” says Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank advocating a realist foreign policy. “Ukraine is still in the gray zone [where] the goal is always moving away from you to the horizon.”

But the Vilnius gathering was not only about Ukraine. Others note that the summit was also the venue where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came out of the cold concerning his relations with the alliance – and to some degree with the U.S.

After standing firm for months in opposition to Sweden’s accession to NATO, Mr. Erdoğan surprised everyone by abruptly lifting Turkish opposition to Swedish membership.

What changed? “Part of this was the F-16s,” the fighter jets Turkey desperately wants to buy from the U.S., says Steven Cook, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

But another part is that “Erdoğan did overplay his hand,” Mr. Cook adds. The Turkish leader is always going to pursue an “independent foreign policy,” he says, but not at the cost of severing Turkey’s valuable relationships.

“U.S. and European diplomats made it very clear – he was at risk of further damaging relations with the U.S., NATO, and Europe,” he says. “The result was the change in 24 hours.”

The “Israel model”

For others, the Vilnius summit will go down as the marker for the alliance’s power shift to Eastern Europe and those countries – the Baltics, Poland, the Nordic countries – most threatened by Russia’s revanchist vision under Mr. Putin.

Indeed, French President Emmanuel Macron’s shift from the go-slow-on-Ukraine-NATO-membership camp – led by the U.S. and Germany – to supporting an invitation to join is a reflection, some analysts say, of his ambitions for French leadership of a Europe that has shifted east.

Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who dramatically shifted his stance on Sweden's NATO membership, looks on after a press conference during the summit in Lithuania, July 12, 2023.

For weeks before the NATO summit, analysts and U.S. officials had suggested that the big takeaway from Vilnius might be some form of security assurances for Ukraine other than NATO membership – especially given President Joe Biden’s position that Ukraine membership was off the table as long as the war rages.

And the model Ukraine could aspire to, some said, would be U.S. security commitments to Israel.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Mr. Zelenskyy has had to regularly go hat in hand to the U.S. and other backers for the arms and funding needed to fend off Russia and to try to push it out of the fifth of Ukrainian territory that it occupies.

In effect, Ukraine has no certainty it will have the resources it needs to continue fighting next month, let alone next year. Planning and developing a long-term defense strategy becomes impossible.

Enter the “Israel model.” Since the 1970s, the U.S. has developed specific written security funding, equipping, and training guarantees that have allowed Israel to confidently build a national defense. Moreover, the assurances have sent a clear signal to regional adversaries that Israel’s defense is backed by its long-term security relationship with the U.S.

“Entrapment risks”

The G7’s declaration on a plan for Ukraine security assurances includes many elements of the Israel model. But some analysts caution that a crucial element in Israel’s relationship with the U.S. could be missing for Ukraine: strong and unfaltering bipartisan support.

“U.S. politics are the reason Israel has as close to a true security commitment [from the U.S.] as anyone,” says Mr. Friedman of Defense Priorities. Congress would have to “sign off on” regular defense appropriations for Ukraine, and he doesn’t see the same level of support for Ukraine as for Israel.

Indeed, a small but growing group of Republican members of Congress favors slashing U.S. military funding to Ukraine.

Some who see clear advantages to offering Ukraine an Israel model of security assurances also warn of a key downside: It could, they say, inadvertently leave the U.S. facilitating policies it doesn’t support.

In a recent analysis of an Israel model of security assurances for Ukraine, Emma Ashford and Kelly Grieco of Washington’s Stimson Center speak of “entrapment risks,” in which sustained security support enables policies and actions “untethered from U.S. national interests.”

In the case of Israel, they note, unquestioned U.S. security support has left Washington impotent in the face of actions it opposes, such as continued West Bank settlement expansion.

Some worry that, just as stating that “Ukraine can only enter NATO once the war ends” provides Mr. Putin with an incentive to keep the war going, security assurances to Ukraine could also end up prolonging the war.

The prospect of long-term funding and other military commitments could convince Ukraine it need not come to the negotiating table, Mr. Friedman says.

“I’m OK with arms and money to Ukraine,” he says, “but I’m afraid anything more is just leading them down a false path.”

Inflation rates hit 114% in Argentina this May, cause for alarm in any economy. But here in Argentina? “Otra vez sopa!” “Soup again,” as the locals say, or “Here we go again.”

That’s because despite the sting of money losing value, this isn’t the first time Argentines have dealt with eye-watering levels of inflation. The economy has spiraled since 2018, racking up the third-highest inflation rate in the world and causing poverty not seen in decades. But it’s just the latest chapter in Argentina’s long history of chronic economic instability. 

“In all my years, I’ve never seen Argentina as bad as this,” says Estela Maris Rado, who is in her late 70s.

Most of today’s seniors were born well after Argentina’s economic golden age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, back when the South American nation was better off than many European countries. Yet, if the lives of older Argentines have traced the country’s complicated economic contours, today that demographic also makes up one of the populations hardest hit by economic instability. Savings and retirement funds rarely keep up with inflation, and many older adults are faced with finding creative solutions to staying afloat – and not feeling like a burden on family and neighbors.

Ms. Rado and other older people say they’ve learned a thing or two about hanging on financially over the decades, from tightening belts and bartering goods to keeping family bonds tight. And despite today’s challenges, they’re tapping into that understanding of the past, with a lifetime of resilience defying the narrative of Argentine decline.

“What happened before will happen again,” says María Julieta Oddone, director of aging and society at the Latin American Social Sciences Institute. “But somehow, we come out the other side. ... It creates a sort of resilience.”

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Estela Maris Rado walks through a park near the Alberto José Armando Stadium in La Boca in Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 19, 2023.

“Keep moving forward”

Four days a week, Luis Amelio wakes early to set up his white vendor tent in a park in San Telmo, a downtown area of Buenos Aires. The octogenarian was never able to buy a home and spends his retirement income, around 71,000 pesos, or $270, on rent. He’s bracing for his landlord to raise the price again this year.

“With the minimum retirement alone, no one gets by,” he says, eyeing his stand from afar as kids reach for brightly colored toys and tchotchkes. The other days of the week he joins his wife to help sell her knitted stuffed animals in another part of town.

Mr. Amelio blames the current state of the economy primarily on politicians he disagrees with and on repeated deals with the International Monetary Fund he sees as unfair. The Argentine economy has dealt with chronic structural issues for decades: economic stagnation; a governmental tendency to overprint money for social programs; and, recently, rapidly dwindling foreign reserves amid a historic drought that has slowed agricultural exports.

The crisis affects everyone differently. The restaurant industry is booming as those who have cash try to spend it before it loses value. But the uncertainty of this economic moment is taking a toll on the most vulnerable.

“It’s a very distressing situation,” says sociologist Eduardo Donza. The retirement system expanded in 2005 to include older adults who had never been able to contribute. That reduced poverty rates but also meant a larger spending burden for the government and less funding to go around.  

More than 85% of seniors earn the minimum retirement payment, one of the lowest in the region. It covers less than a third of the estimated cost of living for one person. These payments increase every few months, but inflation grows faster. Last year, inflation reached 94.8%, while pension and retirement payouts increased by 72.5%. The government announced supplemental vouchers for retirees for June, July, and August, in an effort to ease the challenges of inflation on this population.  

Still, some economists, like Oscar Cetrángolo, say the retirement scheme is “too generous,” given the government’s imposing fiscal imbalance.

“We buy only what’s necessary,” says Ms. Rado, who began working at 19. These days, instead of purchasing fruits and vegetables by the kilo, she buys one or two at a time. “The butcher’s shop? Bring whatever antiques you have from Grandma and pay with those,” she jokes.

No matter what, she says, “You have to keep moving forward despite everything.”

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Marta Leticia Montaña plays a board game with a friend at the Day Center No. 8, a senior center funded by the city of Buenos Aires, May 22, 2023.

Holding out hope

With the front doors wide open at the Day Center No. 8, the sounds of board games and chatter spill out onto the sidewalk near the outer limits of Buenos Aires. Inside, older adults sit shoulder to shoulder around dozens of folding tables. It may look like any senior center, but to those who come regularly, it is a lifeline.

“There’s so much we don’t have,” says Reinaldo Galván, who first came to the center along with his wife, María Antonia, in April. This is one of 27 senior day centers across Buenos Aires, with services like meals and classes ranging from origami to folk dancing offered for free by the city. It allows for a sense of camaraderie that makes it easier to bear today’s economic stress.

“It changed our lives,” says Mr. Galván. “We used to live in silence. Here we began to talk again.”

Retirement money, though minimal, can be the only dependable source of income in a multigenerational household. Close to half the population works in the informal sector. In other cases, adult children help older parents who struggle to pay for basic goods and services.

“You don’t want to ask your kids for too much, because you don’t want to be a nuisance,” says Juan Alberto Gonzalez, another regular.

Argentina is seen as a place of low social cohesion, according to a 2021 study on why some countries seemed to weather the pandemic better than others. Researchers here looked closer in a follow-up study in 2022. They found that despite low levels of “linking social capital,” or a sense of connection between regular people and those in power, Argentines recorded high levels of “bonding social capital,” defined as a “reliance on family and kin networks for survival and for getting ahead.”

That’s a key difference between becoming poor in old age and those who have “always been poor,” says Ms. Oddone, from the social sciences institute. “The new ones sometimes don’t know how to ask for help.”

Ms. Rado sees Argentina as a place of solidarity. “The thing is that now we [retirees] can’t help much either because we don’t have anything left over. We’re at the limit,” she says. Her son left Argentina for Italy after the economic collapse of 2001. Her daughter is “paddling in dulce de leche” – trying hard to get by.

“We always hold out hope that some government will be able to fix this,” Ms. Rado says, “because Argentina is rich in so many things.”

Jae C. Hong/AP

A tarp covers a portion of a homeless person's tent on a bridge overlooking the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles, Feb. 2, 2023.

For more than a decade, California has topped the list of U.S. states with the most people experiencing homelessness. Despite the state putting billions of dollars toward the problem, the number of those without housing keeps ticking up. But a new landmark study could lead the way out of this morass. 

The recent survey of California’s homeless population reveals who is homeless in the state, and why – and dispels some common myths along the way. The findings offer clues about how to build better programs to ameliorate the homelessness crisis in the Golden State and across the country.  

High housing costs are the leading cause of homelessness, more so than mental health or drug abuse, according to the study. Other revelations: Ninety percent of the homeless population in California is from California, and they are older – nearly half are over age 50. 

Researchers at the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco surveyed 3,200 people experiencing homelessness, and conducted 365 in-depth interviews, for the largest and most comprehensive examination of homelessness in three decades. 

California harbors 30% of the nation’s homeless population, which reached an all-time high last year. The new study provides a half-dozen policy recommendations with an emphasis on closing the gap between income and housing costs, including increased access to affordable units, expanding rental subsidies, and financial support to prevent housing loss. 

The Monitor’s Ali Martin spoke with Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness & Housing Initiative and the study’s principal investigator. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Courtesy of UCSF

Margot Kushel is director of the Benioff Homelessness & Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco.

What was the study’s most important takeaway? 

Nine out of 10 people in the study lost their stable housing in California; three-quarters were living in the same county where they lost their stable housing. It’s really important to realize that these are Californians who have been internally displaced by remarkably high housing costs, the highest in the country. 

If we have to put our finger on the single biggest cause of homelessness, whether or not people had disabling conditions, the single biggest driver was the inability to afford housing. At the end of the day, people just couldn’t afford their housing. 

What can the rest of the country learn from California on this subject? 

Frankly, we know that the places with high per capita rates of homelessness – New York, California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Hawaii – they all share something in common, which is a really low amount of housing for the lowest income renters. So there’s this disconnect between the availability of housing for poor people and the number of very poor people. 

California is very similar to much of the West Coast in that most people experiencing homelessness are unsheltered [living in an area not meant for human habitation]. I’m sure if this study was replicated up and down the West Coast, whether Nevada or Washington or Oregon or Arizona, even Texas, I think you would find relatively similar things. 

Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Two residents of a tiny-homes community, built for people experiencing homelessness, stand outside a row of the units in Los Angeles, Jan. 24, 2023.

What sort of financial supports does the study suggest?

People are being industrious, right? They’re crowding in, they’re doubling up, they’re doing whatever they need to do. But I don’t really see a way forward without multiple things happening at once: the cost of housing coming down, but that housing almost certainly is going to need to be subsidized. 

Right now in our country, only one in four people who meet the very strict criteria for having vouchers receive them for rental subsidies. There’s some people who really do need rental assistance but don’t qualify. Some people who have the vouchers in these high cost regions can’t even use them, because there’s no place to use them. That is something that Congress could change. And it would have a transformational impact on people’s ability to be housed because it would also provide a steady funding source for people who are creating housing. Realistically, there’s no way out of this crisis on a permanent basis without recognizing that as long as we have people with such low wages or benefits and such high housing costs, something has to give. 

The other thing we learned is the incredible cost of homelessness. Obviously the most important cost is the cost to people who survive it. The amount of violence people experience, the way that their health fell apart. It’s a really, really searing, terrible experience. But there are lots of other costs, like we’re spending money on shelters, we’re spending money on policing, we’re spending money on jail stays that are doing nothing to promote public safety, just cycling people in and out of our jails. We’re spending money on emergency department visits and hospitalizations that would never have had to happen, if someone had housing. 

How do mental health supports fit in with the recommendations?

It’s not a surprise to anyone that folks experiencing homelessness are disproportionately impacted by mental health problems and substance abuse problems. I’m not denying that in any way, shape or form. What I’m saying, and I say this both as a researcher who’s looked at different models and as a clinician who treats people with mental health and substance use problems, is none of that works if you ultimately don’t have housing. Many people are in the hospital for three days and then there’s no hospital bed so they get sent out and even the really prolonged hospitalization, seven weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks – you’ve got to have a place to send someone to when they leave. 

I do think that much of this housing will need to have really low-barrier access to robust mental health and services. It’s been proven again and again that if you provide the right services and support for people, their housing sticks more. And if you start with the housing and if you make those services voluntary, but you make them really easy to use, people take them up and use them. Absolutely, we need more services, but you can’t ask the health care system to solve a housing problem. 

Have you taken these policy recommendations yet to anyone who can do something about them?

We’re starting to have conversations at local, state, and national levels. I suspect that many policymakers know this and want to do the right thing. And it’s important that the general public understands that this is solvable. That we will all benefit when we solve this problem.

Veterans Affairs is a fantastic model. There has been political will around ending veterans homelessness [which has decreased by 55% since 2010]. They are sticking to the evidence. Every single veteran homelessness program adheres to housing first principles. Housing first is imminently flexible: Some people just need a small rental subsidy. Some people just need a short term boost to get back into the job market. Some people need extensive services and support. That’s what they’re doing. It’s exactly the opposite of one size fits all. But it recognizes that if we really want to help people heal, if we really want people to engage in treatment, then housing is the base of all of it. 

Chi-chi Nwanoku pauses before she ascends the stairs to the performance hall of the New England Conservatory.

It is spring, and she wants to let the “spine-tingling” moment sink in. Eight years have led to this moment for the founder and artistic director of Chineke!, Europe’s first majority-Black and ethnically diverse orchestra. She is bringing African American composer Florence Price home.

Price had been one of few Black students at the conservatory during the height of the Jim Crow era. It’s only recently that her work – a stunning array of more than 300 classical pieces – has been rediscovered and featured by symphony orchestras, thanks in part to the efforts of Chineke!

“To think that this woman, regardless of how skilled or talented she was, she was never going to have a good life, a good career in the thing that she was so proficient and brilliant at,” says Ms. Nwanoku in a practice room at Jordan Hall. She asked a colleague to photograph her on the same steps where Price stood for a photo in 1906, just hours before they would bring the composer’s 1932 Symphony No. 1 to life. “She just kept producing more and more beautiful music in spite of all of that.”

Ms. Nwanoku, an award-winning principal double bassist, has appeared in hundreds of concert halls over her three-decade career in classical music. 

Christian Sinibaldi

Chi-chi Nwanoku is the founder and artistic director of Chineke! On Sept. 1, the orchestra will perform in London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms summer music festival. Besides performing pieces by Beethoven and Haydn, Chineke! will also play a piece by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a 19th-century Black British composer.

Through the Chineke! Foundation, she has filled rosters with musicians who, like Ms. Nwanoku, can claim similar lived experiences of being “the only one” to create a space where they harmonize to become one of many. She founded a junior orchestra to support the development of young musicians. Since 2015, Chineke! has been redefining narratives around classical music – who plays it, which composers fill repertoires, and what audiences come to listen.

“It’s easily within living memory that participation in professional orchestras by African American or otherwise African diasporic musicians was not a part of the core of the classical music industry,” says Douglas Shadle, an associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “The Chineke! Orchestra, Florence Price, and Chi-chi are turning that on its head. They’re saying, look at what classical music can be. And by playing Florence Price, they are saying, ‘Hear what classical music can be.’ ... They’re offering a new vision and a new sonic representation of what classical music is.”

Classical music as an industry has remained firmly anchored in its white Eurocentric roots not only in whose pieces are performed but also in who performs them. In England, only 3% to 6% of the orchestral workforce identify as being Black, Asian, or from other nonwhite ethnically diverse groups, according to a 2021 study published by Arts Council England.

On Sept. 1, Chineke! will perform in London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of the prestigious BBC Proms, an annual, eight-week summer music festival. In addition to performing pieces by Beethoven and Haydn, Chineke! will present a lesser-known piece by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a 19th-century Black British composer.

Coleridge-Taylor, the son of an English mother and a Sierra Leonean father, was a noted celebrity in his time. But in the years following his death in 1912, his works faded from programs.

“Samuel Coleridge-Taylor wrote his Symphony No. 1 when he was a student at the Royal College of Music” in 1895, says Ms. Nwanoku. “It was more than 100 years old and it had never reached a few hundred yards ... to the Royal Albert Hall right next door. ... So we premiered it.”

Before establishing Chineke! Orchestra, Ms. Nwanoku, whose mother was Irish and father Nigerian, felt a struggle to even articulate what it meant to be a Black classical musician in Britain. “Most of our orchestras are completely white, [and] there’s nothing to talk about regarding equity,” she says in a follow-up conversation on Zoom. “All of my Black colleagues that I now know – none of whom that I knew before I created Chineke! – were all the only one, odd one out, wherever they played.”

Robert Torres/Celebrity Series of Boston

The members of Chineke!, Britain’s first majority-Black and ethnically diverse orchestra, stand for a group photo on the steps of New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, March 22, 2023, in Boston. Chineke! performed in Boston as part of its first North American tour.

It was a chance encounter in 2014 that fueled Ms. Nwanoku’s desire for change. She had bumped into Ed Vaizey, Britain’s former minister of culture, on his way to a pre-concert reception for the Kinshasa Symphony from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Even though Ms. Nwanoku was well known and recognized as one of England’s very few Black professional classical musicians – she had earned a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her work in 2001 – no one had thought to invite her. So she tagged along.

“It was their 20th-anniversary concert. I had no idea an orchestra existed in Africa. And so this was amazing to me,” says Ms. Nwanoku. It was at that moment – when she realized she was the only guest who was a person of color at the reception – that Britain needed its own diverse orchestra. “It should not be a novelty that there’s more than one Black person on the stage playing Beethoven,” she says. The next morning she was on the phone to every music establishment in the country.

Everyone she spoke with agreed that something needed to be done – and that Ms. Nwanoku was the one to do it. The Southbank Centre, home to London’s Philharmonic, gave her support and one year to find and launch her orchestra. Three hundred and sixty-four days later, the Chineke! Orchestra, with 62 musicians, walked onto the stage at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sept. 13, 2015.

“As we walked in, it was a standing ovation from the audience, which is rather rare, especially in the U.K. or Europe,” recalls Samson Diamond, a violinist from South Africa, who was a principal at that first concert. Mr. Samson had met Ms. Nwanoku 20 years prior when studying music at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. “There was a sense of validation that this is more than just having people of color on stage, but an orchestra that was needed for that time, just at the right time, for people to feel welcomed in the concert hall,” he says. 

Chineke! slowly gained momentum, performing one concert in 2015 and one in 2016. It took time to synergize musicians with diverse backgrounds and training from Britain, Europe, Africa, and the United States. 

“It was rather difficult at first,” says Mr. Diamond. 

But by 2017, the orchestra took flight. It booked 15 concerts, including its first appearance at the BBC Proms, drawing increasingly diverse audiences.

“It’s incredible to hear this music being played all over the world now,” says Ms. Nwanoku.“Everybody is playing all the other Coleridge-Taylor pieces that we’ve unearthed.”

Fortifying the next generation of musicians by providing opportunities to perform in Europe’s most prestigious concert venues is one way that Chineke! aims to prepare ethnically diverse musicians for professional careers.

“It’s been so important to me to have been able to grow up seeing people that look like me playing classical music together,” says Betania Johnny, an original member of the Chineke! Junior Orchestra. She recently completed her second year at the Royal College of Music, where she is studying violin. 

Ms. Johnny grew up in London surrounded by the Ethiopian music of her parents and gospel music at church. With Chineke!, she has discovered a new fluidity in what classical music can express. For example, in May, South African cellist Abel Selaocoe and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita joined Chineke! at the Royal Festival Hall. 

“They had the most radiant, positive energy, and a lot of their music involved improvisation, which I really just don’t think as classical musicians were exposed to enough,” she says. “It was just so inspiring to see them have so much love and joy for what they’re doing on stage.” 

That collaborative joy is emblematic of Ms. Nwanoku’s tireless mission to bring musicians of color together and create a sense of belonging.

“The thing about her is just her sheer drive to have started something where she knows that she can’t be alone. And she was correct,” says Mr. Diamond. “She is proving to all of us that, actually, she was never alone.”

AP/file

The playwright and performer Mina Khosrovani, known professionally as Mina Kavani, is an Iranian-French actress known for her role in the 2022 movie No Bears. She helped organize the Iranian program at this year's arts festival in the French city of Avignon.

For anyone wondering what has happened to the mass protests that convulsed Iran last fall, look away from the public square to center stage. The annual arts festival in the southern French city of Avignon opened its venues yesterday to a celebration of what one featured Iranian photographer described as “this beauty, this resilience, this hope” of equality.

That won’t be welcomed by the regime in Tehran, which the United Nations Human Rights Council accused last week of extrajudicial detentions, executions, and greater repression of women and girls in response to the demonstrations. The festival is voicing what the ruling Islamic mullahs have sought to muzzle – a mental liberation from tyranny, rooted in a sense of dignity and spirituality as deeply individual.

“We have to come here and let the Western world know that the people’s uprising is still going on,” Mina Kavani, a playwright and performer who helped organize the festival’s Iranian program, told Le Monde newspaper. “That young people are modern, talented and determined to break the shackles of Islam, dictatorship and censorship.”

Art has a long history in freedom movements. Its power lies in its ability to lift societies beyond fear through common narratives. In South Africa, music, visual art, drama, and literature nourished both the struggle against racial segregation and the transitional justice that followed. Art is doing the same now in Sudan, where creativity is forging unity, reconciliation, and resilience amid a resumption of war.

In communities torn by conflict, says Khalid Kodi, a Northeastern University art professor, participatory art projects promote problem-solving – “not to just run to a Kalashnikov [rifle] to solve [this or] that problem,” he told the school’s magazine recently.

The protests in Iran were sparked last September by the death of a young woman during her detention by the regime’s morality police for failing to cover her hair in strict accordance with Islamic law. The incident sparked the largest backlash since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The regime’s violent response helped turn the movement’s slogan – “Women, life, freedom” – into a rally cry for justice heard around the world.

Mass protests have given way to furtive acts of performative defiance quickly recorded and disseminated across scores of social media channels inside and beyond Iran. The festival in Avignon follows similar events in New York and Los Angeles showing the works of hundreds of artists depicting the struggles and resilience of Iranian women. Art murals celebrating the life of Mahsa Amini, the young woman killed in custody, adorn buildings in cities around the world. “The socio-political legitimacy of the Iranian government to rule has been fundamentally called into question,” a Dutch study concluded in March.

In a different social uprising, a young resident of Paris’ migrant neighborhoods that erupted over a police killing of a young man of Arab descent two weeks ago told Le Monde that “to understand when something’s happening, you have to be there when nothing’s happening.” Protest movements inevitably subside. But the aspirations they vent endure and evolve.

As the French organizers wrote on the Avignon festival’s website, “Iranian creators challenge us on the basis and meaning of our republican motto, ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’: Freedom for creators, Equality for women, Fraternity to express the universalism of their causes.”