The answer, probably no… definitely no. But I’ll be damned if that idea even crossed the mind of Portland Oregon’s own James Twyman, who will attempt to travel to Syria to play a folk concert in an effort to inspire peace among the warring Islamic State and other militant groups in the region. Does ISIS have a habit of killing Americans, even ones who travel to Syria on diplomatic or good will missions? Sure they do. Does that mean that they’ll almost definitely kill a Portland hipster who thinks folk music will undo years of engrained oppressive ideologies amongst psychopaths? YES OF COURSE IT DOES.
According to a Foxnews* report (it kills me to include something from them but what the hell this is just too ridiculous) Twyman, the self dubbed “Peace Troubadour” has played in the middle east before, in some pretty contested areas. He plans on traveling through Israel into an Israeli controlled area in Syria in order to eventually set up a venue in ISIS territory. He will also apparently be traveling with leaders of all three Abrahamic faiths in order to have people come together in prayer.
Look, I am a firm believer that folk music can be an extremely effective tool for social change, hell I’ve written a majority of my major academic papers on it. I can throw them up here but not a single person would ever return to this blog after reading them. But if I thought folk music can take a bunch of blood thirsty radicals and have them singing Kumbaya around a fire I would have emailed the State Department with my favorite Woody Guthrie tracks for them to airdrop into Raqqa.
Here’s a link to the Foxnews* article for anyone who wants to read a bit more about the story. And for an added bonus here is one of Twyman’s songs… You tell me if this would inspire anyone to renounce their violent dogmatic ways…
P.S. He calls himself a folk singer I’m not super convinced
-Ryan Schmitz
*This blog does not mean to insinuate what Foxnews does is news.
