For many years now, in my “day job” as a musicologist, I’ve written about war and other forms of collective violence. I’ve looked at some of the ways in which we’ve used music to promote and facilitate acts of great brutality and cruelty. I’ve thought about why so many human societies have become martial cultures — cultures in which war is seen as an inevitable part of the human condition.

This blog is called Cultures of Peace because it is dedicated to the alternatives to martial cultures that are all around us, alternatives modelled by the non-human animals we share our day-to-day lives with — most prominently, birds. They became a real haven for me around the time I began thinking about war and violence on a daily basis. As a musicologist, I am first and foremost a scholar of communication and other techniques of social organisation. I can’t help but be more fascinated than is perhaps normal with how the non-human beings around us organise their lives. And there are few experiences to match moments of connection with a wild creature when it realises you come in peace, with snacks.

Some of the material here comes from the final few years that I was resident in Berlin, and documents encounter with the birds — and squirrels — around my home there. I now live in Scotland, where I’ve been making some new acquaintances.