I am in contact with this sort of thing very regularly as I am involved with musical projects with a lot of recently arrived people. A lot of what I am doing makes me very sad, though the thing that cheers me is the wonderful music that happens in these circumstances, a bit of culture that people have in their heads that they can cling on to in a strange and threatening new world. Thinking about all this, and my relation to it(am I being helpful, or am I an exploiter??) gives me a whole new angle into the world of slavery and colonialism.

The only thing we can do is to learn from all this and try to prevent it now and in the future. For we can't really do anything else now about all the bad aspects, except to openly talk about it but still manage to feel bad and apportion blame.

We can't do anything now either about the cultural and musical benefits - except celebrate these. I feel that it would be sensible to try and feel good about all the fine music that has resulted from transplanting whole cultures into a alien ones - if not about the motives, the manner of it and all the resulting suffering.

If we can't feel good and free from guilt, or not feel we are possibly exploiting this positive musical aspect - perhaps all the suffering od so many, will have served no purpose at all?