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Research Paper | Literature | Turkey | Volume 11 Issue 12, December 2022

Strings Against Gunfire: Music as a Trace of Humanity in Steven Galloway?s The Cellist of Sarajevo

Sanel Biberovic

Abstract: Music is a specific type of art capable of surpassing cultures, civilizations, perceptions, as well as time and space. It can affect and carry a mood without uttering any particular words. For many, music is a kind of a spiritual expression that reflects one's faith, beliefs, perspectives and knowledge. In other words, music carries and mirrors one's being. Its possibilities are beyond human understanding. Therefore, music is way more felt than understood. Throughout time, music has always been an essential piece of life that always finds a way to touch people's hearts and souls no matter of the environment, occasion or place, even if the place happens to be a war zone. The Cellist of Sarajevo is exactly the type of story that reflects the power of music and its impact on the lives of common people who live each day in fear and terror, and not only on them, but on the soldiers as well. The sound of the cello awakens the lost humanity in the citizens of Sarajevo, and questions the meaning of war and what it brings to people and warriors whether they are those who defend the city or those who attack it. Anyhow, everyone stops when they hear the cellist playing, and everyone is carried by the melody back to their feelings, dreams and images of what they used to be and what they wish to become again. Therefore, this paper tends to discuss the very significant role of the cellist and his music when it comes to sparkling the citizens' emotions, hopes, memories, identity and humanity during a war period in which death lurks from every corner of a besieged city.

Keywords: emotions, memories, identity, hope, humanity

Edition: Volume 11 Issue 12, December 2022,

Pages: 834 - 837