Andreas Kossert: »Flucht. Eine Menschheitsgeschichte«

Music to relieve homesickness

People who flee, do so against their will. Refugees are usually escaping war and violence, and on their journeys they encounter cruelty, hunger, exhaustion and death. Fear and uncertainty are never far away. When the refugees arrive somewhere new, there is no one there to welcome them. They arrive in a foreign place, which rarely becomes a new home. They grieve their losses, remember lost relatives and landscapes, and suffer from homesickness. These are experiences shared by everyone who has had to leave their home. Music fulfils an important function of cultural self-assertion in the foreign country. Alongside cuisine, language and dialect, music is one of the few connections to what constituted the old identity. Away from home, music can even infuse a new emotional charge into the past. It helps to relieve homesickness.