When the young speak, let the old listen

On Saturday, 23 August, Križanke was bursting at the seams. As part of Ljubljana Festival the stage was taken by The Slovenian Youth Orchestra with guest musicians, singers and narrators from almost twenty countries. The international cast of young people performed the popular musical Peace Child (Peace Child), which was written by Davida Gordona some forty years ago and has had more than ten thousand performances worldwide. This Slovenian-international version, under the direction of conductor and world peace activist Živa Ploj Peršuh lit up the Križanke venue with its immense energy, love of music and the hope that, with such youthful energy, the world is far from lost, and that there are still many paths to a life that will know no wars, injustice, hunger or oppression. Paradise is here, not in heaven – only we ourselves are (or can be) paradise!

The event was graciously introduced by our Minister of Foreign Affairs Tanja Fajon, who was the honorary patron of the event. A repeat performance is due to take place in Vienna in October. The musical is a post-hippie work, one of the last appeals from that era when the world adorned itself with flowers, love and a future without wars. Yes, good times, we would say today, even though there was no shortage of horrors and massacres back then either – times that conscientious young people tried to change, to re-evaluate, to turn into a kind of paradise of love and peace on Earth. But precious little remains of that rose-tinted revolution. The world dreamt of by yesterday's children is today even more sophisticatedly cruel (Gaza, Ukraine …); killings, ostracism, environmental destruction and the erasure of civilisations are carried out in a hundred and one ways. Our planet is dividing ever more forcefully (now in the sense of a global, unified celestial body orbiting the Sun we all hold dear and share) into a rich and a poor half: on one side an abundance of everything, on the other poverty, hunger and despair.

The musical therefore re-establishes the forces of hope and peace through relaxed, open conversation, with an appeal to all people that there can be only one paradise, that no religion can guarantee a heaven as beautiful as the one we can create ourselves on Earth, which has been entrusted to us as an opportunity to tend and bring to flourish. And when children and young people – our future and our hope – speak about this, their elders fall silent and try to grasp that their word is the only possible path to happiness, the path to the happy coexistence of all.

How powerful is the thought from the musical: one day we will have to die, that is simply a matter of nature and the universe (the Seikilos epitaph from ancient Greece already expresses this beautifully in a single sentence: all that lives must also die), but when I die, I would like to die fulfilled, surrounded by love and peace, at peace (oh, how close those two words are), with the awareness and feeling that I have been able to make the most of my life's opportunity, this miracle of being here and now, and that before I leave I am surrounded by my loving people. That I will close the story of my life and return to the structure of the universe, among the immortal atoms, among the dust and ashes, happy and at peace. And, as the musical's message says, I want to die like that, in a beautiful way, fulfilled in the arms of the laws of nature – not to fall in war, not to be starved to the bone by big selfish corporations that forge selfish profits at people's expense and live past life itself, grasping for eternity where there is none. I want to die loved, and I want to love even after death.

The musical is a single ode to hope, even though it builds on real facts, on the realities of the modern world, which is utterly hopeless if we look at it only through realistic spectacles. The composer David Gordon conceived it as “an open, participatory performance for young people”, writes Metka Sulič in the concert programme, and indeed, despite the terrible messages it strings together in the first part, despite the depressing truths voiced by the young people of different races, cultures and faiths in conversation, a light is always burning in the background. First like a quiet firefly darting across the spring sky, and towards the end increasingly like a glowing light of love, which is true hope, the only real power for the world to live on in happiness and well-being for all, without distinctions, without separations – neither religious nor cultural, neither by skin colour nor by hairstyle, if we may be a little playfully general. Yes, despite the dreadful sequences in the first part, the composer steers the musical towards hope, love, coexistence and also a resolute demand with a clear and uncompromising political thrust, almost akin to a manifesto: Dear President, change the world into something good and beautiful, throw the key to atomic cataclysm somewhere deep into the abyss and help us all to live in the world hand in hand, whatever happens, all different in one goodness, all unlike in one love!

The musical side of the production was prepared superbly, to the limits that can be judged through the eyes of a listener admiring a granddaughter among the violinists. Everyone did their job superbly; the orchestra, most of them amateurs and enthusiasts – well, future professionals too – performed their parts perfectly. It is an old saying that a symphony orchestra's quality is measured by its brass: if they are poor, out of tune and full of air leaks, then everything is poor. Not so this time; the brass alone produced a unity and ensemble that even among professionals can only be a pious hope. Come on, let us set aside the odd slight dip below the prescribed pitch; as a whole, it was superb. As was everyone else, with the choral section at the back, which powerfully managed to drown out the front line of orchestral players and proclaim its own share of the truth.

Everyone who created this project can be proud of their work. We believe they have been mentioned in many places, but let us thank them here too: the arrangement was by Matija Krečič, the screenplay by David Woollcombe, and the narrators/singers were (as listed in the concert programme) Pia Fabian, Adrian Grošelj, Alessandro Lionel Michele Asselin, Lydia Mushkatina, Shea Ferron. Special praise also goes to the voice from the background, Dominicu Byronu Mafhamu, and the director of the event was Matej Filipčič.