“Music is the universal language — you hear that a lot,” Lee said. “I believed in it, but I don’t think I had ever truly experienced it until then. It was life changing for me.”
Standing at her keyboard with 50 little faces looking up at her, USC Thornton DMA candidate Grace Lee (MM ’12) talked about the song she was going to play next. “Take My Hand,” written years ago, had ended a long songwriting hiatus and brought comfort to her during a rough patch in her life. Lee wanted it to bring similar solace and hope to these kids. The children, who had arrived by bus that morning from an IDP (internally displaced person) settlement, were Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority who experienced persecution and genocide at the hands of ISIS in Iraq.
After the translator repeated her story in Kurmanji, Lee began to play. As she made eye contact with the children, she began to cry. “Part of me was sad for what they had gone through — some of them had shared stories about running away to the mountains. I mean my heart aches for them,” she said. “But another part of me was incredibly humbled and so grateful for that opportunity to share my music and love with the kids.”
Lee wasn’t the only one in tears. One of the kids was crying too.
“Music is the universal language — you hear that a lot,” Lee said. “I believed in it, but I don’t think I had ever truly experienced it until then. It was life changing for me.”
Excerpted from Comfort and Joy by Julie Riggott
> Read the original story on USC Thornton School of Music’s website.