A Balkan Music Journey: Mary Cay Brass and Her Emergence as a Music Educator and Peacebuilder from 1960s to the 1990s.

This article focuses on the life and career of Mary Cay Brass, a music educator, ethnomusicologist, and peacebuilder whose engagement with Balkan music from the 1960s to the 1990s shaped her work in global music education and peace activism. Brass's early exposure to Balkan folk dance in Minnesota, her Fulbright scholarship study in Yugoslavia, and her subsequent teaching and choral directing in the United States enabled her to use Balkan and other world music traditions as tools for fostering cultural understanding and peacebuilding. During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, Brass organized benefit concerts and incorporated music from diverse Balkan cultures into her choirs to humanize affected communities and promote reconciliation. Her work exemplifies how localized, non-Western musical traditions can be integrated into music education to support peacebuilding efforts in post-conflict contexts.