A Musical Mission of Peace at Daniel Pearl Magnet Event

Dr. and Mrs. Judea Pearl share their reflections with students.Last Friday, students at Daniel Pearl Journalism and Communications High School Magnet greeted guests in over 20 languages, including Farsi, Tagalog and Mongolian, to kick off Daniel Pearl World Music Day.  More than 100 students, school staff, and community members attended the event in honor of the school namesake, who in addition to being a journalist was also a violinist.  Having grown up in Encino, Daniel Pearl attended Portola Middle School and Birmingham High School.  Dr. and Mrs. Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s parents, joined in the first row to watch the school’s choir, guitar trio, piano soloists, dance performers, and poets dedicate their art to inspire unity, peace, and tolerance. 

An international day of remembrance, Daniel Pearl World Music Days was created in response to the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl by terrorists in Pakistan.  According to the Daniel Pearl Foundation website www.danielpearl.org, World Music Days has grown to include the participation of more than 6,700 performances in 111 countries since 2002.Students greet attendees in over 20 languages.

The magnet school students performed a variety of songs such as “Oseh Shalom” in Hebrew to “Cirandeiro” in Portuguese and accompanied by Latin percussion.  At the end of the program, Dr. and Mrs. Judea Pearl gave students their reflections:  “People are hungry for an excuse to come together to express peace for humanity and to show evil doesn’t win.”  In a single file line, student performers each gave the parents a single pink rose.

To view more pictures from the event, please click here.  To see the student-created video coverage of the event, please view http://my.hsj.org/464014.