Virtually everyone has listened to a popular song with its lyrics changed for comedic or dramatic effect. But a perhaps little-known fact of the Holocaust is that this type of parody was also a common practice in some of the most hellish places on Earth: concentration camps.

Musician and music scholar Alexandra Birch will discuss the resistance demonstrated by one of the 20th century’s most renowned composers, Dmitri Shostakovich, in her presentation at the Music as Resistance to Genocide academic symposium.

Musicologist Janie Cole will discuss how “freedom songs” provided an oppressed community with political expression, resistance, therapy, identity, memory and resilience to confront potential violence and death.

​At the academic symposium, scholars will discuss how music was used as resistance in a number of conflicts around the world. Tina Frühauf will instead focus on the very definition of “resistance” itself.