'Love Is the Answer' for Carter Center’s Karin Ryan '03

Karin Ryan ’03 enlists Berklee for a moving music video that will become the global rallying cry for The Carter Center’s Forum on Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.

June 21, 2016

In 1989, Karin Ryan ’03 and some of her colleagues from The Carter Center traveled to Soweto, South Africa, to give a human rights award to the family of Walter Sisulu, the activist who was imprisoned for battling apartheid as Nelson Mandela’s right-hand man. As it turned out, the visit wound up coinciding with Sisulu’s release; Ryan was in Sisulu’s home when the activist returned after 26 years in prison. As word spread, Ryan says, crowds gathered until celebrating people surrounded the entire area.

Now the senior advisor for human rights at the Carter Center, Ryan recalls, “People were standing on rooftops and in the street and together they were singing these liberation songs.”

The centrality of music and singing to that collective experience of social justice was integral to Ryan’s decision to study music at Berklee, and now to collaborate with the college on a new project that aims not only to inspire people, but to move them to action that will help make the world a better place.

All You Need Is Love—and Action

Ryan, who majored in contemporary writing and production at Berklee, recently returned to her alma mater to create a video, working with Berklee’s video production team, for the song “Love Is the Answer.” The song was written by Breeze the Voice, an artist who was inspired by former President Jimmy Carter's book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, and also features Saudi artist Rotana.

“’Love Is the Answer’ is an anthem about the big picture,” Ryan says, adding that the song, which features several Berklee students and faculty members, will become the global rallying cry for the Carter Center’s Forum on Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, and the lynchpin in a social media movement at #LoveIsTheAnswer.

Watch the video for “Love Is the Answer” here:

“Working with Berklee is so exciting,” Ryan says, “because people need to be touched to get motivated to do something, and nothing does that like music.” For Ryan, however, the ultimate goal of the video is not mere inspiration, but concrete social change.

“My frustration as a musician and as an activist has always been that we get people inspired, but then what?” Ryan says. “It’s like at the Grammys when John Legend and Common did the song ‘Glory.’ It was incredible. Then John Legend gives this amazing speech about how there are more black men in prison today than there were slaves. Wouldn’t it have been awesome if he could have said, ‘And I want you to do this about it?’”

Just Do It

In the case of the themes that “Love Is the Answer” addresses—particularly violence against women—Ryan is clear as to the actions she’d like those who are inspired to take. First, she says, we must seek out opportunities to work with human rights defenders in their own societies. For instance, in Basra, Iraq, The Carter Center supports Fatima al Bahadli, who, working with war widows, has helped to disarm 500 Shia militiamen by persuading them to turn in their weapons and instead pave roads and repair schools and buildings—all with just $5,000 that she was able to raise locally.

“A lot of times, the United States and Europe, in particular, look at problems with a view of what we’re going to do, but people in these societies are prepared to do this,” Ryan says. “So the question we have to ask ourselves is, ‘What can we do to help them?’ And guess what? It’s going to cost a lot less money, and we’re probably going to kill a lot fewer people.”

On the U.S. level, Ryan hopes those inspired by “Love Is the Answer” will push for a shift in our approach to peacemaking, such as, she says, “urging Congress to pass the Women, Peace, and Security Act, a piece of legislation that would create incentives in our foreign policy process where we would then engage women like Fatima in a different way and provide different kinds of support—the kind of support that doesn’t delegitimize them, because sometimes if they take USAID money, they become seen as suspicious.”

The action needn’t be overseas, either. Ryan has met with a Berklee student who, she says, could advance action around sexual assault on college campuses with her song written from the point of view of a woman who has just been raped. For other students passionate about making a difference, Ryan suggests picking an issue that one cares very deeply about, learning as much about it as possible so that one can speak with knowledge, and collaborating with others who are concerned about similar things.

Never Give Up

Even if a musician interested in social justice does all of the above, however, Ryan’s last piece of advice may be her most important: be persistent, even in the face of setbacks, she says.

“You have a choice in life to say, ‘Well, it’s too hard,’” Ryan says. “It is hard. I get up every single day and I feel tired. We know the solutions. The thing is, we just need more people to be a part of them.”

When enough people get involved, she says, “impossible things” turn into “all the great things that have happened in our history”—things like what she experienced in South Africa back in 1989, not long before apartheid went from an inevitable reality to a toppled practice of the past.