Using Music and Community to Disrupt Systems, Cycles and Experiences of Oppression – in Philadelphia and Beyond
Christopher Thornton (they/them) is a youth educator, culture worker and musician whose work focuses on the intersection of using music as a means to create, build and heal communities, as an avenue for processing and moving through trauma as it presents in the lives of individuals our communities, and finally as a means to strengthen our connections to our ancestors, our diverse and inter-related communities and as a means to build resilience, power and harmony in communities around the world that have been effected by overlapping systems of oppression, expolitation and divestment. A lifelong music educator, Christopher serves as Co-Executive Director of Philadelphia’s Beyond The Bars, an organization that uses music as a means to disrupt cycles of violence, trauma and disconnection. Christopher is a student, steward and educator within the Afro-Mexican music and community known as Son Jarocho, a community based in the resilience, community healing and creating capacities of African and Indigenous peoples in the Sotavento region of Mexico.