When Does Art Get Refugees Right?

Interwoven: Sounds and Visions from the World’s Refugee Camps Yale Institute of Sacred Music New Haven, CT Through Dec. 3 The music pumping through the headphones is all happiness: driving rhythms, pulsing chords, a single voice calling out, a chorus of voices singing a harmonizing response. The group of musicians, at a refugee camp for South Sudanese people in Uganda, stand close together, moving in time to the music, and the camera lets us see everything up close: the musicians’ fingers working the strings of their instruments, the gleam in the singers’ eyes. It’s all full of light; even the camp behind them is clean and tidy. It looks organized, well-run, and there’s no reason to think it isn’t. Some refugee camps are. Then the camera comes into the orbit of a kid in the band. He is playing right with the others, but as soon as he is aware of the lens, he stares right into it, and doesn’t let go. His expression is ambivalent at best. He doesn’t seem to like being filmed.

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