Echoes Across Oceans
By: Marvin Shim
An ensemble plays together. One musician, a violinist, draws her bow across the strings. Another, a violist, lifts a note into the air. For an instant, the music swells and escapes the concert hall, expands beyond the musicians themselves — traveling across oceans, to Salama School for the Blind in Kampala, Uganda, over 8,000 miles away.
To the students of EcoEcho, a youth-led non-profit dedicated to empowering and educating kids through music, the concert was not another performance, but a bridge — a bridge connecting youth musicians to youth who have experienced unimaginable loss and suffering. EcoEcho’s students were sending a message of hope, connection, and love through music that did not stop at notes on a page.
EcoEcho has transitioned from a simple, student motivated music initiative to a resource for connection, empathy, and healing. With a philosophy that music can communicate to people like nothing else can, EcoEcho has utilized performance not only as art, but also as outreach and connection for communities across boundaries, backgrounds, and lived experiences. One of EcoEcho's most important moments of impact came after a tragic incident at the Salama School for the Blind in Kampala, Uganda in 2022. When fire caused the death of eleven young girls, with many others injured, the impact was felt far beyond just Uganda. Thousands of miles away, EcoEcho responded with not silence, but sound; EcoEcho organized concerts as a gesture of remembrance and solidarity.
EcoEcho's concerts went beyond the symbolic. They illustrated, in real-time, how youth, when provided the tools and incited to act, can respond to the reality of suffering in the world with compassion and intention. EcoEcho showed the children of the Salama School not just in video and music but in the most clear and profound way they could: you have not been forgotten. For the children of Salama — many still acting out of trauma — music was a balm. It was a gentle reminder that people cared about them and their future, even from thousands of miles away.
Outside of that one performance, EcoEcho has had a broader impact. The organization is reshaping what it means for youth musicians to perform — moving an experience from merely inspiring applause to a more significant experience of harm reduction and impact. The concerts serve as a platform for awareness raising, the rehearsals offer a valuable opportunity for education, and the organization's members become ambassadors of empathy.
Through their marriage of art and activism, EcoEcho has challenged their peers to conceive of their own artistic gifts as pathways to social change. This is so more than just an orchestra; EcoEcho has built a community of individuals willing to engage in healing, aware, and hopeful efforts.
