We’re joining you again from the Sonic Arts Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, and we are thrilled to welcome Belfast-born journalist, author, and co-founder of the Oh Yeah music centre, Stuart Bailie. Stuart is also editor of Dig With It magazine. In our last episode, we talked about conflict, politics, and peace through the Troubles, and in this episode, we will dive more specifically into music’s role through the 30-year conflict. Stuart explains in his book Trouble Songs, “...music has not been a passive voice. It has called for subversion and disobedience. It has put out stories that have challenged the given histories. And in the place of the old, stuck ideas, music has imagined new fixes…the punk rockers, ravers and rogue strummers have all done their job." Growing up in a small town, music was often my window to the outside world and big news events. I love U2, the Cranberries, Thin Lizzy, Van Morrison, and Sinead O’Conner, among others. When I heard their songs growing up, it made me dig deeper into world events. As Stuart says, "God bless music. It just can take you to places that you're not expecting and can challenge all sorts of given stories." In honor of that, a personally curated playlist to accompany this podcast is linked below: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3BRUcTbj1iLCp6sSqynLxt?si=d7ceed204a88488f  Thank you as always for listening. *Special thanks to James Elliott who introduced me to Stuart, to my husband Quinn and Jodi Marr who helped me with the playlist, and to Molly Seuss who has been my star student helping me with edits! As always, big thanks to Mike Olekshy and J. Lauren who helped me launch this podcast and created our main theme music.