Twenty-five years of music for peace.
Songs written with poets in more than twenty countries — Made in Hawaiʻi, given to the world.
I am a singer and musician who has given his work to the cause of peace through music — twenty-five years of it now. Music can turn conflict into something else. It can grow nonviolence, awaken creativity, and open the way to empathy. My hope is to keep creating alongside artists from every corner of the earth, in the name of love and peace.
No wall stands against music. It reaches past every barrier we build, and it remains one of the finest ways we have to give voice to that fierce and living love for existence that each of us carries inside.
That same feeling is the root of everything: my love for my family, for the people of this world and everyone in it — no distinction drawn from gender, age, class, nationality, or cultural, religious or spiritual background. The natural world enters the music too. I write out of respect for the stone and the soil, for growing things, for the flowers and the animals who share this planet with us.
Belonging to both East and West has taught me something simple: we ordinary people, everywhere, want the same peace. Twenty-five years of working with friends around the world has only confirmed it.
My mission is to offer whatever musical gift I have to humanity — to reach toward those who carry the weight of injustice, and to place hope and strength in their hands. Music speaks a language every person already understands. I want to use it to tell the beauty of what we are, and to build a peace that is more than the absence of war.
Hawaiʻi has been my home for twenty years. I look forward to building a better world with you — through music, and through love for life and for people.
With love, music and peace from Hawaiʻi
How the work is made
A poet sends words. That is how most of it begins.
A poem arrives from India, or Romania, or Israel, or Argentina, and a song comes back. Sometimes the two of us never meet. “May Peace Prevail on Earth” began when a Romanian poet posted his lines to a composer in Karachi in October 2006; it was performed in New York the following August, and first broadcast on Romanian radio the spring after that.
The larger projects work the same way. World Prayer for Peace gathered 187 artists from 42 countries in 2008, then 250 from 44 the year after — assembled entirely by email, before there was any social platform to do it on. The recording and production are done at StarLight Harmony Music Studio on Maui.
The road here
The work began with children. In Karachi I built a Muppet theatre and took it to some fifty schools — I wrote the story, made the characters, composed the soundtrack and built the puppets myself. There was a nursery rhyme album too, recorded with children between five and ten years old, on the themes of peace and love.
The music made since has travelled to a United Nations environment campaign, a British classroom film, an American theatre production marking sixty years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and peace festivals in India, France, Romania and New York.
What I do
Studio
Audio production
Composition, arrangement, recording, sound engineering and mastering at StarLight Harmony Music Studio, Maui.
Song
Writing and performance
Songwriting, singing and computer music — including settings of poems sent by writers around the world.
Screen
Music video
Direction and production of music video, and scoring for film, theatre and dance.
In brief
A note on independence. My mission of peace through music is nonpolitical and nonreligious, and rests on the basic principles of humanity and friendship. I respect and love all my friends working for peace and harmony on our beautiful planet. Publishing a link on this website does not mean that I am part of any group, or that I agree — completely or partially — with the ideology, views or beliefs of any person or organization, or with the content of their websites. All links and names are published in good faith, to provide a bridge and to help the community spread messages of peace and love in a neutral way.
M. I. Behleem is an audio producer, composer, songwriter, singer, computer musician, sound engineer, and director and producer of music video. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Laws, and has lived and worked in Hawaiʻi for twenty years.
M. I. Behleem is an audio producer, composer, songwriter, singer, computer musician, sound engineer, and director and producer of music video. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Laws, and has lived and worked in Hawaiʻi for twenty years.
