Colombia - Colombia’s National Historical Memory Center has produced a musical compilation: We Had to Sing: A Musical Journey Against Forgetting / Tocó Cantar: Travesía Contra el Olvido, which includes 45 songs composed by victims of the country’s armed conflict.

The project, supported by IOM and USAID, is the result of a 2014 appeal for songs written and composed by victims of the conflict. In 2015, a production team travelled around the country to record the songs and produce a web series on the process.

The project identified local composers and musicians who wrote about the conflict, the actions of armed groups, the resistance and the organization of communities, to promote social awareness of the need to never repeat the tragedy.

Earlier this month the disc and the web series were officially presented in Bogotá, with over 300 people in attendance and live presentations by the artists. This was followed by a concert on in Tumaco, an Afro-Colombian town located on the Pacific Coast badly affected by the conflict.

The project is part of the National Historical Memory Center’s efforts to collect cultural portrayals of the conflict as part of the process to create a National Memory Museum.

The songs produced are available here: http://bit.ly/1Zlr77s. The web series is available here: http://bit.ly/1LIqNcR. For more information, please contact Nicolás Cárdenas at IOM Colombia, email: ncardenas@iom.int