I saw many smiles over the past three days but none could match the radiant smile of Idrissa 'Malam' Bangura, bass guitar player with Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars. You could not look at him without smiling back. And, as is so often the case, the horrors he and his brother and sister musicians have survived could have ended any hope for joy if they had let it. But they didn't and the world is all the richer for it.

We here in Detroit were the grateful recipients of their foot-stompin' West African, reggae, roots music and infectious expressions of delight as Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars closed out our three-day Detroit Festival of the Arts. And, believe me, Detroit knows how to stomp its feet and express delight! Reuben M. Koroma, the band leader and lead vocalist, kept remarking in awe that we here in Detroit are like the people in Africa--we ALL get up and dance! And hundreds of us--Black, White, Asian, Arab, old, young, homeless, housed, able-bodied & disabled--crowded around this outdoor stage doing just that!

How I love this city and its people. When we gather like this, all divisions are healed and we are family...true, authentic, down-to-the-heart family. Like Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, so many people in Detroit are survivors of horrors others of us cannot imagine. But that doesn't diminish the joy that bubbles up and cascades over us when we come together through music. I was once given a pin that said, "Peace through music." And I'm coming to believe that when we share music, even something as seemingly impossible as world peace becomes possible!