Music has long been recognized as a powerful tool for social connection. Research shows that music can promote empathy, interpersonal alignment, and conciliatory interaction in groups. This paper integrates neurobiological and therapeutic insights with John Paul Lederach’s The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace to propose a framework for using music to support conflict resolution through “mentalizing.”​“Mentalizing” refers to the capacity to reflect on the thoughts, emotions, and intentions underlying one’s own and others’ behaviors. While empathy involves sharing another’s emotions, mentalizing adds the reflective elements of thinking about what someone is feeling and why. Lederach views peacebuilding as a relational and creative process grounded in empathy and imagination. He argues that genuine change arises not from formulaic techniques, but from a process involving intuition, innovation, and openness to serendipity. Music can enhance this process by offering shared spaces where participants experience each other’s humanity and develop a reflective posture toward one another.​Drawing from the Mentalizing-Based Treatment (MBT) psychotherapy literature, this paper suggests that musical processes can bring Lederach’s framework to life by engaging neural systems underlying empathy and reflection. Music regulates emotional arousal. Through the Iso-Principle, facilitators use music to address participants’ emotional states, then gradually shift it to guide them toward a more reflective state. This groundwork enables mentalizing to occur. The reflective stage that follows, when participants interpret and discuss one another’s musical expressions, constitutes the true mentalizing process, inviting curiosity about the thoughts and feelings behind each person’s musical choices. Music thus brings emotional content to the surface in a creative, non-threatening form that can be observed, shaped, and shared, fostering psychological safety and exchange. ​Music engages brain networks associated with active mentalizing and can be applied in community or educational settings. Participants might express emotion through rhythm, tempo, melodies, or dynamics, while facilitators guide the evolving group sound toward synchrony and calm. Guided reflection invites participants to interpret one another’s musical expressions, transforming them into a medium of perspective-taking. Over time, this cycle of improvisation and reflection cultivates interpersonal attunement: the ability to perceive and respond to others’ mental states with empathy and reflection. ​Lederach teaches that understanding others begins with recognizing one’s place in a web of relationships and risking openness with those perceived as opponents. MBT-informed musical practice extends this vision, fostering reflection to move participants from emotional reactivity toward relational resonance and peacebuilding.