The U.S. State Department has a plan to use music as part of foreign policy in 2024
Soft power–the use of culture and consumer goods in international relations–has been a big part of American foreign policy for decades. Back in the 1950s, the U.S. Government engaged the Cold War dance partly by exporting music, dance, movies, and TV shows to nations around the world. Show the people of, say, the USSR, what they were missing out and they’d eventually rise up and overthrow the commies in power.
The use of soft power continues today. Slate.com shows us how.
“Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, said in an email, ‘The pandemic had separated the American and Chinese people, with no in-person cultural exchanges for nearly four years.’ The Philadelphia Orchestra’s tour ‘turned the page on that period of estrangement.’
“Matías Tarnopolsky, the orchestra’s president and CEO, recalled that the last time the musicians visited China, in 2017, he sat for a very stiff meeting with a senior Chinese official. But at the end, the official led him aside and urged him to keep making these tours. The official recalled how much his parents talked about the event when Ormandy and the orchestra came in 1973, and what it meant for hopes of contact with the rest of the world. “At times,” the official told him, ‘these cultural exchanges are the only thing that works.'”
Read the whole article here.
