U.S. sends musicians to make overtures in war zones

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-05-03-overtures_N.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno


When pianist Jonathan Lefcoski walked into a rehearsal at a Baghdad music club, he didn't know what to expect. He didn't know whether the Iraqi musicians would welcome him — or whether they'd know how to play the same music he did.

Within minutes, however, Lefcoski and an Iraqi bass player were working their way through Caravan, a classic by the American jazz great Duke Ellington. During the clinking of piano keys and the plucking of bass strings, Lefcoski said, they soon realized that "music was universal."

-snip-

This kind of cultural diplomacy dates back to the Cold War, says Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Music was considered "a good cultural weapon" and the government sponsored jazz musicians specifically because "jazz was an internationally known, admired and a respected art form identified with the United States," he says.
Sending jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie was one of the few ways to penetrate the countries behind the Iron Curtain, Morgenstern says.

-snip-

"With our new president, there's a possibility to talk about things and not just assume things," Atkinson says. "We now have the possibility of at least having an intellectual conversation."
Funding for the State Department bureau that runs Musical Overtures and other cultural programs expanded under President George W. Bush from $900,000 to $10 million in 2008. The budget for 2009 is at $8.5 million.

:thumbsup: