I stayed up very late last night in order to finish reading Shirley. After I was finished, I turned on the TV for the first time that day, and came across a live feed via North Korean TV on CNN of the New York Philharmonic performing live in Pyongyang. The first thought that came to my mind was, What? I don’t know much about North Korean culture, but I do know that they are fiercely anti-American. Plus, after all the fears about the possibility of their possessing nuclear weapons, I thought it would be years before anything like this would happen. But there it was, on TV.
They first performed both the American and the North Korean national anthems, and both countries’ flags were displayed on the stage. I unfortunately missed this, and the short Wagner piece that came after, but I was fortunate to hear their beautiful performance of Antonín Dvořák’s 9th Symphony, which he wrote during his stay in New York City in the late 19th century…very appropriate. The symphony is most familiarly known as “From the New World”, which summed up the American musicians’ message to the North Koreans: “We come from the New World with this great gift.” The next piece was “An American in Paris” by that quintessential American composer, George Gershwin. What could be more American than Gershwin? The conductor, Lorin Maazel, said, as he was introducing the piece, that he hoped that someday someone would write a song called, “Americans in Pyongyang”, which received an appreciative laugh and applause from the audience.
I went to bed after the Gershwin piece was finished, so I missed Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” (what is more American than Gershwin? Bernstein!), but I went to bed hoping that President Bush would be wise enough to use this historic event as a diplomatic tool. The thought of using music diplomatically is sort of magical to me. Music has the ability, that almost no other medium has, of reaching inside and touching someone, no matter what part of the world they come from, or their particular political or religious creed.
Of course, Bush is too much of an IDIOT to realize that this historic concert could have been the beginnings of more cooperative relations and understanding between the U.S. and North Korea. The White House instead denied that the concert served any important function, and certainly not a diplomatic one. It wasn’t his idea, after all…it was North Korea who invited the New York Philharmonic. Bush obviously doesn’t want any part of any diplomatic process that he did not think of in the first place. But then, diplomacy is not his strong suit, is it? He would much rather bomb Pyongyang than try to understand the North Korean people or meet them on any other terms than his own. When will Bush learn that the U.S. does not have the right to demand that the whole world bow to its supposed superiority?
I’m not going to waste my time by going on another anti-Bush tirade. He’s not worth it. But I will say that I hope that this will not be the last American concert in North Korea. Maybe it will lead to other concerts in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and to other parts of the world that need to see that not all Americans come to them in aggression. Sometimes, we just want to share some music!
