The ICD Music as Cultural Diplomacy Program

It is difficult to overstate the value of music in bringing people from different cultural backgrounds together for a common cause. Music has an almost limitless potential to unite both musicians and listeners regardless of their age, cultural background, language spoken, or skin color. Why is music so powerful? Music is important because it is, as Wadsworth declares, a common language: it can be appreciated and interpreted by anyone. The emotions stirred by the dramatic climax in an opera, the soothing rhythm of a drum display, are the same to everyone who hears them - though we are free to interpret them as individuals. Furthermore, music is universally accessible: A live musical performance may take place in the corner of an underground station, on a village green, at a bar, or in front of thousands at a world famous music venue.

The Live Aid concerts held in 1985 brought together a live audience of over 200,000 and a television audience of over 1.5 billion, in over 100 different countries around the world, for what can be seen as a large-scale example music’s ability to cross cultural barriers. An example of modern cultural diplomacy took place at the height of the cold war. US Jazz musician Jason “Dizzy” Gillespie embarked on a world tour that would see him and his band travel through and play, amongst other locations, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. At a time of considerable international tension, with mistrust and miscommunication rife in international relations, Dizzy Gillespie and his band highlighted the commonality, the love of music, that is present in all of us, independent of our ideological views.

The ICD’s Music as Cultural Diplomacy department works to plan and coordinate musical events that serve as a practical example of cultural diplomacy, and bring people from different cultures together.