Silenced Majority Portal: An American in Pyong Yang: New York Philharmonic Plays in North Korea

This reinforces my strong conviction that music speaks louder than words and is more powerful than fighter jets - it's biologically so culturally universal and transcends alot of the bullshit that passes for foreign policy and diplomacy. On my commute, I heard that some North Koreans got to hear American musicians play Dvorak's 9th Symphony, and a little Gerschwin, & North Korea's most famous folk song. Granted, they were invited by North Korea but the US State Department actually went along with it! Something like this can make my day. I did also read a headline somewhere in passing that said that Eric Clapton may be performing in North Korea. It was this that primed me to catch this NPR story on the drive home.

The music can be heard at the NPR website. The concert was broadcast nationally and internationally by the North Korean officials.

Highlights from the NPR story:

The conductor said, "When we received this very warm, enthusiastic reception, we felt that indeed there may be a mission accomplished here. We may have been instrumental in opening a little door, and we certainly hope that if that is true, in the long run it will be seen as a watershed."

The Philharmonic's principal bassist, John Deak, said when the musicians started leaving the stage, the North Koreans started waving at them. "Half of the orchestra burst into tears, including myself and we started waving back at them and suddenly there was this kind of artistic bond that is just a miracle. I'm not going to make any statements about what's going to change or everything. Things happen slowly. But I do know that the most profound connection was made with the Korean people tonight."

The British critic Norman Lebrecht calls the event "somewhere along the scale of morally inappropriate and aesthetically offensive." He derides the North Korean government for "starving its own people," and doubts that any of the "average citizens," who are reportedly free to attend the concert, will indeed hear any music. Critic Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal, wrote that the Philharmonic visit amounts to "little more than participating in a puppet show whose purpose is to lend legitimacy to a despicable regime."

In September 1956, the Boston Symphony was the first major U.S. orchestra to visit the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and in the fall of 1973, the Philadelphia Orchestra made an unprecedented trip to China.