Who‘s Playing Whom?n e t w o r k© Kim Jacobs“Political leaders have long understood the power thatcomes from attraction. If I can get you to want to dowhat I want, then I do not have to use carrots or sticksto make you do it... The ability to establish preferencestends to be associated with intangible assets suchas an attractive personality, culture, political valuesand institutions...” 1 Joseph Nye, Kennedy School ofGovernment, Harvard University“Cultural diplomacy is the linchpin of public diplomacy;for it is in cultural activities that a nation’s ideaof itself is best represented. And cultural diplomacy canenhance our national security in subtle, wide-ranging,and sustainable ways. Indeed history may record thatAmerica’s cultural riches played no less a role thanmilitary action in shaping our international leadership,including the war on terror. For the values embedded inour artistic and intellectual traditions form a bulwarkagainst the forces of darkness.” 2 Advisory Committeeon Cultural Diplomacy, US State Dept.“The usual position of governments to culture is as to acharity – something they are compelled to throw smallamounts of money at so they don’t get shouted at.”Simon Anholt, International Policy AdvisorGovernments love us world music artists, and rightlyso. What’s not to like? Wholesome, positive and asreliable as the family dog: when you’re feeling a bitdepressed, and there are clouds gathering over yourneighbourhood, world music can be relied on to makeeveryone feel good, both about themselves and aboutyou too. We don’t tend to be loud or aggressive; half ofwhat we do is instrumental and looks as pretty as ournational dress; and as for the other half, the songs aremostly about waiting for a lover in a barn or a group ofWho’s Playing Whom?Cultural Diplomacy and World MusicBy Lemez Lovas (UK) | Producer, Lyricist, Artistfriends coming together as one, and anyway most of thepeople we play to can’t understand the lyrics anyway. 3We don’t make too much money or promote obscenevalues, and as long as we sound different enough fromour neighbours and don’t mind waving the flag, ourpolitical leaders – regional or national – will be happyto adopt our music and send us abroad to spread themessage of what it is that our great corner of the globestands for. For a brief moment, whatever else ourhonoured representatives might have done that peoplemight not like will be forgotten, and other nations willrespect ours for its creativity, humanity and diversecultural traditions.We could be forgiven for pinching ourselves. The musicbusiness claims to be in a crisis, and those who aren’tin crisis are keeping quiet to save money. It’s gettingmore and more difficult for world music artists to getsigned, distributed and launch an international careerfor themselves, and even if you get lucky, tough visaprocedures and lower fees are making it harder thanever to tour an average-sized band. So the current loveaffair between regional and national government andworld music artists has, one might argue, come at a veryuseful time indeed. World music is now a key plank in– whisper it – ‘cultural diplomacy’.“I prefer the term ‘cultural relations’,” says policy advisorSimon Anholt, “‘cultural diplomacy’ sounds very elitistto me, as if you are doing something weaselly amid highlevel negotiations to persuade other elites your cultureis worth paying attention to. What you try to do is toget people in other countries to know about and to likeyour culture – whatever culture means.”British Council Music Director Cathy Graham agrees:“We are in the business of creating a dialogue. Differentgovernments have different reasons for doing culturalrelations work – most governments understand thevalue of people to people rather than government togovernment engagement, and direct contact with thepositive bits of each other’s culture can do a lot ofgood.”This year’s storm over the Wikileaks cables meansthat 20<strong>11</strong> hasn’t been a great year for the image ofdiplomacy, but semantics aside, cultural diplomacyseems to be on the up. The concept of attraction asbeing a more effective form of international relationsthan coercion may have been around for centuries, butit has taken until last year for it to become a centralpart of UK foreign policy. Put plainly, in an age ofsevere budget cuts and messy international militarycampaigns, the ‘soft power’ arsenal of culture, values,policies and institutions is both more palatable at homeand abroad, and a lot cheaper too. The era of ‘heartsand minds’ in international relations has well and trulyarrived – and music is a crucial tool in the diplomatichandyman’s toolbox.“There is a dumb, old approach,” continues Anholt,“which is basically culture promotion, putting a lot oftaxpayer’s money into sending out art exhibitions andtouring orchestras and forcing people in other countriesto swallow your culture. There is also an intelligent,modern approach, such as the one taken by the BritishCouncil among others, based on mutuality. Ratherthan trying to project a stream of culture, it’s aboutdoing culture together with people in other countries,so that they are enriched by us and we by them.”Top American jazzmen featured heavily in US diplomacyat the height of the Cold War – Benny Goodman’stour to Russia in 1962 and Louis Armstrong and DukeEllington going to Africa in the fifties and sixties, atradition continued by artists like Wynton Marsalis inmore recent times. Classical music has an illustriousdiplomatic history too, from Italian Jesuit MatteoRicci’s present of a clavichord to Ming Emperor WanLi in 1607, to the New York Philharmonic’s trip toPyongyang in 2008. In world music, however, theAmerican outreach flag these days is being flown by LosAngeles multi-ethnic rock/hip-hop band Ozomatli.The band might seem like an unusual choice fordiplomatic envoys – they met at the city’s Peace andJustice Center, first performing for picketers at a strike,and were approached by the US State Departmentduring the Presidency of George W. Bush. The need tocombat the swift rise in anti-Americanism at the timefound a perfect partner in a band who may not haveagreed with US policies, but who projected values thatshowed a positive, alternative side of American culture.However, it wasn’t an easy courtship for either party.“The US Embassy in India, which is our third largest,was asked by someone at the State Department to lookat bringing us out,” says band manager Amy Blackman.“It took them a couple years to convince the embassy– they had a lot of concerns about the band’s politicalmessage, as we were very outspoken about the Bushadministration and the Iraq war, and they thought wewere too rebellious for this kind of interface. When wefinally got the call from India, it took me months toconvince the band. They were like ‘no way, we hate thegovernment and we won’t dialogue with them.’ I justkept on and on at them, and since then we’ve been sentall over the world.” Local embassy officials abroad were,the band discovered, not so different in outlook tothem, and now the mutually beneficial relationship hasevolved to such an extent that the only places the bandwouldn’t go to are those where “security is an issue.”Herein lies one potential issue with artists taking on thebadge of foreign diplomats: Ozomatli were approachednot for their music alone, but because it came packagedwith a story of cultural fusion, tolerance and diversitythat was right for a country with a serious imageproblem. “What happened during the 2 nd Iraq war,“says Colin Hicks, “was that George Bush forgot thecentral tenet of diplomacy – the reputation of yourcountry is your major asset.” Hicks is a cultural brokerwho spent 18 years as the Cultural Attache for theQuebec Government Office in London. One problemof cultural diplomacy he sees is that what governmentswant out of musicians and what constitutes the bestavailable art is not necessarily the same thing.n e t w o r k Who‘s Playing Whom?8687
Connecting India’s Independent Artists and Worldwide MediaTHE MEETING HUB FORMUSICIANSFILMMAKERSMEDIADJSwww.muzikonnect.comwww.muzikonnect.comOnline Music Samples Librarywww.earthmoments.comwww.clementine-studio.comThe Spirit of SoundMUSIC | FILMLIVE SHOWS | STUDIOCONTENT | ONLINE PLATFORMSwww.earthsync.com“I’ve seen a lot of artists become instruments ofdiplomacy provided they were saying the right things,”he says. “When they were on message they were funded,when they weren’t, they weren’t.”It isn’t just big countries with troublesome militarycampaigns who are seeing the value of sendingout cultural diplomats. Brendan Quinlivan is aSenior Policy Advisor at the New Zealand CulturalDiplomacy International Programme, whose statedaim is to ‘maintain a New Zealand cultural presencein key overseas regions or countries in order to boostNew Zealand’s profile and economic, trade, tourism,diplomatic and cultural interests.’“As a geographically isolated country,” he says, “culturaldiplomacy is seen as increasingly important in doingbusiness, and there is broad recognition of the value ofcultural diplomacy by New Zealanders.”If Quinlivan is right, New Zealanders are a savvybunch. There are too many countries on the planet –between 192 and 225 according to various criteria, themajority with under 10 million inhabitants – for mostof us to have any impression of them at all, and for asmall country without a damaged reputation to fix,culture is the easiest way to put a positive mark on anotherwise blank page.“It’s almost an a priori requirement,” says SimonAnholt, “that if a country wants to have the esteemand admiration of people around the world, then itneeds them to know something of its culture. Peopleare unable to admire countries whose culture theydon’t know or respect. For example, Latvia: researchshows that the majority perception is that as an ex-Communist country, it has no culture at all, whereasLatvia has more folksongs than people. It follows thatpeople would have no interest in anything that happensthere as we seem to equate cultural richness with qualityand self respect.”For smaller countries vying for cultural space in ourovercrowded heads, the argument for culture in itselfcan be a tough one, whereas for linguistically dominantpowers, spending on outreach is easier to justify inpurely economic terms: by investing in music exchangesnow, you help to develop markets that in the future yourdomestic music industries can exploit by themselves.We all have something to sell – be it tea towels or tradedeals – and showing what visible economic benefit webring to the table is a more important part of the debatethan ever.“Culture is most foreign to governments,” continuesAnholt. “These days most officials understand businessas they tend to have experience in this sector – butnever in culture. It’s almost as if it is a completelyseparate universe. Frequently ministers and even PrimeMinisters don’t understand what a money earner it canbe, how it supports direct investment. I often have tolecture ministers about it in these terms, as it’s the onlylanguage they understand.”So, dear <strong>WOMEX</strong>-goer, your country or region has afantastic music culture that hardly anyone knows about– your band might even be part of it – and a reputationthat, frankly, just isn’t fair, or maybe isn’t there at all.However, before you go banging on the minister’s doorto throw some money into next year’s opening nightcountry showcase, think about strategy.“I’m quite critical of showcases,” says Colin Hicks.“There is a tendency to throw money at them: they area tool but they have to happen in context. You needwhat I call gateway producers or promoters – who itis in the culture you are targeting that will open doors.I think that it takes four years in real terms to build alevel of trust, not only in quality but in consistencyof quality, to the point where they will take a risk. Ifyou have ten of these gateway producers then you haveopened up a huge network, as these ten know anotherhundred who will see that they took a risk, so they willtoo. That is how you break a market.”The music and diplomacy love affair looks set to grow.Bands love it because they don’t sell enough to get tothose far-off locations by themselves, and governmentslove it because it’s a lot better than going to drearymeetings, and if they’re lucky, they might just get a tradedeal out of it. However, a couple of niggling questionsremain – many artists would be uncomfortable flyingthe flag for a corporation, brand or organisation whosepolitics they don’t feel completely at home with. Sowhy are countries different? And if we, as world musicartists, fit our government’s agenda of what kind ofimage they’d like to project, shouldn’t we be – well –just a little bit worried? To what extent should art andgovernment be in bed with each other at all?George Bernard Shaw was once seated beside anattractive woman at a dinner party. “Madam,” heasked, “would you go to bed with me for a thousandpounds?” The woman blushed and angrily shook herhead. “For ten thousand pounds?” he asked. “No.I would not.” “Then how about fifty thousand pounds?”he continued. The huge sum made the woman hesitate,and after further reflection, she coyly replied: “Perhaps.”“And if I were to offer you five pounds?” Shaw asked.“Mr. Shaw!” the woman exclaimed. “What do you takeme for?!” “We have already established what you are,”Shaw calmly replied. “Now we are merely haggling overthe price.”1Nye, Joseph: Soft Power and Leadership. Compass:A Journal of Leadership. Harvard University. Spring 2004.2Report of the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy.U.S. Department of State. September 2005.3Author’s note: there are some songs about blood and fightingand conquering other nations, but that we call folk music,so it doesn’t apply to us at all.© 20<strong>11</strong> Lemez Lovas› Conference/Session 17› Conference/Bios A – Z: Lovas89n e t w o r k Who‘s Playing Whom?
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