Did you know that the New York Philharmonic just gave a concert in, wait for it, North Korea?!?! Their orchestra was the biggest single group of Americans in North Korea since the Korean War. I'm afraid the significance of this concert has been lost on many of us. In his 2004 (I believe, I could very well be wrong, it might have been earlier but I'm short on time to check it out right now) State of the Union Address President Bush labeled North Korea as a member of "The Axis of Evil." Given their atrocious civil rights practices, the government of North Korea probably deserved that title (obviously that's not the angle President Bush was coming from).
That's a pretty big leap in a short time: from Axis of Evil to hosting one of America's premiere cultural institutions! The concert began with the orchestra playing both countries anthems and then moved to pieces that mostly highlighted the orchestra's history.
We often here people talk about music being a universal language (which, let's be honest, there is no one musical language that is universal so therefore "music" cannot be a universal language, but the human act of the creation of music is a universal act among all cultures). What a blessing it is to see art used as a bridge to open up dialogue between diverse groups of people!
Their are rumors that Eric Clapton has been invited to give a concert in North Korea in 2009.
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