The Politics of Music

On Monday, December 10th, the New York Philharmonic announced that it will be traveling to North Korea to perform a concert there on February 26th. The concert, which will come at the end of the orchestra's China tour, will include pieces by Gershwin, Dvorak and both the US and North Korean national anthem.

What has startled me most about this recent announcement is the negative reaction it has received from some. For example, I heard Terry Teachout interviewed on CNN just before the announcement was official and he berated the orchestra for crossing boundaries of political hostilities. If the United States has diplomatic sanctions on North Korea, he argued, why should we freely offer them our musical pleasures?

This point of view seems to me to show an egregious misunderstanding of music's role in history as a political equalizer. Perhaps I'm under the influence of The Rest is Noise, but even during the totalitarian reigns of Hitler and Stalin when music was at its most highly politicized, music served as a no man's land where many composers were able to communicate with the outside through their universal language. Even some Jewish musicians were spared by Hitler because their musicality raised them above their ethnicity. Can't that same universality help us today, even if classical music isn't the soul of our culture as it perhaps used to be? I guess I should be heartened that an orchestra's touring schedule still has the power to elicit passionate responses from politicians, journalists and music fans alike.

Edith Piaf: The Voice of France

Biopics are no new thing in film. 2007 saw its fair share: Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter and Truman Capote have all had screen time recently. Musicians Ray Charles and Johnny Cash also received attention in recent years. But not one biography of an artist has gripped me like La Vie en Rose, the summer release based on the life of legendary French singer Edith Piaf which I saw for the first time the other night.

Aside from the tragic life that made for fast-paced and wrenching storytelling, Piaf's original music fantastically illustrates the atmosphere of France before and after World War II. Her gutteral tone--almost speaking on pitch-- is so closely associated with French folk singing that I, not having heard any particular Edith Piaf recordings before this movie, instinctively understood the cultural setting of the movie.

Also remarkable about this film is the performance of Marion Cotillard, who plays Edith Piaf. It's hard to believe Cotillard is the beautiful young woman who co-stars with Russell Crowe in A Good Year. And it's hard to believe that the same actress plays Piaf through all her adult years; she changes so dramatically in her appearance and demeanor as her character grows older and more sickly.

I have already searched iTunes for Piaf's best-loved songs. Her voice, while not always beautiful, spoke the language of a whole people.