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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

MAESTRO DUDAMEL, VENEZUELAN SOFT POWER AND LESSONS FOR AMERICA
MAR 6, 2008 - 7:09PM PDT
Posted by Neal Rosendorf
All posts by this author

The New York Philharmonic's recent Pyongyang concert has garnered extensive international news coverage over the momentary piercing of North Korea's thick carapace. But rather than seeking as far as the Hermit Kingdom for evidence of a truly effective use of classical music as soft power, we'd arguably do better to look in our own back yard: Los Angeles to be precise, in the guise of the L.A. Philharmonic's next music director, Gustavo Dudamel. The extraordinary young conductor is the embodiment of Venezuela's one real soft power asset. The U.S. has much to learn from Maestro Dudamel's story and experience as policy formulators think about future public diplomacy initiatives. In general, skepticism is warranted about the soft power potential of orchestral music performance. True, Leonard Bernstein made a splash when he took the New York Philharmonic to the Soviet Union in 1959, just as his successors have just done in North Korea. But as one-off events, it's questionable whether one can discern any long-term persuasive or attractive achievement. But Gustavo Dudamel and what he represents is different. Dudamel is the most illustrious progeny of a Venezuelan youth music education program that receives kudos the world over, including the highest praise of emulation. The Fundacion del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, or simply "el Sistema," was established in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu, an economist-cum-musician, to bring the benefits of instrument instruction and performance to poor and troubled Venezuelan children. El Sistema provides lessons and youth orchestras to some 250,000 youngsters and, in doing so, an alternative to crime and self-abuse. Dudamel himself has said in this regard: "The music saved me. I'm sure of this." El Sistema also offers a conduit for the most talented young musicians to find their way up through competitive regional ensembles to the apex Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. How good is the Simon Bolivar? When the orchestra appeared in New York this past autumn under Gustavo Dudamel's baton, the New York Times reviewer rhapsodized about the young musicians' "sweeping, urgent, often brilliant playing"; and he glowingly described the el Sistema program for Times readers. With the imprimatur of figures like Berlin Philharmonic conductor Simon Rattle, who has called el Sistema "the most important thing happening in classical music in the world today", similar programs have been set up in 22 Latin American and other Western Hemisphere states, Scotland, and most notably the U.S., where in Los Angeles Dudamel will play a leading role in the Philharmonic's new Youth Orchestra LA, a public-private initiative "devoted to providing quality instrumental music education for children with the greatest needs, fewest resources and little or no access to instrumental music education." For Venezuela's strongman Hugo Chavez, el Sistema represents a critical exception to the lackluster performance at home and abroad of his so-called "Bolivarian revolution", and it is unsurprising that he gives the program far more financial support than did his predecessors. Unlike petrodollar-driven foreign aid programs like free eye operations in…... FULL TEXT
 
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