Last year, ASP hosted the all-female bluegrass band Della Mae, discussing their cultural diplomacy trip to Central Asia. This year, Della Mae’s The World Oft Can Be is up for a Grammy for best bluegrass album. Judging by what we heard, what we saw, and what we learned from Della Mae as they recounted their American Music Abroad tour of Central Asia, this is no surprise.

Overall, the members of Della Mae demonstrated that they are among the best cultural ambassadors the U.S. has to offer, not only because of their immeasurable talent, but because of their ability to build relationships on a one-to-one basis.

While recently on a cultural diplomacy adventure across Central Asia on an American Music Abroad tour—the State Department’s flagship musical exchange program that American Voices administers—with the bluegrass band Della Mae, I had the opportunity to encounter the public diplomacy space that are the State Department’s American Corners.

The members of the band Della Mae come from all over the United States: Vermont, South Carolina, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington State. And they are steeped in the Appalachian bluegrass tradition. You can’t get much more American than that. Perhaps that’s why the US State Department selected Della Mae to be America’s cultural ambassadors to Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The band calls it their “‘Stan Tour.”