Every year, the State Department and nonprofit groups help send musical troupes, dance groups and teachers abroad to promote American culture and generate goodwill. It’s all part of cultural diplomacy, an idea that got its start with the “jazz ambassadors” at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s.

I got into the public diplomacy game as a local hire as a Foreign Service National (FSN) working for the Israeli Foreign Ministry as a Press Officer for the Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest. As such, I have a deep appreciation for others who work as FSN for various foreign ministries and the U.S. Department of State.

For two weeks, American Voices offered performing arts lessons to 300 Iraqis from across the country. Classes were taught in the areas of jazz, piano, classical symphony, theater and hip hop & breakdance. I was essentially the Assistant Director of the YES Academy, and a veritable public diplomacy camp counselor. We also held smaller mini-YES Academies for close to a week in both Baghdad and Kirkuk -- the latter of which I ran as well.

Mr. Ferguson is the founder of American Voices, a US nonprofit whose mission is to spread goodwill across developing nations by helping aspiring young musicians indulge in their passion for the all-American art forms of jazz, Broadway musicals, and break dancing, as well as classical music. Over the past two decades he has worked in some 120 countries from Nigeria to Myanmar (Burma).

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.

Somewhere etched in memories and images of Louis Armstrong being royally greeted by throngs in Cairo and blowing his trumpet to the ear of the sandy sphinx, or of Duke Ellington's regal jazz ambassadorship as he stared down at sitars, American cultural diplomacy found its groove.

It is not that often that the Western Wall is the focus of attention for celebrity magazines. But it was recently when actor David Arquette was in Israel and, upon visiting the Wall, decided to have the barmitzvah that he never had as a youngster, and to have it there.
While the barmitzvah was spontaneous, the growth in celebrity visits to Israel is not.