{"id":6436,"date":"2017-03-22T14:51:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T14:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=6436"},"modified":"2017-03-22T14:51:38","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T14:51:38","slug":"of-travel-bans-and-global-bands-required-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/22\/of-travel-bans-and-global-bands-required-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Travel Bans And Global Bands: Required Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kinan<\/a>
Kinan Azmeh<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nSteve Dollar<\/strong>, a colleague of mine in the Wall Street Journal’s pages and one of the strongest writers I had the pleasure of directing during my editing days, has written an important piece for NewMusicBox.
\n“World Music in the Era of Travel Bans<\/a>” considers the Trump administration’s pending travel bans, and its subtext of nationalism and xenophobia as applied to U.S. policy, in the context of both that outdated (was it ever useful?) term “world music” and the global reality of artistic endeavor and presentation.
\nIt’s a must-read piece.
\nAs Dollar writes of Trump’s executive order and its implications:<\/p>\n

…The situation is an active threat to the ability of global music artists to tour the United States\u2014 something that is often already complicated\u2014and arrives, paradoxically, at a time when audiences are more easily immersed in international sounds than ever before. It seems like an opportune moment to consider the meaning and relevance of what has been called \u201cworld music,\u201d as a global refugee crisis and a rise in nationalistic fervor in Europe, Russia, and the United States newly threatens open cultural exchange.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the article, Steve MacQueen, artistic director of the Flynn Center for Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont, gives an articulate account of one dimension of fallout from Trump’s policies (which, for me, recall the chill created by Bush administration policies after 9\/11, but yet without clear cause and cloaked in far more dangeous rhetoric):<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to hurt Americans more than it hurts other cultures,\u201d he says. MacQueen believes the ban will even discourage artists who aren\u2019t targeted. \u201cLet\u2019s say you\u2019re Algerian. You\u2019ll do Europe now. Go to China. There\u2019s lots of other frontiers. It kills me to see us abdicate our position. Since World War II, the place everybody wants to play is the U.S. It\u2019s the birthplace of all this stuff. It\u2019s where Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley were born. But now that seems like it\u2019s over to me. This kind of stuff marginalizes us to the rest of the world. Why go someplace where you\u2019re not welcome? Why go someplace where you\u2019re going to get hassled? You don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a quote from\u00a0Syrian-born clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, a longtime New York City resident, green card holder and member of Yo-Yo Ma\u2019s polyglot Silk Road Ensemble, hits hard, too:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you can burden the actual art-making with lots of political slogans,\u201d Azmeh says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I want to play with XYZ person because I want to cross barriers. I think, \u2018There is another person, who can play beautifully, and I\u2019d like to play with that person.\u2019 Of course, it takes a more important role when the surrounding context suggests the opposite. It\u2019s interesting that sometimes we have to repeat phrases that should be the standard practice. This is when you have to make your message a bit louder, and hope that it\u2019s contagious.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Dollar, a colleague of mine in the Wall Street Journal’s pages and one of the strongest writers I had the pleasure of directing during my editing days, has written an important piece for NewMusicBox. “World Music in the Era of Travel Bans” considers the Trump administration’s pending travel bans, and its subtext of nationalism … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Of Travel Bans And Global Bands: Required Reading”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[472,473,474,475],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6436"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}