By PHK
hippity, hop, hop . . . hop
I was intrigued by both Moises Velasquez-Manoff’s September 6, 2007 article in the Christian Science Monitor “US sends a jazzy message overseas: jazz artists are the latest to act as ambassadors of American culture” and Barnett Rubin’s follow-up observation in Informed Comment Global Affairs on September 10 that as much as he likes jazz, a few American jazz musicians sent on cultural goodwill missions on the behest of the U.S. government won’t make W’s unpopular policies any more palatable in Central Asia – or elsewhere. The latest annual strategic study on US power and prestige in the world by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) reported in the Financial Times on September 13 would certainly concur with Rubin's assessment.
Nevertheless, it’s comforting to know that the Christian Science Monitor is concerned enough about America’s failing and flailing image in the world to assign a reporter to write about one of the ways the US State Department is trying to address it. Unfortunately, the CSM story is mostly a feel-good, scratch-the-surface report that includes several factual errors that could have been avoided by fact checking. Regardless, it still serves to raise questions and, hopefully, stimulate debate.
Correcting the CSM record
I realize it must be difficult for a reporter confined to 850 words or less who apparently does not understand the arcane workings of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs or the difference between the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE) to pick up on certain nuances. But it would be nice if he had done just a little more research before filing.
The reporter’s impression that Karen Hughes was the third public diplomacy czarina during W’s tenure is correct, but he got the name of the second one wrong: Margaret Tutwiler preceded Hughes, held the title and occupied the position from December 2003-June 2004, not Patricia Harrison as the CSM story indicated. Harrison filled in as Acting Czarina on various occasions but was never Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy.
And for a little now "ancient" history, USIA’s Voice of America was the flagship radio station that broadcast American jazz to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, not the Central Intelligence Agency’s Radio Free Europe (RFE). RFE had a different mandate - essentially telling the Soviet Union's real story to the Soviets - and was run, much of the time, by a very different agency with a very different mission and modus operandi. The late Willis Conover, the venerable originator and host of VOA’s jazz program, was unknown in the US, but a veritable hero among generations of Soviets. In fact, a public concert to commemorate Conover’s contributions entitled “A Celebration to VOA Jazz and Willis Conover” will be held on Monday evening, September 17, 2007 at VOA’s Cohen Auditorium in Washington, DC. For more information call VOA at 202-203-4962 or by e-mail at [email protected] Seating is limited so contact VOA before showing up.
Moving right along
I was, nevertheless, heartened to discover via State’s webpage and Google that, in reality, the tours of several of today’s most-favored State Department jazz quartets under its outsourced pop-music-to-the-Muslim-world-initiative did not just target “underserved groups – primarily Muslim audiences around the world.” This despite that characterization of 'Rhythm Road' by Alina Romanowski, deputy assistant secretary for professional and cultural affairs as reported in the CSM article. (My how that position’s title has inflated since I left USIA in 1998). At least I’ve never thought of Greece, Vietnam, South Korea, South Africa, Russia, Venezuela, Estonia, China or Mongolia, for instance, as primarily Muslim - "served" or "underserved" whatever that's supposed to mean.
"Rhythm Road’s” contours
The State Department project featured in Velasquez-Manoff’s article is called “Rhythm Road: America’s Music Abroad.” If you do some Googling as I did you’ll learn several things about many of the some 16 or so popular music quartets the US has sent and may be sending abroad under State Department auspices. Several musicians have their own websites that feature snippets of their music. Clips of a couple of the groups’ previous overseas performances can be found on You Tube. The quality of the quartets and the video/audio varies but my favorites are “The Charlie Porter Quartet” and “Opus Akoben” although I also really liked the Duende Quartet’s performance clip on My Space. It’s hard to figure out from the various State Department webpages, however, who’s traveled, who’s traveling now and who is expected to travel because the information is presented in such a fragmented fashion.
And don’t expect to find the Rhythm Road project readily by Googling http://www.state.gov. Rhythm Road is at least seven – largely non-obvious – clicks away. A hint: click on the tab "Youth & Education" to begin. Quicker, however, to use an external search engine than try to navigate the State Department's rabbit warren of a website.
Alternatively, it’s possible to begin a search for Rhythm Road with the State webpage that introduces Hughes’ Global Cultural Initiative (GCI) under which Rhythm Road is a part. The GCI frontispiece features a group photo that includes an unusually flattering picture of Karen Hughes, who looks better without a burqa, and a less than attractive one of Laura Bush sporting a simpy smile which could use touch up or an airbrush. The not particularly memorable text features laudatory tributes to the Texas twins’ made-for-the-media 2006 GCI plus barebones information about it. These webpages, however, omit far more than they reveal. What’s missing? Perhaps most importantly the budget and really good descriptive overviews.
Furthermore, for some inexplicable reason, there seems to be a disconnect between the quartets included in the press kit webpage (this page does include links to the groups’ own webpages) and those listed on the Global Cultural Initiative webpage of groups on tour right now or scheduled for tours in the future. Only two (Alvin Atkinson and the Sound Merchants and AFAR) appear to be on both. This may simply be a webpage design problem. Regardless, it beats me.
Anyway, according to the CSM article Rhythm Road costs $1 million annually. This comes out of the State Department budget for education and cultural exchanges that totaled $465.6 million for fiscal year 2007. If my math is correct, it means only .0086 percent of the entire State Department educational and cultural exchanges budget was devoted to support for U.S. international cultural programs. This includes Rhythm Road's $1 million. That's not very much.
Meanwhile, Rhythm Road turns out to be yet another project outsourced to the private sector even though even more complex and larger projects were competently run by a small number of career civil servants throughout the Cold War. The few civil servants still handling cultural programs now oversee the grants to private sector organizations that run the programs they or their predecessors once administered themselves.
The grant for Rhythm Road, for instance, went to Wynton Marsalis’ “Jazz at Lincoln Center,” yet there is no indication how much of the $1 million goes to Jazz at Lincoln Center for administrative costs or whether the grant for administration of this project was ever competed.
The September 25, 2006 State Department press release that announced this new global cultural program initiative stated that funding for US cultural programs abroad has more than tripled since 2001. If the American Arts Alliance’s figures can be believed, however, the increase to $4 million for fiscal year 2007 for all State Department cultural programs from the nadir of $2 million in 2001 is more like double. Would somebody please get their figures right?
What is unsettling to the American Arts Alliance, an arts organization lobbying group, is the lack of certainty that funds will be devoted to culture in the future - so even the $4 million could be a one time thing. This is because of the way the State Department budget is put together for educational and cultural programs. The consolation is that the money from which cultural programs funds come is fire walled by Congress so at least the State Department can’t divert the money to build say, another swimming pool in the Green Zone or erect an outer-outer ring of concrete barriers surrounding Main State.
Meanwhile other significant parts of Global Cultural Initiative funds are devoted to transporting films from the American Film Institute (AFI) for showing at a few international film festivals, sending four young American film makers to South Africa on a project called 20/20 as well as 81 black and white photos of New York buildings that seems to be circulating the globe.
What’s missing from this picture?
I hate to keep harking back to the “good old days” because it makes me feel ancient but much is missing from this picture.
Here’s the problem: films entered in a few film festivals, art exhibits at a couple of Biennales, 81 photos of New York buildings and a narrow focus on mostly Latin jazz or hip-hop bands are better than nothing but do not a classy or robust cultural program make. As one consequence, they do not even begin to touch on the vast regional differences in this diverse and creative country. What ever happened, for example, to the West Coast, the Rocky Mountain States, Alaska, Hawaii, or even much of the Middle West?
What about women? Few of the quartets sent on tour include even one female performer – but then as The Village Voice pointed out – neither does the 15 member Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Or what about duos, trios, quintets or septets: What makes jazz and hip-hop an almost exclusively young man’s game and four performers the magic number?
The Arts Alliance, a lobbying group for arts funding that has been instrumental in resuscitating the National Endowment for the Arts, calls for a $10 million State Department cultural programs earmark for Fiscal Year 2008. I applaud their efforts and hope they also lobby for far more diversity in all sorts of ways.
When the US government had a full service international performing and visual arts program under the auspices of an office in the U.S. Information Agency called Arts America, it did not so single-mindedly concentrate most of its resources on promoting one form of music supposedly aimed at one narrow slice of the population – in this case Muslim “underserved” youth.
Sure, you can point to the fact that the Global Cultural Initiative is about to send Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Thailand for the Thai King’s 80th Birthday Celebration and Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance Company is slated to perform in Moscow. But these two presentations both scheduled for November – it seems to me - represent today's exception, not the norm.
Before the 1995 Republican Congress with isolationist Jesse Helms at the helm of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the US sent jazz, country and western, folk and other popular performing arts groups abroad but it also sent – or helped underwrite – the travel of major US modern dance groups, theater and ballet companies, symphony orchestras, new music ensembles and classical string quartets, as well as made available a treasure trove of wonderful American soloists, duos, trios and thespians of all ages throughout the year. And films? Of course: They were a staple.
With a small budget, access to a USIS cultural center auditorium or even a VCR or loan of a 16 mm projector for in home showings we found ways to show top US films – albeit often classics – to foreign friends and acquaintances in places where American films were virtually absent. Sure it’s great to have the latest Cannes winners – but not at the expense of almost everything else.
I also wonder about so much emphasis placed on a black and white photo exhibit of New York buildings. Isn’t that what was once-upon-a time called a jazzed-up paper show? If so, these were routine, low budget offerings for display in our once-upon-a-time cultural centers – or anywhere else we could get wall space. They were never at the top of my list, but others found them useful.
What did make incredible impressions were our block-buster exhibits that traveled throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This included several week stops in cities in Central Asia. I also remember smaller exhibits of original paintings, lithographs, prints and sculptures by stellar American artists that - with loving care and help, as needed, from a special restorer - making their way around the Middle East and South Asia.
I’m not going to touch on the tough political question which Rubin raised because that’s a different issue altogether.
I think, however, international educational exchanges and American cultural presentations abroad have intrinsic merit in and of themselves. Both help create long time personal ties and memorable experiences for everyone involved that transcend national borders as well as leap over the juvenile tantrums of a one-eyed uneducated mullah and a Texas greenhorn on the warpath.