Sunday, May 20, 2012

On the need to study the effect of international pop music tours on international affairs


The Deficiency of an International Studies Program
that Neglects the Potential of Music and Dance
to Influence International Relations

            I participated in an international studies program 30 years ago in graduate school.  A couple of years ago, I wrote the following letter in 2010 to the Dean in charge of that program expressing some recent thoughts.  Decided to post them here.  Haven’t checked the links to see if they still work.

Michael Jackson
            I first became interested in this topic while studying the life history of Michael Jackson, shortly after his death. 
            Michael Jackson rose to prominence at age 10, around the time when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.  He looked out in his audiences and saw black and white people holding hands and singing and dancing together.  This was the beginning of his interest in the response of people to his performances.
            When interviewed in his early twenties about what he saw in his audience, he remarked that he saw love and that even the politicians could not achieve what he saw out there.
            He went on to perform in 40 countries, receiving an overwhelming response everywhere he went.  The recent Boteach book[i] about him quoted him as saying that audiences all over the world were the same.  They lit lighters in the same places.  They cried in the same places.  They even fainted in the same places.
            He liked to turn the cameras on the audiences.  If you look at videos of him singing “Man in the Mirror” on his “Moonwalker” movie[ii] or his internationally broadcast concert in Bucharest[iii], the audience footage is incredible.  The audiences are of a size that is almost beyond imagination and the few that one can see in front are in a state of emotional frenzy, singing, dancing, crying, fainting.
            I was a science major.  I wonder, looking at these people, what science knows about the biological/medical effects of being in such crowds.  The pheromone levels must be astronomical, when adoring fans all look together at their preferred performer.[iv]  What are the long term effects?
            Michael Jackson imagined the potential of the audience reaction as a kind of chain reaction that might, under the right circumstances spread to the whole world.  In his song “Cry”[v] he encouraged the whole world to “cry” together, though the video for this song shows them singing and holding hands.  In the movie, “This is It,” there is a sequence where dancers doing a military dance called “Drill” are multiplied through CG magic until they reach the horizon[vi].
            In fact, there has been an impressive worldwide response to Jackson’s work. An estimated world wide audience of one billion people watched his memorial service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which ended with a moving rendition of his song “Heal the World.”  A prison in the Philippines uses his music and dances to rehabilitate prisoners.  A woman from Sri Lanka who I met on the Internet told me that his song “Heal the World” is in the official elementary school music textbooks there.  That’s penetration!

Instant international communication
            I was struck, during 2009, how panic spread instantly throughout the globe, both for the economic situation and for the swine flu.  Stock markets plunged simultaneously. Masks appeared on people’s faces in Hong Kong as they were appearing on people’s faces in Mexico City. 
            Music and dance spreads just as instantly as someone like Lady Gaga becomes an international sensation. 
Some of Michael Jackson’s fans have been trying to organize a world wide event where the entire world sings the same song at the same time – not so different from the “Hands Across America” event we had in the US 20 years ago – though they have been unsuccessful so far, yet it is conceivable that such an event might succeed. 


The Singing Revolution[vii]
            During the summer of 2009, this same period of time, I saw the Estonian documentary entitled “The Singing Revolution.”  This documentary described the non-violent revolution of the Estonian people against the USSR.  This movement was based around singing a patriotic song at a music festival.  Unlike Latvia and Lithuania, Estonia was able to negotiate peacefully with the USSR.  Their story was just as moving as the stories of Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the USA.
            The filmmakers, like Michael Jackson, noted the power that singing had to unite people, so that they could not be easily quieted by police action.
            One of my friends observed the same thing recently during Christmas festivities at Rockefeller Center.  When the crowd was singing “Silent Night” and the police tried to disband them before they were finished, they resisted and more and more people joined until the police gave up.
            “Silent Night” was also the carol that allegedly provoked the “Christmas Truce” an event during World War I, which you said you had heard of.

Kris Phillips
            Another performer I found on YouTube was this very intriguing half American half Taiwanese pop singer, who is the king of pop in China, while nevertheless apparently maintaining a residence here in New York and being virtually unknown in the US.[viii]  Phillips has an incredible ability to leap over the Great Firewall and bring culture into the Middle Kingdom.
            Phillips was born in Taiwan, but his post secondary education was in the USA.  His father was an American diplomat, while his mother was an entertainer in Taiwan.  After training to be a singer and dancer, he established a career as a pop singer in Southeast Asia. 
His mother’s mother was still in China.  He decided to go to China both because he and his mother wanted to see his grandmother and also because he wanted to Chinese audiences to experience western style pop music. 
He was given the opportunity to perform at on an important national television program in 1987[ix].  This broadcast was controversial both because the government of Taiwan wanted its citizens to boycott the mainland and also because the disco dance that Phillips performed in his second number was regarded by many in the mainland as decadent and capitalist.  Nevertheless, the performance was very successful and Phillips sold 10 million albums in one week afterwards. 
He has continued to perform and sell albums there, with a hiatus in the 1990’s.  From what I have read on the Internet, he remains the performer with the most albums sold in China, and is regarded as having been a significant friendship ambassador between Taiwan and China.
His continued efforts to bring culture over the great firewall have included introducing China to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s works[x] and performing a rendition of Michael Jackson’s song “We are the World” with a group of famous international pop singers – notably no other Americans – at the Shanghai World Expo[xi] only about a month after a group of American pop singers made a 25th anniversary performance to raise funds for Haiti.
I would love to see your school get this man to talk about his views of the potential for music and dance to transform international relations.

Charice Pempengco[xii]
            This Philippine performer was recognized three years ago by Oprah Winfrey as the world’s most talented girl.  Thereafter, at Oprah’s urging, she was given an international recording contract by David Foster.  Her recent successes, after having grown up in poverty and homeless in Manila and entering singing contests to earn money for food, has been cause for a major patriotic outpouring in her home country[xiii]  Apparently, US recognition for one of their singers is a major ego validation there.

International music tours & YouTube
            In fact, many popular musicians are our most-travelled citizens.  They voyage all over the world.  With the Internet, they are increasingly in direct contact with their fan base.  Their fans are passionately devoted to them.  Their music and their dancing defy boundaries, language and culture.  Their work is an international language that requires little interpretation.
            Some of these performers have incredible international experiences.  Many of them would also make interesting speakers, relating to what they might have observed in their travels. 
             
No international anthem of the United Nations
            The U.N. lacks an effective international anthem.  A friend of mine who used to work there told me that there was once a song, but its credibility was undermined by factionalism.  Doesn’t every functional nation have a national anthem?  How can one hope to have world unity in the absence of consensus on a song to sing together?  I find this deficit appalling – and yet its significance seems to be completely ignored by the diplomats who spend their time there, arguing.





[i] The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul in Intimate Conversation
[iii] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaDlfODoaEE an estimated 500 million people worldwide watched this concert
[iv] After all, when a bird sings in a forest, it is a mating call.  If a man sings in a crowded stadium, what happens?
[xi] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KecXl82ZdHY Includes “Vitas” a top Russian singer who also has made a specialty of vaulting the Great Firewall, “Rain” the top pop singer of Korea, and “Laura Fygi” a ½ Dutch, ½ Egyptian singer popular in Europe, two Chinese performers, but notably no other Americans other than Kris.  The news blackout in the US regarding the Shanghai World Expo has been rather disappointing.
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