Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Can "Boots and Beer" move hearts and minds?


http://www.publicdiplomacycouncil.org/


Can "Boots and Beer" move hearts and minds?

David Firestein recalled his talks about American county music to foreign audiences as a public diplomacy officer at our First Monday Forum July 6.  He played several country hits and handed out lyric sheets to demonstrate how the music conveys American values.  Skeptical?  Click the link to read some for yourself.
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Photo Credit - Tara Schoenborn
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1 comment:

Jim Bullock said...

Following this talk, which I attended, the Q&A got into the issue of whether the political connotations of country music should be considered when deploying it in service of US public diplomacy, i.e. should the music be associated with the views of those who listen to it? At least some foreign audiences are unaware of / unwilling to accept the full range of American diversity, and focusing too much on country music in our PD programming might just reinforce that misperception. If country music is the hymnal for rural white America - with recurring themes of "us vs them" (rural vs city / a certain kind of Christianity vs other belief systems / South vs North,/ and a generally conservative approach to social issues) - then perhaps it might be used to illustrate American diversity, but not held up as America's "real music." I remember bringing a Western Swing band inito Baghdad back in the mid 1980s - a big hit, but their songs were fun, not "political" (My Girl Alexis has a Heart as Big as Texas ... etc.), and young Iraqis loved to dance to it. There are many "Americas" today, and that has always been true. The majority of the American population today is not rural Protestant white people. I like country music myself. I have family from the South, and I am learning to play the banjo, but I remain leery of using country music - especially songs with overt political messages - too prominently in our public diplomacy programming. The political associations that go with at least some contemporary country music do not represent all of America, or even most of it. We had a lively exchange about this after Monday's talk, and this post is intended to broaden that discussion. Do you associate country music with "the culture wars" and emblems like the Confederate battle flag? How would you use country music in our overseas cultural programming?

July 8, 2015 at 11:14 AM

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