{"id":34,"date":"2008-02-27T21:29:34","date_gmt":"2008-02-27T13:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=34"},"modified":"2018-03-14T13:18:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T05:18:47","slug":"music-as-a-universal-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/02\/27\/music-as-a-universal-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Music as a universal language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OK, maybe not &#8211; Mathematics should be the only universal language. But it was still delightful to wake up to good news for a change. No, it wasn\u2019t that Bak kwa prices are dropping. Rather, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_York_Philharmonic\">New York Philharmonic<\/a> under Lorin Maazel just did a concert in Pyongyang in what seems to be a small step towards warming of ties between two countries which are still technically at war. To be honest, I don\u2019t have many albums of the NY players. A disproportionate number of my classical CDs are performances by the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Academy_of_St._Martin_in_the_Fields\">Academy-of-St.Martin-in-the-Fields<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wiener_Philharmoniker\">Wiener<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Berlin_Philharmoniker\">Berlin Philharmonikers<\/a>. But hey, any news where music is doing a number for world peace and harmony is music to my ears.<\/p>\n<p>The concert was largely attended by the party cadre and elite. But from reading the reports, the concert struck a chord in many of the North Koreans, some even moved to tears during the orchestra\u2019s performance of Arirang, a beloved folk song in Korea. Hooray for music! It was even reported today that famed rock guitarist, Eric Clapton, has just been invited to also perform in Pyongyang. Exactly how much appeal rock music has in the hermit country up North is anyone\u2019s guess, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inrich.com\/cva\/ric\/entertainment.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-02-27-0019.html\">one report\u2019s suggested<\/a> that Kim Yong Il\u2019s son is apparently an Eric Clapton fan.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, the least cheerful reports of the event came from the White House, who cautioned against reading too much into the event. Duh &#8211; what party poopers.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what <a href=\"http:\/\/weblogs.chicagotribune.com\/news\/politics\/blog\/2008\/02\/music_diplomacy_thaws_usn_kore.html\">Chicago Tribune\u2019s report<\/a> of the event, with the picture in this entry from the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, maybe not &#8211; Mathematics should be the only universal language. But it was still delightful to wake up to good news for a change. No, it wasn\u2019t that Bak kwa prices are dropping. Rather, the New York Philharmonic under<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2008\/02\/27\/music-as-a-universal-language\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  Music as a universal language<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-news-letters","wpcat-11-id","wpcat-12-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}