American Cultural Influence-- Music!

Elvis, Madonna & Michael Jackson have been super influential worldwide

Towards the end of my senior year in college I was in a race with the Suffolk County police— I wanted to graduate and get the hell out of there and they wanted to arrest me and put me in prison. They were getting very aggressive and I took off early and went to Europe. (I recently went through an old box of papers my mother had saved and found a diploma, the first time I was certain that I actually graduated.) Anyway, I spent around 6 years in Europe and Asia, most of it in Amsterdam working in a meditation center.

I had been a dj on WUSB, my college station and had presided over a free concert series that included virtually every great ‘60s artist other than the Stones and Beatles— including The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, The Who, The Dead, Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, the Blue Oyster Cult, Miles Davis, The Temptations, Joni Mitchell, Tim Buckley, The Byrds, Pink Floyd, Jackson Browne, the Four Tops… and dozens more. When I came back to the U.S. I worked as a dj in San Francisco and San Jose and as a music journalist and co-founded an indie label before getting a job as general manager of Sire Records which eventually led to me becoming president of Reprise Records. So… I’ve been involved with music. But I want to tell one very specific story today.

A few years ago I visited Russia with two friends. They both had to get back to work and left me in St. Petersburg and I decided to take the opportunity to visit the Grand Chorale Synagogue, which my teenaged grandfather went to on his last night in Russia before emigrating to the U.S. On the way there, the bus was diverted off the main street and I was afraid I would get lost. The bus attendant couldn’t speak any English but she found someone who could— a drop-dead gorgeous guy on his way to soccer practice. He offered to show me where I had to go. We got to know each other a bit and he was happy to practice his English while I stared into his eyes. Eventually he said he’d come see me that night and went to soccer practice and I communed with my grandfather’s spirit in the synagogue. I never expected to see Igor— I think that’s his name— again and went to sleep when I got back to the hotel.

The phone woke me and I figured it was Roland or David telling me they had gotten back to the U.S. But it wasn’t. It was the front desk telling me I had a visitor. Igor knew English because:

• His family had a vacation house in Cyprus

• He learned some in high school

• He listens to rap music

• He wants to live in Miami

But mostly because he listens to rap music. And he hates America. I mean he really hated America. Completely brainwashed. I’m not sure if he knew Miami is part of America or that he was getting bonked by an American—no he did know that— but I do know, because I asked him, that he did not associate rap music with America. Not even a little and not in any way.

Almost no one at Warner Bros really liked traveling much and mostly they saw profits from our foreign subsidiaries as “extra.” Even after we were making more money selling our music abroad, most of the company’s upper management looked at it as windfall profits. Wrong way to look at it. I spent an enormous amount of time working with our subsidiaries on marketing and development for our artists, not just in England and Japan, but in less cultivated markets, from France, Sweden, Italy, Germany to Spain, Egypt, India, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Bill Clinton once asked me to introduce him to Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks. A few years later he wanted me to bring Lou Rawls to play at a state dinner. I figured out that he didn’t really mean Lou Rawls; his guest was Václav Havel, president of Czechoslovakia, and Clinton heard him requesting Lou Rawls; I knew that Havel, who named his movement the Velvet Revolution after the Velvet Underground, meant Lou Reed. I brought that Lou to the banquet and Clinton played sax on one song. Clinton was flexible.

I have a feeling the Biden administration is… less so. More… rigid? Sclerotic? Everyone knows that American music is one of the most popular and influential ways to promote American values and lifestyles (and products). Our music is incredibly diverse— a wide range of genres, from jazz, blues, and rock to country, hip hop and pop. Even in countries with their own well-established musical traditions, American music has had a significant impact on the sound of existing genres. For example, American rock and roll had a major influence on the development of British rock in the 1960s, and American hip hop has had a similar impact on hip hop scenes all over the world. Almost everyone sings with an American accent-- even a UK superstar like Adele (who has a heavy British accent when she speaks). I spent time in Mali, the birthplace of what turned into the blues and everyone was as excited about American music as they were about Ali Farka Touré, Bassekou Kouyaté, Toumani Diabaté, Oumou Sangaré and Salif Keita. That’s me visiting Bassekou at Studio Bogolan in Ségou

Click on the photo to hear a song Bassekou was recording when I was there

And, obviously American musicians have long been admired and respected by musicians all over the world, and many musicians have been inspired by American music to create their own music— from the Beatles to the K-Pop groups. American jazz and rock have profoundly impacted music all over the world. And the hip hop that originated in Brooklyn in the 1970s, has since become one of the most popular genres of music in the world. Hip hop musicians from all over the world— from Stormzy, Skepta and Little Simz in the U.K., Cro, Haftbefehl, Marteria and Samy Deluxe in Germany, Psy, Epik High and the original BTS in Korea, Emicida, Projota and Rashid in Brazil to Davido, Wizkid and Burna Boy in Nigeria, Divine, Raftaar, Naezy and Emiway Bantai in India, Booba and Ninho in France, Iggy Azalea and Hilltop Hoods in Australia and all the way back to music Igor mugshot be listening to in Russia (Oxxxymiron, Basta and Noize MC)— have been inspired by American hip hop musicians. So, yeah hip hop is having a major impact on the development of popular music in… everywhere (ElGrandeToto in Morocco, Rich Brian in Indonesia and Tamer Nafar and Nechi Nech in Israel).

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken (age 61) launched a global music diplomacy initiative. It’s “a worldwide effort to elevate music as a diplomatic tool to promote peace and democracy and support the United States’ broader foreign policy goals. The Initiative aims to leverage public-private partnerships to create a music ecosystem that expands economic equity and the creative economy, ensures societal opportunity and inclusion, and increases access to education. It will build on current public diplomacy music programs to create public-private partnerships with American companies and non-profits to use music to meet the moment, convey American leadership globally, and create connections with people worldwide. With senior Biden-Harris Administration officials, a bipartisan cohort of Members of Congress, music industry icons, leaders from the arts and humanities, and alumni from the Department’s music diplomacy exchanges the Secretary announced the American Music Mentorship Program, the Fulbright-Kennedy Center Visiting Scholar Award in Arts and Science, and efforts to bring American music and lyrics into classrooms across the world as part of the United States’ investment in English-language learning worldwide. In addition, the Secretary and Recording Academy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Harvey Mason, jr. awarded Quincy Jones the first-ever Peace through Music Award, a collaboration between the Department and the Recording Academy, which recognizes and honors an American music industry professional, artist, or group that has played an invaluable role in cross-cultural exchanges and whose music work advances peace and mutual understanding globally.”

I’d enlist Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, John Legend, Lil Nas X and Olivia Rodrigo. I love Quincy Jones and respect his work; he’s 90. The State Department is sending Herbie Hancock (83) and Dee Dee Bridgewater (73) to Jordan and Saudi Arabia next month. These are people who would appeal to me. I’m in my ‘70s. Are they really going to accomplish the goals of the program?

Also next month they’re sending Birckhead, The Beatbox House, The Invisibles, Marielle Kraft, Matthew Whitaker, Pipeline Vocal Project, Raining Jane, Sihasin, Sub-Radio, and Tap Music Project to 30 countries. Very cool; I hope everyone has a great time. Beatbox House is good. Sub-Radio too. But I have a feeling none of them would win Igor over to the American side. OK, so maybe Beyoncé and Billie Eilish weren’t available. What about Jack Harlow? Something tells me there was more than a bit of identity synthesis that went into fleshing out this program— maybe more of that than actually achieving any of stated the goals. But what do I know?