NY Phil. in North Korea

The New York Philharmonic is in Pyongyang, North Korea right now, to play a concert, apparently at the invitation of the North Korean dictatorship. What could they possibly hope to accomplish by this? Evidently, the project was hatched last year, when there was a “thaw” between the US and North Korea. A handful of multi-party talks chaperoned by supposedly non-aligned governments at least one of which (China) is friendly to North Korea and is widely believed to be the only reason the Kim Jong Il dictatorship hasn't collapsed yet, taking half of Asia down with it, qualifies as a thaw? A little flexible with our definitions are we? But never mind that.

Cultural ambassadorship has a long history, some of it distinguished, or at least innocent. Exposing a foreign society, particularly a non-Western one, to Western artistic achievements is considered to be the most direct, and the least political, method of appealing directly to the general population of the target country. Classical music seems to fit the bill especially well – it is supposed to be the art form that captures humanity's highest hopes and ideals, and it does not depend on written or spoken language to deliver its message. In practice, however, these same qualities are the art form's greatest liabilities, and in the case of North Korea at least, the project will backfire.

There is a reason why Kim invited a symphony orchestra – classical music is an art form that most people in any society don't understand. It is safe, precisely because it does not depend on conventional language while wearing very convincingly the cloak of great culture. If there is anything a Stalinist dictatorship knows how to do, it is how to create an illusion of benevolence without actually granting its people anything meaningful, and the NY Phil. and its music director Lorin Maazel have played into Kim's hands by agreeing to go.

“It would have been a great mistake not to accept this invitation,” Maazel was quoted as saying. And why is that, may I ask? You can't seriously believe, Maestro, that you are actually contributing to the well-being of an average North Korean in any meaningful way, do you? I am willing to bet significant amounts of money that every single attendee at your supposedly historic concert is going to be a carefully screened party apparatchik. Yeah, they're going to show it on state television. Big deal – how much can you really communicate to a group of half-starved North Koreans, indoctrinated to automaton level, gathered around a grainy black and white set in someone's communal kitchen? It makes no difference that you're playing Gershwin's “An American in Paris.” Actually, it does make a difference – a negative one. A rousing Beethoven symphony at least has a chance of coming across on a purely emotional level – its essence of human struggle and drama is universal and timeless. Gershwin, on the other hand, will be completely lost on your North Korean audience. Heck, it's lost on most Americans.

In the meantime, you, and your entire orchestra are made to surrender your cell phones and “publishing of all kinds” at the airport. Is this the kind of government for which you want to show respect? For that is precisely what you're doing. Accepting any invitation is a show of mutual respect by both parties. Someone invites you to dinner at their house. They do this because they like you and want to do something nice for you. You accept for the same reasons. That is a show of respect. Or they do it because they want to get something out of you for their own benefit. In that case, you do not accept, unless you're too naïve or too full of yourself to recognize it. Guess which category Kim falls into, making you fall into the coresponding one? Thankfully, a Western artist cannot be compelled to do something he does not wish to do. So the responsibility for legitimizing, however apolitically, the North Korean regime, falls squarely on your shoulders, Maestro Maazel.

What do I expect you to have done instead, you ask? I expect you to have stood up and declined the invitation outright, saying that your moral standards do not allow you to accept an invitation from a government that is directly responsible for starving two million of its citizens to death.

What is equally worrisome is that apparently not a single orchestra member declined to go, citing North Korean human rights abuses as the basis for their decision. I attribute this to the tyrannical powers conductors sometimes have over their orchestras, and the musicians' pathological fear of losing their jobs. Still, this is very sad. Great artists, great conductors in particular, are known for allowing their outsize egos to disconnect them from reality. An average musician has no such excuse. Sheepishly surrendering your cell phone at customs, and allowing oneself to be bussed around for two days to performances of folk dances by girls with pasted-on plastic smiles, by a government that would not hesitate to lob a nuclear missile at Japan just because it has nothing to lose, is cowardice at best, moral decrepitude at worst.

P.S.: Evidently, even after the US-North Korea talks collapsed, Maazel was told by the Bush administration he could proceed with the visit. I suppose it is possible that he wanted to cancel, but for mysterious reasons of its own, the administration, ahem, encoraged him not to. But I am not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe that seriously. Politicians are even worse than great conductors when it comes to disconnecting themselves from reality.