Music Diplomacy Quotes

My feeling is, music is a more eloquent international language than Coca-Cola or McDonalds.

The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.

I remember I was at a press conference where somebody came up to me with absolute confidence, like he knew me forever, and whispered in my ear, 'You should sing a song now. The Indian audience will enjoy it. Your songs will improve India and Pakistan's relations.' I clarified to him that I wasn't Ali Zafar.

Citizens of India, Pakistan, and Kashmir need to come together and make music.

We've had real strong aboriginal male artists who've crossed over to the mainstream who have toured the U.K., who have been a massive influence on myself and many, many communities around Australia.

When I tour I'm going to countries to play music for people. My presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that country's policies. My presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music.

I was one of the first American rock n' rollers in the '50s to go to many foreign countries. It's a wonderful thing to go out and spread joy and love rather than hate.

I had a vision of bringing two cultures together, and I have said this in the past: my goal is to bring Morocco and India together through music and art.

When we decided to go to Cuba to perform, we did it because we just wanted to build a bridge, you know, between Cuba and the rest of the community. And we just wanted to prove that music and art need to be over all ideology or way to think life, and we just wanted to go in there and play just because of love.

We got a chance to go and play in some places that the usual European tour by an American band didn't go to.

...music is sometimes the only benign avenue of communication between antagonists.

My idea to bridge the world together with music starting in Asia and going to the West is something that is new, untapped and leading to the future of bringing the worlds together.

Music is not supposed to be nationalist. It is supposed to surpass language barriers. It is about generations communicating with each other.

And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it's third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it's much more polite.

I do believe that the Chinese are becoming international leaders in showing the way forward for concert music.

The singer is always an ambassador of music.

I do think that music has a special ability to get behind enemy lines and win hearts and minds.

Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.

The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic was to take it to places where I could break down segregation.

It taught the English to speak Spanish and it taught the Spanish to speak English. If we had more songs such as that, it would solve the immigration problem in a hurry. But there can't be another 'Feliz Navidad.'

We can understand each other with music without words - and that's so important in these times when walls are built. In music, there are no walls.

The point of teaming up with American musicians was that there was no better way than that of music to let people from both the sides know what either of them thinks about the other.

We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that's going on between the East and West. We gotta understand that Hip Hop is now universal. Hip Hop is not East coast or West coast.

I was in the Rockin' Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain. A lot of photos were taken of us next to milk churns.