This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Abroad from the KU Center for East Asian Studies.

Confucius said, “When music and courtesy are better understood and appreciated, there will be no war.” Confucius was a Chinese philosopher in the sixth century BCE. Lorin Maazel was a Jewish orchestra conductor in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. And yet they both understood the power of music. Maazel drew loud criticism when, as musical director of the New York Philharmonic, he decided to take them to Pyeongyang in 2008 to play selections by Wagner, and Gershwin, and end the program with the beloved Korean song Arirang. Many objected on the grounds that it was just plain wrong to perform for the axis of evil though, as it happens, Kim Jong-il did not attend. “We are,” Maazel told his critics, “bringing peoples and their cultures together on common ground where the roots of peaceful interchange can imperceptibly but irrevocably take hold.” How very Confucian of him.

From the KU Center for East Asian Studies, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.