Singer/songwriter Gina Chavez has witnessed firsthand the ways music can build bridges.
In 2017, the Austin-based artist was getting ready to perform on a stage more than seven thousand miles away in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Not long before, she hardly could've pointed to Uzbekistan on a map. Now, she was standing in historic Registan Square, framed by three centuries-old madrasahs (Isalmic schools), getting ready to sing "Nazar, Nazar" — a song in Uzbek. From the opening note, she watched the crowd come alive.
"All of a sudden, these older women in the audience stand up and they're just dancing like crazy," she recalled, during a SXSW 2024 panel discussion titled The People's Playlist.
Overnight, Chavez and her band became an Uzbek sensation. People were stopping them on the street, showing them videos of their set, and following their bus. Thanks to that one performance, Chavez now found herself connected to a place she'd been completely unfamiliar with a year before.
Chavez's story is just one example of the way music can be a tool for diplomacy — the theme of the South By Southwest panel The People's Playlist. The panel featured Chavez, Liz Allen, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and was moderated by Recording Academy Chief Awards & Industry Officer Ruby Marchand.
"The goal in building relationships around the world is to understand each other better," said Allen. "When we can understand each other better, we're able to have conversations that lead to better outcomes — whether they be policy outcomes, humanitarian outcomes, or economic outcomes."
Chavez is certainly proof of the power of global relationship building. She has visited 14 countries as a cultural ambassador through her work with American Voices and American Music Abroad — a program sponsored by the U.S. State Department to promote cultural collaboration. Last fall, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced that the Department would be expanding those efforts by partnering with the Recording Academy to launch the Global Diplomacy Initiative — a wide-ranging effort to promote peace and diplomacy through music.
The initiative was born out of the bipartisan Promoting Peace, Education, And Cultural Exchange (PEACE) Through Music Diplomacy Act, signed into law in 2022. PEACE includes global exchange opportunities like the American Music Mentorship Program, which will welcome its first cohort this fall. These partnerships aim to create a thriving music ecosystem across the world, elevating creatives, fostering their talents, and creating more opportunities for them to succeed.
"This is a major step forward in terms of the Recording Academy and the State Dept. working together," said Marchand. "It's an opportunity to come up with programs for not only music creators, but music professionals all over the world."
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Music has long been used as a tool for diplomacy. As the Under Secretary reminded the audience, the U.S. began sending jazz musicians around the world as cultural ambassadors during the Cold War. Legendary acts like Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington were just a few of the musicians who became the sort of "godfathers" of the cultural exchange programs the State Department has continued to sponsor today, all building on the belief that music is a universal language.
"When we are seeing division and conflict, music becomes really important to express what people are feeling, often in a way that's not as overt, or, frankly, as risky," said Allen. "In some societies, people can be punished for speaking their truth. Music is a way for those views to be incorporated into conversations about solutions."
As an ambassador, Chavez doesn't see her role as a way of confronting differences, but finding a path forward to connection. As a proud queer artist, her role has sparked several unique opportunities to visit countries like Saudi Arabia, where, at the time, it was illegal for her and her band to perform in public (they instead performed for a crowd in the U.S. Embassy). During her trip to Uzbekistan, Chavez also knew that the country had strict laws criminalizing the LGBTQ+ community. At the time, she didn't make any waves, but a few years later, a friend at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent asked if she would be interested in sending a video for Pride Month.
She sang "Nazar, Nazar" again, capping off the recording by waving the pride flag.
"We essentially broke the internet in Uzbekistan," said Chavez. "And the coolest part about that was the messages that I received privately from people saying, 'Thank you so much for saying that,' or 'My mom just came out to me and I love her, but I don't know what to tell her."
That impact was only possible, she said, because of the time she'd been able to spend in Uzbekistan years earlier, making connections with people and performing their music, in their language.
"We're really proud of what these programs do," said Allen. "We really do care about reaching young people around the world, who otherwise don't have a home to feel seen. We're not looking to export the way Americans make music, we're looking to plant seeds all over the world."
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