america days

A few weeks ago everyone in my office was invited to a concert at JKK (Jawaharlal Nehru Center for the Arts), dubbed "America Days: Jaipur". The concert, we were promised, would provide "Authentic music from the American South." Put on by the American Culture office of the U.S. Consulate to India, the invitations were nothing if not strange, arriving as they did in the mail with no warning. No one in the office had even heard of the Culture office, much less that they were traveling across India putting on concerts.

The concert was this past Wednesday night. Because of the Monsoon, it was held in one of the auditoriums instead of JKK's beautiful central courtyard. This auditorium had plush reclining seats, as if to auto-suggest that the material comfort of the auditorium would correspond with the music. We arrived after the show had already started. The seats were full of well to-do Indians and American ex-pats. Perfect audience for a few old-fashioned and inoffensive country tunes, right?

Wrong. Against a backdrop of a giant blue poster depicting a kind of photoshop-merger of an Indian temple motif with a bunch of American stars, "Nashville Freight and the Freightliners" played four-chord renditions of such songs as "Tennessee Mountain Angel" ('Met this girl at a bar while I was drinking') and "I'll go to my church and you'll go to yours";  the entrance to the auditorium became a revolving door of offended Indians as the band played on heedlessly into the wet evening. The lead even performed "the first song I wrote after September 11th" (over-anunciated 'e's in 'September' included).

The band itself had only two Americans: the drummer and bassist were Indian, and backup vocals (if they can be called that) were performed by a girl from Hong Kong. Are we outsourcing music as well?

Interestingly, most of the young Indians present stayed through the entire 2-hour show. A few unconnected thoughts:

It's tempting to think of this as cultural imperialism, but it's a far cry from Louis Armstrong's visit to Egypt after World War II. For one, Louis Armstrong was musically talented. But more importantly, America had something to prove then. As the world decided between Anglo-American capitalism and Soviet authoritarian kleptocracy, Armstrong had a significant contribution to make to the cultural debate that was also raging. Today, such American government-sponsored performances come across as contrived. American popular culture already dominates the airwaves; why not let the market function, and give the Indians what they want: American performers like Akon and Justin Bieber. (Although I faintly recall Bieber being Canadian. Whatever.)

But even if we discount the performance as an attempted act of cultural self-assertion, there is something to be said for the event itself: no one can dispute that on September 15th, 2010, several hundred people used up two hours of their day in order to listen to music (albeit poor) from America.

"I come from the American South, and this is a song from my home in Louisiana. The South is like Rajasthan," the lead said. "Louisiana is like Udaipur." Everyone laughed, although I'm not sure why.

American culture pioneered the proliferation of recorded media. It is an irony that the two largest markets, India and China, will use pirated versions of the technology to return music to its origins: that is, something local, free, and ultimately supported by patronage.