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Amanpour
Best of 2013 So Far; Music From Around The World
Aired August 02, 2013 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, I'm Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to a special edition of our program, where we take a look at some of the stories and conversations that we've had this year, ones that we thought were worth sharing with you again and, of course, reporting any new developments.
Tonight, bitter enemies sharing music stands and the same orchestra pit. That was the idea of my next guest, Daniel Barenboim, the world famous Israeli classical pianist and conductor.
Fourteen years ago, along with his friend, the late Palestinian American scholar Edward Said, he founded a youth orchestra, together Arab, Israeli, Iranian, Turkish and all sorts of other musicians and break down political boundaries in harmony.
Barenboim himself was only 10 years old when he first stepped onto the world stage. And in the next 60 years, he grew to lead some of the greatest orchestras that ever were assembled, taking the world by storm.
Now at 70, he sees his legacy as letting the power of music help those who are divided by conflict, to hear and understand the other side. His new music academy will open in Berlin two years from now.
And getting to this point has generated a lot of controversy. Earlier this year, the maestro conducted his mixed youth orchestra at Carnegie Hall here in New York. And he stopped by our studio to tell me why he keeps pushing the boundaries of music and politics.
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AMANPOUR: Daniel Barenboim, welcome to the program.
DANEIL BARENBOIM, ISRAELI CLASSICAL PIANIST & CONDUCTOR: Thank you very much.
AMANPOUR: You've said that one of your aims is to see -- and I quote -- "whether music really is the universal language."
BARENBOIM: Right. Many of the musicians who are in the orchestra do not come from the musically cultured families of Berlin or Vienna. They come from Ramallah. They come from villages in Israel. They come from Syria. They come from all over, not from musical backgrounds. And the music speaks to them with such an intensity.
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AMANPOUR: Well, we're just showing some music right now. And I want to play you a little bit of an interview that one of your original musicians, a young Arab boy by the name of Karim, you were teaching him way back when. Let's look at this sequence.
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KARIM JORDAN, PALESTINIAN (voice-over): I was the youngest in '99. Still, as a 10-year old, I had -- I was pretty naive. Israelis to me were something that -- something that's not human even.
This is how I perceived it as a young boy and it's something that isn't to be dealt with, something that should be isolated because the only side we saw in Jordan is that of killing, of massacring even, of extreme brutality. That's the only thing I saw of Israelis.
And for me to actually meet people who have the same interests as me and lead relatively similar lives, it changed my view of what a human being is almost.
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AMANPOUR: Wow, that is really powerful. First of all, there you are, teaching this little boy --
BARENBOIM: Ten he was.
AMANPOUR: He was 10?
BARENBOIM: Ten he was.
AMANPOUR: And then look what he said about music. It changed his idea of what it meant to be a human being. That's huge.
BARENBOIM: Yes
AMANPOUR: Let me just rewind the tape a little bit to your start. I mean, you were a prodigy. You gave your first recital, your first solo piano recital when you were 8 years old.
BARENBOIM: I remember the fun I had playing. I loved playing. And I was 7.
And I played -- I loved playing. I loved the feeling of being on stage. Don't tell anybody, but I still do.
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AMANPOUR: I think so. You're known as somebody who brings this energy and this fun.
BARENBOIM: (Inaudible).
AMANPOUR: Well, it certainly set you up for this lifetime, frankly, of pushing the barriers. You also took a huge ensemble of internationally renowned musicians into Gaza not so long ago, a closed enclave as we all know.
What was the reaction then? Must have been quite emotional for people to see this international orchestra breaking the siege.
BARENBOIM: Oh, absolutely. It was -- it was -- it was very moving. It was very moving. You know, people don't know what Gaza is about. They think Gaza is just a hold for terrorists.
There are 12 universities in Gaza. I have met more young, intellectually active people than in almost any other city in the area. And there are a lot of very intelligent and very cultivated people.
And at the end of the concert, the Palestinian NGO thanked me profusely and I said, no, no, it is my honor, et cetera, et cetera.
He says, no. This is very important you came here. I said why was it so important for you that I came here?
And you know what he said to me?
He said, "We in Gaza, we feel the world has forgotten us. Some people remember us and they send food and medicines. But then you would do that for animals, too.
"But you came and played music, made us feel like human beings again."
That is the greatest compliment I have ever had in my whole life.
AMANPOUR: Will music bring peace to the Middle East?
BARENBOIM: Of course not. But one has to understand really how it operates. In other words, it's very simple for two musicians. Just imagine you are a Syrian cellist. And you come for the first time into the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and you sit with an Israeli on the same stand. For you, the Israeli has been only monster. That's all you have heard about Israel -- and vice versa.
And now you start at 10 o'clock in the morning, trying to play the same notes in exactly the same way with the same sound, with the same intensity, in the same volume, all exact. And to do it together -- after you've done that for six hours, you look at this monster a little bit different because you see that he also has some of the same preoccupations -- not political - - that you have.
We don't look for a political consensus in the orchestra, not at all. The consensus on Beethoven is more than enough for me.
AMANPOUR: So obviously I have to ask you about Wagner and what you did in Israel back in 2001. Now there was no official ban on Wagner, although he was Hitler's favorite composer. He was anti-Semitic. But people didn't play Wagner in Israel.
BARENBOIM: No, they played Wagner. They stopped playing Wagner on the 9th of November, 1938, with the Kristallnacht.
AMANPOUR: Well, there you go.
BARENBOIM: Very right decision for that moment.
But there is no -- not ever a decision is valid for eternity. It is totally out of context. That the musicians of the orchestra did not want to play Wagner on the 10th of November, 1938, after the Nazis burned books and Jewish books and synagogues, perfectly understandable, respect and everything.
But you cannot maintain something like this for half a century when it is not really relevant.
AMANPOUR: It was very sensitive in Israel, as you can imagine.
BARENBOIM: It was not, Christiane. It was not --
AMANPOUR: Then why did nobody play it?
BARENBOIM: Because they have politicized in Israel, there is a politicization of so many parts of the Jewish history, unfortunately, not just the Holocaust.
AMANPOUR: But then, after you played your concert in Jerusalem, you decided to do an encore of the prelude to "Tristan and Isolde."
BARENBOIM: I had a 45-minute conversation with the audience from the stage. And at the end, I said, look, it's very simple.
Why don't of you -- those of you who don't want to hear it, go and have a wait. And of 3,000 people, less than 100 left. Made a lot of noise outside.
AMANPOUR: And you played it.
BARENBOIM: And then we played it. And it was absolutely wonderful.
AMANPOUR: I'm struck by how many of the films about the Holocaust focus on music. I mean, if you look at "The Pianist."
BARENBOIM: Yes, yes.
AMANPOUR: I'm struck by something that somebody wrote in a review recently.
He said, "The history of this century is written in blood and tears through many a musical score."
What are your reflections on that?
BARENBOIM: Music is so powerful for a variety of -- for a variety of reasons. First of all, it obviously has something to do with the human soul, although it means different things to different people.
Music allows everyone to create his own associations as he listens to it. Music, one listens to actively. If you are in a melancholic mood, the piece will seem melancholic to you. You hear the same piece, the same performance at a moment when you are very up, and the music will be up.
And when you are faced with something, something so horrible and horrific as the Holocaust, the music that has to do with it gives it an even greater dimension, I think. I really do.
AMANPOUR: And now you're going to give this gift to all these people who are going to come to your academy in Berlin. What do you hope that the legacy of this academy will be?
BARENBOIM: Look, I want to create an academy which is totally independent of the political situation. And I believe very much -- I believe very strongly that the Israelis and the Palestinians can live either together or side by side, but not back to back. And for this, you have to create the structure for them.
AMANPOUR: Daniel Barenboim, thank you so much for joining me.
BARENBOIM: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And after we take a break, if music really can break down the walls of hate and mistrust, then no place on Earth needs it more than Afghanistan, where women and girls have long been the target of Taliban hatred.
In his last State of the Union address, President Obama announced an accelerated drawdown of U.S. forces there.
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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tonight, I can announce that over the next year another 34,000 American troops will come home from Afghanistan. This drawdown will continue and by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over.
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AMANPOUR: That might be popular amongst the American people. But as that date hastens, it leaves Afghan women and girls, like these two orphans who are aspiring musicians, wondering about their future.
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AMANPOUR: Music was banned by the Taliban, but it's been revived in the Afghan Youth Orchestra.
These two girls and their fellow musicians recently came to America on a mission of musical diplomacy. They even performed here in New York at Carnegie Hall.
How did they get there? We'll tell you when we come back.
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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Welcome back to the program. And here in the studio, we have something very special for you now.
Now for the world's would-be musicians, there's a famous maxim here in the United States, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? The answer: practice, practice, practice.
Well, for Afghanistan's only national orchestra, the road to this esteemed concert hall here in New York began in Kabul, where not so long ago playing music was illegal.
When I covered Afghanistan during the war years, under the Taliban, I saw them round up and destroy instruments and cassette tapes, string their entrails on branches as a warning. Public performances, of course, were banned.
That tune has been changing now since the fall of the Taliban more than 11 years ago. Thanks to the Afghan Ministry of Education, to a lot of money from the United States and its international partners and also to their maestro, Afghan musician Ahmad Sarmast, the student musicians here with me now performed at Carnegie Hall.
Sarmast was studying music in Russia. And when the Taliban came to power, he fled and sought asylum in Australia. He only returned back in 2006 to found this Afghan orchestra and the institute that trains 141 students now between the ages of 10 and 21. Incredibly, half of these students are orphans and street children; 41 of them are girls.
And last week on the first stop of this, their American debut tour, they performed with young American musicians at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. They performed Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" with a distinctly Afghan twist.
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AMANPOUR: Such a famous piece of music, performed by this youth orchestra. And in a moment, I'll speak with Ahmad Sarmast and his students.
But first, an Afghan folk song now, called "Lila John (ph)," performed here in our studio by Aziza Safi and Sapna Rahmati, who are 10 and 11 years old, on the piano; and Reshad Afzali, who's on the drums. And he's 18 years old.
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AMANPOUR: That is beautiful. Well done. Excellent.
Let me ask a couple of the musicians here.
Reshad, how have you enjoyed being in the United States? What's all this meant to you?
RESHAD AFZALI, DRUMMER: Well, for me, it was such a great and wonderful and benefitful (sic) experience to play with the other musicians, I mean, that we never played with them, and to play in two popular and famous places like Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall (inaudible) --
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AMANPOUR: Did you ever dream that you would be here?
AFZALI: Well, no, no, really, it's something like -- it was something amazing for me. I really enjoyed; I loved it.
AMANPOUR: Let me talk to Aziza and Sapna.
Do you like playing the piano?
AZIZA SAFI, PIANIST: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Yes? You're 10 and 11 years old; you've come from Kabul. And you're playing for people in New York and Washington, D.C., all these important people.
What is it like?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We feel great, because we're representing Afghanistan. And we want to show those who think Afghanistan doesn't allow girls to go to school or study music that we can.
AMANPOUR: How special is your school for you, your musical school?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): When I play music, I feel very good about it. Some people say playing music is bad. But it is very valuable to me.
AMANPOUR: Is it important, especially as a little girl, to be doing something this important?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Yes. It is very important, because this is the first time we have been here and performed in a concert hall like Carnegie Hall.
AMANPOUR: Excellent.
I remember how bad it was for people who wanted to play music in the '90s.
Why was it important for you and for Afghanistan to create this institute, these young musicians?
AHMAD SARMAST, AFGHAN MUSICIAN: It's very, very much connected to the discriminative policies against music and musicians that happened in 1990s up to early 2002.
AMANPOUR: When the Taliban said absolutely no, nobody's allowed to play?
SARMAST: Yes, but at the same time, after the collapse after the regime of the Taliban, it was significantly important to return the musical rights of Afghan children back to them and --
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: Why? Why was it so important for you to give them back those musical rights?
SARMAST: Because no country can exist without having its own musical identity. And also it's not just the musical identity of Afghanistan, but at the same time, the establishment of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music was significantly important to revive, preserve and transmit the Afghan musical tradition which became almost obsolete during the years of war.
AMANPOUR: Those of us who know about Afghan music, we recognize some of the traditional instruments. But it's not usual to have a piano in Afghanistan. That's not an Afghan instrument.
SARMAST: Yes, but Afghanistan should be part of the international music making. Afghan children should have access to the same musical instrument that it's given for granted outside Afghanistan to other children.
Students should have the ability to play Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, as it's part -- as this music is part of the musical heritage of humanity.
AMANPOUR: It's incredible for me, when I read about this orchestra, that a lot of them are either orphans or street children or had no other opportunity.
How did you even find them? How did you select them? How did you train them?
SARMAST: We are working in close collaboration with a number of orphanages, which are caring for the Afghan kids. This cooperation and collaboration allows us to organize auditions for the disadvantaged kids of Afghan society and to identify the talents and enable them to further develop and polish their talent and become the master musicians of our country.
AMANPOUR: It's fantastic.
SARMAST: It's a great honor.
AMANPOUR: So you think this will continue, even when the U.S. leaves, even as it's becoming a little bit more conservative and people are more afraid now of -- if the Taliban gets more influence in this (inaudible)?
(CROSSTALK)
SARMAST: I strongly believe that the -- believe that the Afghanistan National Institute of Music operating within the Ministry of Education will survive, not only because it's part of the government, but at the same time, the people of Afghanistan, the mentality of the youth of Afghanistan, enormously changed in the last 10 years.
I believe that the youths of Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan will not allow anyone to return the wheel of history back.
AMANPOUR: Good luck, everybody. We wish you all the very best. And we'll be watching. And thank you for coming into the studio.
And we're going to leave you now with another excerpt from their repertoire. They'll be performing "Anar Anar," which means "Pomegranate Pomegranate."
And performing again is Reshad Afzali on the drum, Abu Kadir (ph) and Mustafa Darwishi (ph).
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, we've seen and heard how music can bring disparate people together and inspire hope in troubled places like Gaza and Afghanistan.
Now imagine a world where one of the most dangerous cities on Earth armed its young people not with guns but violins.
In Venezuela, they call it El Sistema, and it's a national music program that's also a natural resource.
It began almost 40 years ago in the mean streets of the capital, Caracas, with only 11 children, a way to keep them safe and create a sense of community and personal dignity. Today, almost 400,000 children participate in El Sistema's many youth orchestras and choirs. And its musical model has been exported to 25 countries, creating world-class musicians and responsible citizens in every walk of life.
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AMANPOUR: The renowned conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, is just one of the kids who grew up on El Sistema. And we'll leave you tonight with its irresistible message of exuberance and hope.
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