Hot Springs hosted violinist, conductor and composer William Harvey this week as part of his yearlong project, What is American Culture?
Harvey has spent 2016 on a quest to visit all 50 states in the U.S. to uncover and explore the many ways it's possible to live, define and express American culture and to catalyze a national conversation about the topic. He spends a week in each state collaborating with other musicians and artists, holding discussions and events, talking to the media and encouraging people to speak up and share their own unique answers to the question.
"The idea is that this question, 'What is American culture?', has infinitely many answers. You can have your answer, I can have my answer; both are equally correct," he said. "The idea is that we are somewhat unique in that there is no consensus either here or in the world about what American culture is. Certainly there are some cliches -- football, baseball, apple pie -- and if you really look at any of those things, they all had origins elsewhere. Even jazz grew from traditions that originated elsewhere. So, what can we say our culture is?"
During his week in Arkansas, Harvey spent time in the cities of Hot Springs, Little Rock, Fayetteville, Bentonville, Mulberry and Midway.
His impromptu violin performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" during Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea this week left the crowd stunned and in awe.
The project is part of Harvey's nonprofit organization, Cultures in Harmony, designed to advance and promote international and cultural understanding through music and interaction.
On Sept. 16, 2001, five days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Harvey, then a freshman at Juilliard School, was asked to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" for soldiers from the Fighting 69th Regiment as they returned from a long day of rescue and cleanup work at ground zero.
"That experience really changed my life and made me want to do whatever I could as a musician to make sure that there would never again be a 9/11," Harvey said. "Looking at some of the root causes I felt that more of an issue than radical Islamic terrorism itself is the sort of tacit support for it, which is a function of our relations with the rest of the world. So I wanted to see if exchanging musicians could remind people that we have more in common than what divides us. Our differences are cause for celebration, but let's always come back to the common humanity we share."
Four years later, Cultures in Harmony was born. Since then, Harvey and his team have done 40 projects in 16 countries, from Pakistan to Zimbabwe to Tunisia. What is American Culture? is their first project in the United States.
In addition to his work with Cultures in Harmony, the violinist spent four years in Afghanistan teaching at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. He arranged the music for and conducted the Afghan Youth Orchestra and sold out concerts in Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center as part of a tour in the U.S. to "show people that the American investment in Afghanistan has not been wasted," Harvey said.
Another career highlight of Harvey's includes arranging the music for and conducting the first ever symphonic performance of music by a black Zimbabwean, national icon Oliver Mtukudzi, in Zimbabwe.
"Music brings people together. Cultures in Harmony, whether we are helping start the first music festival in Zimbabwe or we are performing for inmates in a women's prison in Alaska, that's what ties it all together. Music allows us to communicate at a level beyond words. It allows us to remember and celebrate that we do have a lot in common," he said.
"I hope that the What is American Culture? project inspires people to have this conversation. The project is not about me and my experience of the United States, even though of course I'm enjoying that. It's about encouraging people to share how they define American culture and then listen to the definitions that other people have and see how these definitions are similar and how they're different.
"For instance, in Kentucky, the first state, I interviewed the owner of a gun store and a member of the new Black Panther party and they gave very different answers, but both answers were rooted in a dedication to the concept of liberty, just defined very differently, so I think that's useful to remember and I hope people have these conversations."
Over the next four weeks Harvey will visit Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa.
Visit http://www.culturesinharmony.org for photos, videos and accounts of his experiences in the states and use the hashtag #AmericanCultureIs on social media to join in on the conversation.
Local on 11/20/2016