Yo-Yo Ma (Harvard College ’76) is a world-renowned cellist, the recipient of over 15 Grammy Awards, and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Harvard Political Review: You initiated the Silk Road Ensemble, which fosters collaboration with artists from around the world. What role, if any, do you see music having in prompting international dialogue and political change?

Yo-Yo Ma: I think there has to be a place in society where politics, economics, and culture can meet. Like a Venn diagram with three intersecting circles, the common space is the space that as a culture worker, I want to inhabit. The greater that common space is in society, the more fulfilled its citizens are. The more we have that kind of common space, the less people will make decisions that are deeply contrary to someone else’s interests.

To take [that] the role that music might play—music is sound and energy in space. Sound is energy that moves air molecules. It hits the ear, we somehow interpret it and it makes order out of chaos. It joins people together – there is no culture that doesn’t have music. What’s the function of music? Music tends to alert people to things, it can join people into a communal experience, it is part of a celebration of life, it part of the mourning of the passing of life. It comes up during the important times during people’s lives. It expresses things. It’s really hard to define music because it is very ephemeral, but its effect is generally always about something bigger than yourself.

I’ll give you some examples from the stage. We work with Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who are not exactly at peace. However, we do not say, “Let’s just put people from opposite sides of the political spectrum together,” but rather, if people actually share something, we highlight it. It gives more value; it gives more space. It stimulates the imagination to say, “This is possible, these people who might be in conflict are doing something that can only happen when there’s trust on stage.” The music is the tip of the iceberg for the trust that has to exist for people to perform together. So it’s not just that the music is nice, but rather that the underbelly of the music is collaboration and trust.

HPR: You also started the Silk Road Connect program, which integrates the music of the ensemble into a middle school curriculum involving the history, geography, and arts of the Silk Road. In the days of shrinking school budgets, how do you see music education continuing its presence in public schools?

YM: In a democracy, you get the democracy you work for. If we take ownership in the country we live in, it means that if you believe in something, you work hard for it. So before we talk about music in the school, let’s go broader. Let’s start with humans as sentient beings. How do we receive information? Visually, orally, tactilely, and through smell: we have the five senses. How do we imagine things? We know that in order for us as humans to move forward in life, we have to have imagination and innovation. So, how do we imagine something? Can you practice imagination? Imagination comes from all of our senses. It’s actually an artificial construct of different realities that you know.

Music is one of the great forms that show disciplined imagination. You can get into Bach’s mind by playing one of his pieces. What was he trying to do? Was he showing off? Was he proving something? Where does he begin? Where does he end? We’re using our imagination to find a code. It’s not so much about music in schools; it’s about what music can bring. If you can draw or act, what does that do for your communication skills? If you can imagine who Bach was and what he was writing, wouldn’t that be a great thing for you to then to be able to imagine someone who lives in East Germany? You can think about Angela Merkel and the kind of family she came from. You can just riff on that and suddenly you have a better understanding of what it’s like to be German. Suddenly, you have an understanding from the inside, an empathetic understanding of something.

HPR: How do you respond to people who argue that the appropriation of musical traditions by groups such as the Silk Road Ensemble actually destroys these traditions?

YM: When people talk about appropriation, they’re talking about who owns it. I’ve started saying, if it really is that good, it is really for everybody. For the people who talk about appropriation, I would respond, “I’ve come to realize that every tradition that we know of is the result of successful invention.” So, every tradition was at some point invented. People liked it and gave it a name and gave it a frame.

Frank Zappa also said the following: “I’m a singer/songwriter. I write this great song and people say, ‘Frank, please write me another song that’s just like that.’” When you want something exactly like what you already have and not something else, that’s when success is its own demise. You want to keep it, but meanwhile, the world is moving on. Traditions hit their peak and then the numbers get smaller. People have new stories to tell.

It’s fine to talk about appropriation and who owns what, but culture is when something is living. And it’s passed on as something that’s alive. If nobody practices it a certain way, the culture is dead. So, you have to put the language of appropriation within the context of whether or not it’s living. It’s all about what gets passed on that’s living. It’s not the industrial production of something that is incredibly beautiful that you can just put on your shelf and ignore. That’s not living. But if you use it every day and you get beauty out of it, then it’s living. If a tradition stops evolving, then it starts to die, just like human society and institutions. Everything is constantly evolving.

HPR: On the topic of evolution, as a classical musician, do you think we will still have orchestras as we imagine them now in 50 to 100 years?

YM: The real question is, in 50 to 100 years, are we still going to have people? If we have people, then, will we have people who want to do things together, who want to express themselves together, who want to have gatherings? If we still have ears and memory and treasure memories and interactions, there’s a great likelihood we’ll still have orchestras.

Our communities have changed. The voices within our communities have changed too. We have to think, “Who are we serving?” We have to respond to what is happening, to acknowledge new and old things, to have the flexibility to honor and dignify people’s voices and traditions, and to try to make it all work together. It’s a microcosm of what we all have to do in society.

There is a part of music that is political. I think it’s important that there’s a separation as well as common space. There are different spaces for music; it’s a big mansion. If it were only political, that would be horrible. All you would get would be propaganda or social realism. That’s not what the essence of music is. It can report on a truth that could be threatening to politics. These things are very real and very worth looking at, but if you’re looking at it solely through that lens, then you miss things. If you lose perspective, then you really don’t have anything.

One last thing: a number of years ago, Gorbachev was invited to the Kennedy Library. I was invited to the lunch. I was sitting next to Mrs. Jacqueline Onassis. She said, “Yo-Yo, I don’t know what to say to him.” And so I took my chance to be brazen, and I asked him, “Mr. Gorbachev, I’m a great admirer of Rostropovich (who was famously very close friends with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn). What do you think of the relationship between culture and politics?” And he says, “I think they should be separate.” That was definitely a culture and politics moment. And he answered my question.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photo credit: Flickr