Abigail Washburn: Building U.S.-China Relations…by Banjo
Posted by aaron on April 23rd, 2012A TEDxGreenville Open Blog post by Despina Yeargin.
At our 2012 TEDxGreenville event, we saw the healing power of speaking poetry out loud, courtesy of internationally-known poet, Glenis Redmond. We saw the uplifting and energizing quality of Asheville’s Sirius.B, we engaged in rapping for a live recording of a VLOG with sintax.the.terrific and experienced the ability of a small group of young men to come together in a band and offer us sheer joy, as Greenville’s Bent Strings did.
From TED 2012, here is a 6-minute talk about the power of music to engage different cultures in healing and in conversations that politicians strive to attain, but seldom succeed in producing.
Abigail Washburn is a TED Fellow and an accomplished musician who gave up law school for a career in banjo-playing. She performs internationally and for a period of time travelled all over the world as a member of The Sparrow Quartet, a team of young musicians who used their Western instruments to showcase Chinese music.
This talk made me smile, brought tears to my eyes and made the hair on my arms stand at attention.
Abigail, performing with The Sparrow Quartet:
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