Aaron Copland in Latin America – Music and Cultural Politics
Carol A Hess
Illinois 344pp (hb) £25.99
‘Standing up for three hours and shaking hands with 80 people is not much fun’. Cultural diplomacy can, it seems, be decidedly tedious. Between 1941-63 Aaron Copland made four US government-sponsored trips to Latin America, and among the many high-profile lectures, broadcasts and concerts that he gave were a bevy of less stimulating assignments – listening to ‘god-awful’ recitals by local musicians,
