Speaking of the Sudan

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Spock
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Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:01 pm

Speaking of the Sudan

#1 Post by Spock » Wed Sep 27, 2017 11:54 am

Just today ran across a (maybe) telling anecdote in a book 'Travels with Herodotus" by a Polish Cold War-Era journalist (Ryszard Kapuscinski).

I may have mentioned Mark Steyn before (LOL) and one of Steyn's themes is that the rough and violent edges of the map (Indian Country, if you will) are expanding. For example, there are probably not too many massive Hollywood productions being filmed in the Congo anymore as they were in "The African Queen" days.

Be that as it may, Kapuscinski describes stumbling across a Louis Armstrong concert in 1960 in Khartoum, of all places. It did not appear to be a concert for Ex-pats as he describes as the audience as Moslems who did not seem to be very into the concert. Kapuscinski saw him afterwards in the hotel restaurant.

Can any of us today, even imagine the modern equivalent of Armstrong performing in Khartoum in 2017? Conversely, could 1960 people even begin to imagine that music and dancing and so forth would be under bloody and brutal assault in the heart of the west in 2017-Paris, Manchester, Orlando-etc?

Which scenario is more likely: That music and art and so forth flower in Khartoum or that it just becomes easier not to do concerts and stuff in larger and larger areas of the west?

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