Cultures of Resistance

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The unprecedented recent performance in Pyongyang by the New York Philharmonic has been hailed as a potentially historic step in the path towards rapprochement on the Korean peninsula. Over two thousand audience members, mostly made up of North Korea's communist elite, gave America's oldest orchestra a standing ovation after a rousing set that concluded with a Korean folk song, Arirang, an unofficial national anthem in both North and South Korea. Some of the musicians were so overcome with emotion they left the stage in tears.

As the inventor of the escopetarra—rifles transformed into guitars—Cesar Lopez breathes life into instruments of death. In response to the violence that has plagued his home in Bogota, Colombia, Lopez has discovered a way to channel this violence into "art, where creation triumphs over destruction."

Cultures of Resistance teamed up with Hich Kas to produce this track and video to expose some of the diversity of Iranian culture not shown in western media and to invite people to take another look at Iran and its people.