OneBeat

OneBeatSM is an international music exchange that celebrates musical collaboration and social engagement through innovative people-to-people diplomacy. In the fall of 2012, 32 musicians (ages 19-35) from around the world will come together in the U.S. for four weeks to collaboratively write, produce, and perform original music, and develop ways that music can make a positive impact on our local and global communities.

OneBeat will be a musical journey like no other. It is a chance for adventurous musicians from an incredible diversity of traditions to seek common ground, creating new musical combinations, pushing the boundaries of music technology, and finding ways to involve all members of society in the process of musical creativity. OneBeat endeavors to be the nexus of a new way of thinking about how music can connect people from across the world and around the block.

One BeatSM is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, administered by Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation. OneBeat builds on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vision of “smart power” diplomacy. It embraces the use of a full range of diplomatic tools, including music, to bring people, especially youth, together for greater understanding.

1beat.org