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Rocking Toward a Free World - When the Stratocaster Beat the Kalashnikov (Hardcover)
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Rocking Toward a Free World - When the Stratocaster Beat the Kalashnikov (Hardcover)
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Stephen Colbert calls Andras Simonyi "the only ambassador I know
who can shred a mean guitar!" In fact, Simonyi, the former
Hungarian ambassador to the U.S., may be the only diplomat to also
front a rock band. And as both, he has witnessed two of the most
powerful forces in modern life: democracy and rock and roll. In
ROCKING TOWARD A FREE WORLD, Simonyi reflects on the profound
effect of those two forces in his life. He details the struggle of
growing up behind the Iron Curtain in 1960s Hungary, and how under
a communist regime music was powerful but furtive: records were
black-market bootlegs; concerts were held in secret; protests were
hidden in lyrics. To get caught meant punishment, even prison. But
Simonyi was determined and knew how music could feed the culturally
impoverished. Inspired by the protest music coming out of the US
and the UK, he formed a band, befriended musicians, and became part
of the burgeoning rock scene. There were setbacks, the oppression
of the regime, and the collapse of his own dreams of stardom. But
Simonyi came of age in step with his struggling homeland. By 1989,
when a watershed Amnesty International concert in Budapest helped
signal lasting change in Hungary, it was Simonyi, now a bureaucrat,
who helped make the concert a reality. That same year, the Berlin
Wall fell, and communism began its collapse. Inspiring and moving,
ROCKING TOWARD A FREE WORLD shows the soft power of rock and roll
as a driver of change, and how it inspired one boy to make a
difference in his country and the world.
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