Secretary of State Antony Blinken played electric guitar and sang Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man” at the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative launch event.
“I couldn’t pass up tonight’s opportunity to combine music and diplomacy. Was a pleasure to launch @StateDept’s new Global Music Diplomacy Initiative,” Blinken tweeted when sharing a video of his performance.
The U.S. Embassy Ottawa shared Blinken’s post, apparently crossing out the words “Secretary of State,” before writing, “Rockstar @SecBlinken shreds guitar at the launch of @StateDept’s new Global Music Diplomacy Initiative.”
Blinken’s post on X has amassed more than 7 million views so far.
“He has no peace plan for Ukraine but Blinken has Music Diplomacy,” Richard Grenell tweeted, calling Blinken “the worst Secretary of State ever.”
“Nothing will intimidate Putin and Xi like ‘Hoochie Coochie Man,'” Morgan Wirthlin tweeted.
“We don’t talk enough about how Secretary of State Antony Blinken has several songs on Spotify,” Gary Grumbach tweeted.
Blinken, who describes himself on X as a “(very) amateur guitarist,” has released several songs on digital music platforms under the name ABlinken.
“I had a bunch of songs I had written, probably 30 or 40 years ago, that were sitting around. I’d always had this ambition of giving them a somewhat proper recording. But I didn’t really have the chops and I didn’t have the recording skills to do that,” Blinken previously told Rolling Stone.
But Blinken said that his friend Lincoln Bloomfield has a home recording studio. “I was talking about some of these songs I had always wanted to record. He said, ‘Let’s do it,’ so we did,” Blinken said, according to Rolling Stone. “Lincoln played bass, keyboards, and lead guitar. I’m on rhythm guitar and vocals.”
A press release describes the Global Music Diplomacy Initiative as “a worldwide effort to elevate music as a diplomatic tool to promote peace and democracy and support the United States’ broader foreign policy goals. The Initiative aims to leverage public-private partnerships to create a music ecosystem that expands economic equity and the creative economy, ensures societal opportunity and inclusion, and increases access to education,” the press release states.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!