BRICS, explained.
Dancers and musicians during the performance of the BRICS Symphony on 12 September 2026 in New Delhi (brics2026.gov.in)
BRICS wants to reshape the world order. So why has it chosen an old symbol of power?
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BRICS reaches for a crescendoBRICS reaches for a crescendo
At the BRICS summit in Delhi, leaders discussed reforming global governance institutions (Opens in new window). But at the gala dinner hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a very different kind of international order was being created on stage.
Around 160 performers presented the program “BRICS Symphony – One Rhythm, Many Cultures”, featuring musicians and dancers with links to BRICS member states and partner countries. Russia was represented by the balalaika and the bayan, while the Chinese instruments included the erhu and the guzheng. Other musical traditions represented countries across the expanded BRICS network. It was an appealing image of international cooperation. It was also a carefully crafted symbol.
For centuries, nations have sought ways to assert themselves. Flags and anthems can transform an abstract political community into something that people instantly recognise. Ceremonies can do almost the same thing.
This makes the orchestra an effective embodiment of the international order that BRICS seeks to project. Its members remain independent, yet coordination is still possible.
BRICS faces a more complex challenge. It is not a nation, and it cannot draw on a shared history or cultural tradition. The expanded community comprises states with very different political systems and strategic interests. The Interpreter has previously explored the competing visions within BRICS (Opens in new window), including India’s preference for a multipolar order and its concerns about the grouping acquiring an explicitly anti-Western character. Nevertheless, BRICS presents itself as part of a shift towards a more multipolar international order.
How can a symbol of unity be created without pretending that these differences do not exist? An orchestra offers an extraordinarily effective answer. Its symbolism is based on difference. A violin does not need to turn into a flute for the ensemble to function. At the concert in Delhi, the Russian balalaika did not need to become a Chinese erhu. Each instrument could remain recognisable, at the same time contributing to the greater whole.
This makes the orchestra an effective embodiment of the international order that BRICS seeks to project. Its members remain independent, yet coordination is still possible.
There is, however, an intriguing historical irony: the modern orchestra is, in itself, largely a product of European musical culture. I don’t think this contradiction makes the BRICS Symphony any less effective as cultural diplomacy. If anything, it reveals how cultural power actually works. Political orders rarely create their symbols from nothing; old forms can acquire completely different meanings in new hands.
The orchestra’s development was closely linked to royal courts and theatres, and later to public concert life. The employment of musicians was not merely a form of entertainment. Like majestic architecture or solemn ceremonies, music could demonstrate wealth and power. But cultural symbols do not necessarily remain the property of the societies that created them.
This process is central to my own research (Opens in new window) into 19th-century Russian musical culture. At the beginning of the century, Russia did not yet possess the permanent public musical infrastructure or established national classical canon that would take shape later. Musical life depended to a large extent on the imperial theatres and aristocratic patronage. Foreign musicians, particularly from Italy, France and Germany, played an important role as performers and teachers.
In the decades that followed, these borrowed traditions became firmly established in Russian cultural life. By the 1830s, composers had begun to develop a repertoire that would subsequently come to be perceived as distinctly Russian. Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar, which premiered in 1836, became a particularly striking example of how music acquired a distinctly national significance.
The infrastructure developed more gradually. The Russian Musical Society was founded in 1859. The St Petersburg Conservatoire followed in 1862, the Moscow Conservatoire four years later. Russia took the musical traditions and institutions that had taken shape in other countries and made them part of its own cultural identity.
By the end of the 19th century, Russian music had itself become an important cultural export. In this way, the orchestra could become something of a flag: an inherited form imbued with new national meaning.
This is why I find the BRICS Symphony (Opens in new window) so interesting. The orchestra may have European roots, but its political meaning is not permanently European. Russia itself demonstrated in the 19th century how effectively European musical institutions could be absorbed into a different national culture. BRICS is now doing something comparable on an international scale.
Leaders from the BRICS countries watching on (brics2026.gov.in)
The political flexibility of the performance was evident almost immediately. One Russian media outlet (Opens in new window) provocatively described the BRICS Symphony as a “musical slap in the face to the West”, while India’s official presentation (Opens in new window) emphasised cultural diversity through the slogan “One Rhythm, Many Cultures”.
The same performance can mean different things to different audiences. From Delhi’s perspective, it could demonstrate that cultural differences do not hinder cooperation. From Moscow’s perspective, it could be interpreted more assertively – as proof that the political and cultural world is no longer centred on the West. That distinction matters: as one contributor to The Interpreter has noted, India has long tried to keep a foot in multiple diplomatic camps (Opens in new window), rather than treating participation in BRICS as synonymous with alignment against the West.
This flexibility is a reason why music works so well as a tool of cultural diplomacy. Political declarations require governments to agree on wording. Music, however, can create an image of harmony without defining exactly what that harmony means. India already makes extensive use of culture and identity in its foreign policy, shown by the role of culture in Modi’s diplomatic toolkit (Opens in new window), as well as the country’s more recent use of soft power in its wider diplomacy (Opens in new window).
A flag usually calls on the audience to identify with a single community. An orchestra can do things differently. No one needs to give up their individual voice for the sake of the ensemble. BRICS, therefore, may have less need to invent an entirely new cultural vocabulary than its rhetoric about a changing world order might suggest. Political power has always been capable of taking inherited cultural forms and altering their meaning.
About the author
Stacy Jarvis
Stacy Jarvis is a music historian, writer and classical musician whose research focuses on 19th-century European musical culture and the relationship between music, politics and society.
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