3

Jazz in the Cultural Presentations Program

When people today think about American musical diplomacy, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Dave Brubeck are the musicians who come to mind. The metaphorical associations between jazz and freedom, or even between jazz and democracy, have become the stuff of legend. The very strength of these associations can make them seem a permanent feature of the music, obscuring the conflict and care that went into forming the iconic status of jazz. Nevertheless, State Department officials’ decisions about how to use jazz abroad helped shape that status. Jazz was not used in diplomacy because it was already meaningful for foreign publics. Rather, the state’s mobilization of jazz changed what the music meant to foreign and American publics in the postwar period.

When the State Department began regularly using music as a tool for cultural diplomacy in 1954, race relations were a paramount international issue for the United States. Coinciding with anticolonial movements in Africa and Asia, the struggles of African Americans to end segregation, establish the freedom to vote, and ensure educational opportunity drew the world’s attention. Soviet print and radio propaganda carried news of every American abuse all over the globe. In return American propagandists used every means at their disposal to rescue America’s prestige by circulating more positive visions of what it meant to be black in America.1

In the early years of cultural presentations State Department staff sought to change perceptions by sending African American performers of classical music abroad. Demonstrating that African Americans could play refined European music was meant to combat the impression that African Americans had no access to education—a key concern as the world watched America’s violent school desegregation. Many diplomatic posts demanded African American performers, and this wish was fulfilled whenever possible. A State Department official noted that Africa was practically “saturated” with performances by the operatic bass-baritone William Warfield and the classical pianist Philippa Schuyler.2 By contrast, jazz—music that today is widely accepted as a major African American contribution to American culture—entered the program slowly. Criticisms from abroad that American music was simply derivative of Europe’s suggested that art music alone would not reform America’s image. The widespread foreign success of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, an operatic mixture of popular and art-music styles, called attention to the possibility that America could best be represented through musical forms that developed within its borders.³

The Music Advisory Panel that recommended musicians for tours consisted overwhelmingly of experts in classical music who were not necessarily qualified to judge the suitability of jazz musicians. (A separate panel for judging jazz and folk music began meeting in 1964.) Furthermore, the program-wide decision to feature only the “highest” arts meant that officials remained uncertain about how and whether to include jazz. The guide to Cultural Presentations that was delivered to diplomatic posts in 1959 explained that “entertaining or pleasing mass audiences” might be a “desirable by-product” of cultural diplomacy, but it was not a main purpose of the program. The guide specified that jazz performances “are legitimate cultural manifestations” but insisted that “a distinction must be made between jazz as an art form and popular dance bands, which are not used by the Program.”⁴ In practice, that distinction was sometimes difficult for the music panelists and other officials to draw, but it marked official recognition that jazz could be understood in multiple ways. Jazz had roots in popular dance music, yet it also encouraged a form of specialized connoisseurship among its listeners.⁵ These various modes of listening would be important in the State Department’s strategy for jazz.

The first jazz presentation to be sent abroad through the Cultural Presentations program was Dizzy Gillespie’s band in 1956. After collecting intelligence data on his reception, President Eisenhower’s Operations Coordinating Board, an interagency planning committee, reported, “This type of presentation is one of the best possible for the effect desired; not only is this type of music popular throughout the world, but it also attracts the attention of serious music students and lovers of fine music who appreciate the fact that this is a distinctly American form of expression which has influenced profoundly the entire art of music.”⁶ This recognition opened the door to the further use of jazz in musical diplomacy.

LEGITIMIZING JAZZ

Jazz had many obstacles to overcome before it could succeed abroad. It had become known in Europe early in its history, and it had long circulated on 78 rpm records, but the world’s opinion of jazz was not uniformly positive. Edmund Kellogg, the chargé d’affaires in the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh, noted that while jazz might be “a universal language of goodwill” where Western music was familiar, in Cambodia it was “indistinguishable . . . from itinerant night-club dance combos.”7 A staff member at the U.S. embassy in Athens explained that it would not be worthwhile to “demonstrate our supremacy in jazz,” since Greeks tended to disparage it on racist grounds and by comparison to European art music.⁸ The American embassy in Tokyo explained that the “Japanese do not consider jazz a major art form.” It lacked the prestige of the European classics.⁹

Moreover, the first State Department–sponsored tours of jazz musicians in the 1950s produced an angry response at home. Citizens sent objections to the State Department and to their representatives in Congress, both because of the cost and because they believed that jazz was not worthwhile music. Widespread news coverage of the Gillespie tour focused on his high salary (quoted in U.S. News and World Report as $2,100 per week), inflaming debate about whether sending jazz abroad could possibly be worth the expense.¹⁰ The State Department received numerous communications from Congress questioning the program’s validity. Officials had never intended to explain musical diplomacy to the American public, but if jazz was going to be a component of the program, the music would have to be justified at home, as well as abroad.

The State Department’s strategy for presenting jazz abroad was conceived by Marshall Stearns, an advocate of jazz and founder of the Institute of Jazz Studies, and shaped by John S. Wilson, a well-known jazz critic for the New York Times. Both Stearns and Wilson had worked to make jazz more widely known within the United States through public lectures, and both served on the department’s Music Advisory Panels. Together with department officials, Stearns and Wilson developed a strategy that framed jazz as a form of art music, legitimizing it as a distinctively American music with a distinguished history. Stearns, a professor of English at Hunter College, taught courses on jazz at several institutions and wrote widely on the history of jazz.¹¹ From 1954 to 1970 Wilson presented a series of radio programs in New York that crafted historical narratives about jazz, offering a sense of pedigree for modern jazz as well as conveying appreciation for historical styles.¹² He offered some of the same material to audiences abroad on Voice of America radio in the 1970s. Emphasizing that jazz had distinct phases of development and its own canon of great composers differentiated it from ephemeral, popular music, framing it as classical music’s equal.13 Wilson had relatively conservative tastes, judging the modern jazz of the mid-1960s “routine” and “tiresome.” His predilections may have encouraged State Department officials to choose the tried-and-true over the novel or experimental.¹⁴

When ANTA was planning the Gillespie tour, the first of its kind, Stearns was asked to accompany the tour as lecturer. Robert Schnitzer, the general manager of ANTA, cautioned Stearns that “every precaution must be taken to assure that America’s popular music is presented in such a way as to achieve the best results for our national prestige.” Stearns was asked not only to lecture but also “to keep an eye on Dizzy’s programs in order to see that he maintains the standards that have been set for them.”¹⁵ Evidently Schnitzer harbored some concern that the band would alter its programs while traveling. Given that jazz programs were typically subject to change, this was a likely scenario. At Stearns’s suggestion the band put together a “history of jazz” set lasting about half of the program, which they played throughout their tour. The historical program included “African rhythms,” as well as spirituals, blues, New Orleans–style jazz (“When the Saints Go Marchin’ In”), and a selection of classic numbers by Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Goodman, Roy Eldridge, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington.¹⁶

Down Beat magazine characterized the program as “unusual” for jazz musicians, who tended to be identified with a characteristic style rather than dabbling in all of them.¹⁷ Yet presentations of jazz in historical styles persisted in State Department–sponsored performances throughout the 1960s, as well as in materials given to U.S. Information Centers abroad. When Earl “Fatha” Hines toured the Soviet Union in 1966, he brought a program that was “designed to reflect the variety of American jazz forms in the past thirty years.”¹⁸ More surprising, Randy Weston, who was known for playing a contemporary style of jazz, consented to adopt a history of jazz format for one of two programs he offered in alternation on his tour. Weston’s history began “with early native rhythms and calypso, continuing through blues, ragtime, and swing, and leading up to jazz of the sixties and Weston’s own works.”¹⁹ When Dave Brubeck gave a jazz seminar in Bombay (now Mumbai), the program resembled the interactive classical performances of the Dorian Quintet. Brubeck “explained the evolution of progressive jazz from the original Dixieland music,” and each musician demonstrated the qualities of his instrument. The group then took requests and discussed their technique of improvising on standard tunes. They also answered questions from the audience.20 This emphasis on history and technique underscored the seriousness of jazz as an art form. Apart from Weston, whose more novel repertoire was carefully managed, the choice of musicians to send likewise highlighted the historical lineage of jazz. Hines, Ellington, Jack Teagarden, Cozy Cole, and Red Nichols were elder statesmen in the jazz world, still capable of excellent work, but predominantly associated with older rather than current styles. Cole noted in 1962 that he was still playing much as he had in 1935.²¹

These historical programs addressed the problem of legitimacy, but they presented a new problem: many jazz musicians and devoted fans despised older styles. The performers who were most respected by the jazz cognoscenti in the 1950s and 1960s were modernist innovators, seeking new sounds and disparaging earlier ways. Dixieland, a core element of the historical programs, was considered trivial, formulaic, and commercial—exactly what “real” artists eschewed. Swing, too, seemed commercial, although the famously skillful arrangements of Lunceford and Ellington mitigated this concern to an extent.²² A musician such as Weston would not likely have chosen to perform in older styles of his own accord. But, as Stearns told the State Department in 1963, “although under the pressure of competition in the United States they play their most advanced style, [most musicians] can also play earlier styles—if it is insisted that they do so.” Stearns believed that the historical justification was so important to the music’s success abroad that it should be required.²³

The extent to which professional musicians objected to the State Department’s request that they play in older styles is difficult to assess. Hines had been making a living playing Dixieland before his tour. Although a critic speculated that such a fate would have “embittered a lesser artist,” we have no evidence that Hines thought this music was beneath him.²⁴ Weston demonstrated a more ambivalent response. Georgia Griggs, who accompanied Weston’s 1966 tour as manager, reported in Down Beat that the State Department took a “patronizing” and “colonialist” attitude toward the band: having hired a band that played contemporary jazz, the department then ordered them to play Dixieland. It is not clear, however, whether Weston agreed with Griggs. He had been working in schools with Stearns since the 1950s, developing and performing historical jazz programs, and Stearns had been instrumental in arranging for Weston to tour. Weston explained proudly in a 1973 interview that the historical programs “showed the whole heritage of this music, which is really what Africa contributed to the Americas.”²⁵ In Weston’s autobiography he makes no mention of conflicts over repertoire, complaining only about the State Department’s requirement that the band wear suits and ties.26 After the tour the Music Advisory Panel’s jazz subcommittee discussed reports of problems with the Weston tour. They felt that Weston had succeeded with audiences but that he might have won more friends had he been willing to adopt familiar repertory rather than highlighting his own compositions.²⁷ U.S. officials noticed similar musical preferences among the college jazz bands who toured: the young musicians were devoted to recent styles, and some chafed at the idea of playing Dixieland.²⁸ Even in Jack Teagarden’s band, which toured with a program of Dixieland in 1958, one band member reportedly had begun to prefer modern jazz, and his tendency to regard his bandmates as “dinosaurs” caused some dissension.²⁹

Stearns believed that the historical programs helped people who did not care for jazz to understand it as a legitimate art form. After his tour with Gillespie he wrote of his experiences in Ankara and Athens: “The leaders of opinion in these countries, having heard the cheaper and more commercial kinds of jazz, felt that the music was shallow and ephemeral. A brief lecture-recital, stressing the vital folk roots of jazz, changed their minds effectively.”³⁰ Indeed, the CAO in Ankara had tried to arrange a lecture at the State Conservatory, but it was not permitted because “the students of music were already too much interested in jazz.” Only after Gillespie’s first concert did the director of the conservatory change his mind and allow the lecture to proceed. The students reportedly gave a five-minute ovation at the close of the talk.³¹ Subsequent concerts and exhibits of jazz drew significant crowds (figure 6).

Yet for initiated fans who wanted to hear Gillespie’s band perform as it would in the United States, the historical program was a disappointment. The consul general in Bangladesh reported to the State Department that even among uninitiated audiences who might need the background, the history program was not as well liked as the part of the program that featured Gillespie’s own music.³² By the late 1960s the historical programs were no longer an asset. A Finnish reviewer wrote of the University of Illinois Jazz Band that “when they here first blew avant-gardism [sic] and put on funny hats and played Dixieland, aired rock ’n’ roll rhythms for a change, made a little fun at the expense of the old Ellington sound, and then again came back to straight Basie or a more decorative Lunceford beat, the whole made a very motley impression and the band did not seem to have any profile of its own.”³³ Some European critics found that the ability to play in many styles indicated technical achievement without spiritual depth—the same charge that was leveled at some American classical musicians.³⁴ With this mixed feedback it is curious that the State Department continued to use the historical programs throughout the 1960s.

Figure 6. Visitors at the Bergama Kermes art festival wait to enter the “Jazz U.S.A.” exhibit, created by U.S. embassy staff in Ankara, Turkey, 1964. The exhibit drew twenty-five thousand visitors. USIS Ankara FM-114 to DOS, 22 June 1964, folder Turkey 1/3, Entry A1-1039, RG 306, National Archives.

Still, the revival of historical styles was a real success in some places. When Jack Teagarden played in Japan, a wave of favorable press coverage in newspapers and music magazines continued for months after he left. The embassy reported that Teagarden’s performances in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Hiroshima “stimulated a Dixieland revival which spread throughout the night clubs and coffee houses of Japan.” Toshiba rushed a new recording into production to capitalize on Teagarden’s new popularity.35 Teagarden’s Dixieland jazz flopped in the Philippines, however: the post reported that “interpreting Philippine enthusiasm in popular music as including interest in Dixieland jazz” had been a mistake. The post suggested that swing or rock ’n’ roll could have worked, although Benny Goodman’s swing band had also lost money on its privately sponsored visit to the Philippines a few years before.³⁶

The acknowledgment of jazz’s folk roots did appeal to some European sensibilities: one Yugoslav critic located the origins of jazz in the “city folklore of American Negroes,” connecting jazz with long-standing European practices of transforming folk music into art music and at the same time linking it to socialist ideals of “the folk” as the source of valuable culture.³⁷ In response to the historical narrative presented by Gillespie, one Turkish newspaper critic explained to his readers that jazz had evolved “from the drum tunes of the African jungles.” To him the narrative implied increasing sophistication, the evolution of black people from rural to urban living and from simple folk music to complex jazz.38 As Scott DeVeaux has pointed out, American critics’ emphasis on the historical evolution of jazz implicitly claimed to track the social progress of African Americans: “the progress of the black man’s music from rural folk music to the international concert hall, a social acceptance far in advance of what could be expected in other spheres, was often taken as an encouraging sign that [full citizenship for African Americans] was possible, perhaps inevitable.”³⁹ This narrative, enacted abroad for both new and experienced listeners, precisely matched the State Department’s typical claim that although racism had been a problem in the past, the nation was working to solve it, and conditions were improving continually.⁴⁰ Thus, the historical programs did more than explain the genre and conventions of jazz. They told a hopeful story of progress that emphasized African American achievement and supported the idea that the civil rights struggle was nearly complete. This triumphal story persists in today’s writing about jazz. As Laurence Bergreen tells it: “Though still suspect in its homeland, the voice of an oppressed minority, jazz became the Sound of America for the rest of the world, the music of freedom, celebration, and happiness, a symbol for a nation of vastly different ethnic groups, blending into the most wonderful noise ever heard. This was the trajectory of jazz, the music first heard in the brothels, funeral processions, and honkytonks of New Orleans.”⁴¹

JAZZ, DEMOCRACY, AND FREEDOM

This metaphorical interpretation of the history of jazz as the history of racial progress was accompanied by a reading of jazz as “democratic” art. The understanding of jazz as a process analogous to democracy existed long before the State Department began sponsoring jazz musicians’ tours. As early as 1923, J.A. Rogers had called jazz a social “leveller” that “makes for democracy” by virtue of its disregard for formality.⁴² Nonetheless, the reading of jazz as embodying democracy first gained prominence in public discourse in the 1950s, when Americans were seeking to differentiate themselves in all possible ways from the undemocratic politics of the Soviet Union, and when African Americans’ exclusion from democratic processes was a pressing concern.

At the outset of the Cold War, music was routinely interpreted in overtly political ways within the Soviet Union and the East Bloc. There, governments demanded that art portray the worker-led socialist democracy they claimed to be building. Many thinkers in the West therefore wanted nothing to do with the assertion that art might directly depict society. Joe Barry, the New York Times Paris bureau chief, wrote home to Charles Palmer about a jazz feature planned for the Sunday section: “I know you want good quotes from names that jazz is an art form. But you won’t get anything about it being ‘Democratic’ whatever that means in music. I suggest such a demonstration be dropped—otherwise you play into the hands of the Russian critics who think such terms can be applied to literature, art and god knows what else. If by ‘democratic’ you mean ‘popular,’ okay. Otherwise no.”43 Still, the idea of jazz as democratic gained currency in postwar Germany, where jazz had been forbidden under National Socialism.⁴⁴ Another memo sent to Palmer quoted Olaf Hudtwalcker, the president of the Hot Club of Frankfurt: “a jam session is a miniature democracy. Every instrument is on its own without any prescribed music it has to follow. The only binding element is toleration and consideration for the other players. And every instrument is equal.”⁴⁵

As a description of what goes on in a jazz performance, Hudtwalcker’s statement is superficial at best. Not every instrument is equal in a typical jazz ensemble: the rhythm section usually remains subordinate to the melodic instruments, and the most renowned soloists are usually featured at greater length than others. The idea of improvisation is also misrepresented, for a jazz performance does not simply emerge unplanned from the minds of the musicians. Usually an arrangement has been worked out in advance, chord changes agreed on, the order of solos predetermined. Often the entire performance, including solos, has been mapped out in detail ahead of time.⁴⁶ Hudtwalcker’s idealized vision of jazz as the spontaneously lived antidote to totalitarian politics derives from its suppression in the 1930s and 1940s and his desire as an ardent fan to propagate it. This vision also reflected a youthful alternative to the orderly hierarchy of classical orchestral music, and it was likely supported by jazz’s presence on the radio and on records during the U.S. occupation of Germany that followed the war.

Expressions such as these certainly resonated with Stearns and others who were seeking to win respect for jazz in the United States. Stearns was happy to explain in a radio lecture that “a jazz band exemplifies an ideal solution of the increasing conflict between the individual and the group in modern society” and that jazz therefore embodied the democratic process in action.⁴⁷ Because Stearns accompanied Gillespie’s band as a lecturer, he had ample opportunity to propagate these ideas abroad. The ideas then came back to America through newspaper accounts of the tours and State Department reports. As early as 1951, Stearns took every opportunity to talk to the press in the United States about the merits of jazz as propaganda: “It’s democratic in its origin. It’s democratic in its performance. No wonder the Russians are nervous about it.”48

Over the course of the 1950s other jazz musicians and critics embraced the idea that jazz represented democracy, echoing Stearns’s words in print and in interviews. Dave and Iola Brubeck published an article stating that jazz embodies “in its very form the democratic idea of unity through diversity” and “free expression of the individual.”⁴⁹ The African American press used similar language: George E. Pitts cited the “freedom of individual expression” in the Pittsburgh Courier, noting, “Jazz is a product of a free soul, and any freedom as such does not go well in the Soviet Union, with such tight controls on everything.”⁵⁰ By the late 1960s this explanation had been widely adopted among musicians and critics alike. On a 1969 tour to Africa saxophonist Oliver Nelson responded to baiting questions from a representative of Tass, the Soviet press agency, by asserting that “jazz is a highly creative and individualistic art form, and is therefore most representative of the American democratic system.”⁵¹

That black and white musicians often played together in the touring bands allowed this idea of “democratic” jazz to embody a particularly egalitarian form of ethnic inclusiveness. Like the historical narrative, the story of jazz as a representation of democracy was important in shaping the message of jazz abroad—but that story papered over the fact that democracy had not yet been made real for many African Americans in their everyday lives.⁵² Equating jazz with democracy nonetheless affirmed the centrality of African American contributions to American culture and offered a tangible demonstration of African American progress. These statements harmonized well with U.S. propaganda goals.

JAZZ AS CULTURE, JAZZ AS SUBCULTURE

Jazz made for successful diplomacy, but it did not conquer audiences worldwide (as the story is usually told). Musically, jazz abroad is a story of strikingly mixed successes. It is seldom reported but frequently documented in the sources that jazz failed to reach audiences. Even renowned musicians playing well sometimes faced audiences indifferent to the kind of music they were playing. Glenn Wolfe reported after Louis Armstrong’s appearances in Africa that Armstrong was well received because Africans understood Armstrong as distant kin, honoring the relationship between Africans and African Americans and between African music and jazz. Despite this connection, however, Wolfe believed the music had failed to truly reach the public: “they came by the thousands to see him, but then they walked away. His music did not mean anything to them.”53 Although Armstrong was carried into Leopoldville on a throne and celebrated with enthusiasm by a crowd of some ten thousand, the response to his playing there was muted.⁵⁴ The U.S. embassy at Leopoldville cabled back to the State Department in typically telegraphic language: “Louis appearance highly successful from standpoint over-all psychological impact on this troubled city; however reaction Congolese mass both here and Brazzaville indicates they don’t particularly understand or cotton to Armstrong brand music. For this reason plan indoor performance his return November 24, with selected audience of devoted cats.”⁵⁵

When the Jack Teagarden Sextet performed in Kabul, the trumpeter Max Kaminsky reported a similar problem: “The rapport between the audience and us when they heard us play that afternoon was equally nil. They had no idea at all of what we were playing.”⁵⁶ As Kaminsky tells it, this incident was a typical experience. Dizzy Gillespie noted that his first program in Dacca (now Dhaka, Bangladesh) was poorly received: “Nobody ever heard of Louis Armstrong—so I knew I was in trouble.” Stearns noted that the few listeners who came to hear Gillespie in Dacca “were entertained and applauded but they didn’t dig it at all.”⁵⁷ Likewise, in Quito, Ecuador, Gillespie’s performances were poorly attended, resulting in large financial losses for the impresario who cosponsored the concerts. The post reported that Gillespie was unknown and that officials had been unable to find any recordings of his music in Quito.⁵⁸

Although jazz was rooted in a popular musical practice, and many of its standard works based on popular tunes, it was by no means a popular music on a worldwide scale. The role of musicians—and of State Department planners—was made difficult by the fact that in any single locality there was likely a large population who had never been exposed to jazz alongside a small community of dedicated fans. The existence of these expert fans was likely due to another U.S. propaganda effort: the broadcasting of American music on Voice of America radio, especially Willis Conover’s “Music USA.”⁵⁹ Even in isolated places, avid collectors also remained in touch with the musical world through the circulation of recordings. When the University of Michigan Jazz Band toured Latin America in 1965, the band members encountered one or two extremely knowledgeable jazz fans at almost every concert who were eager to talk about the details of modern jazz. As Lanny Austin described it:

You’d think you’re playing to an audience of [musical] dullards, but there’d be one guy who was this monster musician. . . . You’d want to cut the concert short, then later realize someone really astute was in the audience. People would approach the band during and after concerts—there would be Q and A after concerts, questions about instruments, what is that instrument, what is different between that and the others, all the questions you could have, then all of a sudden somebody says, “I notice you played all minor blues—don’t you do any major blues?” A question that shows there is someone out there who knows.60

Thus, the problem of multiple audiences that vexed classical music planning also applied to jazz. Performers attempted at once to introduce jazz to people who were unfamiliar with it and present the best jazz to connoisseurs. The post in Moscow noted that “people who attend jazz concerts in the Soviet Union range from the uninitiated, struggling to understand what is going on, to the very ‘hep,’ who inquire why we don’t send Charlie Mingus or John Coltrane rather than old timers like Earl Hines. To satisfy a wide spectrum of listeners with one jazz attraction every four years is no easy task.”⁶¹

Aside from the historical programs, which both legitimized jazz and taught basic concepts to the uninitiated, diplomatic posts strongly preferred mixed programs that included material known to most listeners as well as newer music. Hines was praised by the post in Moscow as “clever enough to sense the preferences and comprehension-level of audiences in each city,” for he “continually altered the pace and content of the show to meet local conditions.”⁶² Foreign Service officials appreciated this flexibility as long as they perceived that it was working in the posts’ interests. By contrast, they expressed frustration with musicians such as Randy Weston, whose choices appeared to be driven more by personal taste and musical aspirations than by the desire to please a broad audience.

Sometimes musicians saw the opportunity to engage the nonspecialist audience on its own terms but rejected it. When the Wilbur De Paris jazz orchestra played in Leopoldville, De Paris refused to “engage in the type of antics that some audiences desired”—nor would he play encores that audiences demanded. When audiences in Sudan requested rock ’n’ roll, De Paris declined to play it, calling it “bobby sox stuff.”⁶³ De Paris drew crowds, and many enjoyed the music (figure 7), but post officials fretted that he could do more by accommodating audiences’ expectations of popular music. Dizzy Gillespie accommodated by including a rock ’n’ roll number, “School Days,” but the band treated it as a joke—a hokey novelty act inserted in response to audience demand, not a serious part of the concert.⁶⁴ The Turkish critic Ilhan Mimaroğlu noticed the performers’ lack of respect for their introductory program: “Dizzy Gillespie and his cohorts had, as it seemed, realized the futility of the idea, and (adroitly should I say), they had turned most of the numbers included in the historical section into a display of comicry.”65 For the specialist this sort of accommodation to listener tastes was insulting: Mimaroğlu wrote that the attempt to sell jazz in this way weakened the music’s “intrinsic values.” Although some audience members might have enjoyed the music despite the over-the-top showmanship, it was not what Gillespie’s fans wanted. When experts heard programs sprinkled with crowd-pleasers, they were not impressed: a Brazilian critic chastised the Millikin University Jazz Band for its “frustrating attempt to please everybody.”⁶⁶

Figure 7. Wilbur De Paris and his New Orleans Jazz Band play at the Lido in Accra, Ghana, 1958. RG 59-G-95-206, National Archives.

Despite their relatively small numbers, the expert fans were a key constituency for jazz performances abroad. These fans preferred to hear the latest music, and the State Department did send modern jazz where it seemed such music could succeed: Herbie Mann, Charles Lloyd, Paul Winter, and Charles Mingus toured on the department’s behalf, and most of the university jazz bands that traveled included contemporary jazz in their concerts. Whenever they could, expert audience members engaged deeply with the American musicians: they asked to hear particular pieces of music, stayed after concerts to talk with the players, and invited band members to their homes to discuss recordings.67 The amount of informal contact varied. Audiences were typically granted better access to musicians from college bands than to famous musicians, because the famous players tended to draw enormous crowds that were hard to control. Although many fans could obtain music via radio and long-playing records, they craved live performance and stories about the current jazz scene in the United States. Officials at diplomatic posts recognized the importance of the fans’ intense relationship with the United States and cultivated it not only through performances but also by making jazz films and recordings available in USIS libraries throughout the world.

Traveling American musicians were shocked to realize that their colleagues in other countries had poor instruments and little access to necessary supplies. This recognition provided another important avenue of engagement. Jimmy Powell, a clarinetist with the Gillespie band, met a clarinetist in Abadan, Iran, who had used the same frayed reed for a year. “I laid a couple of new reeds on him,” Powell recalled, “and he almost cried.”⁶⁸ By the late 1960s, State Department officials routinely instructed musicians to prepare for their tours by bringing along not only recordings and memorabilia but also items specific to their trade, as when a collegiate trombonist brought the recipe for his special homemade slide grease and samples to offer fellow trombonists he met in the Middle East.⁶⁹

The improvisatory, open nature of jazz also allowed opportunities for connection among musicians. When the University of Illinois Jazz Band visited Finland, the post scheduled jam sessions “at a place and time habitually used by students for entertainment. . . . Finnish musicians were recruited to participate in the jam sessions, to the delight of audiences and performers alike.”⁷⁰ A newspaper in Hyderabad, India, reported that about half of Duke Ellington’s orchestra engaged in an impromptu jam session that was attended by some two hundred university students and local musicians; they played well-known standards such as “Misty” and “The Nearness of You” to allow greater participation.⁷¹ Local musicians were even invited onto the stage to play with the band during formal concerts. When Ray Nance could not continue on the tour, Patrick Blake, leader of the band at New Delhi’s Ambassador Hotel, was invited to take his place in Ellington’s orchestra for the remaining Indian engagements. The guitarist Carlton Kitto was invited to sit in for their performances in Madras.⁷²

In the public’s eyes the participation of local musicians was one of the most compelling aspects of these performances. In April 1958 Dave Brubeck’s ensemble visited Bombay. The CAO threw a party at his home to which forty-five local musicians were invited. They brought their instruments and, as the party went on, they offered Brubeck and his colleagues a demonstration. Then “both the Brubeck ensemble and the Indian classical performers turned toward improvised playing which soon took on the proportions of a jazz session.”73 Six months later, the Jack Teagarden Sextet played in Bombay. Brubeck had raved to Teagarden about the excellent tabla player, Shashi Bellari, so Teagarden invited Bellari to rehearse and perform with the band. The concert at Brabourne cricket stadium is preserved on a recording made for Voice of America. The Teagarden Sextet began with its standard Dixieland numbers. The audience was appreciative but coolly so. A few voices shouted out from the crowd, apparently making requests that were inaudible to the musicians. But when Bellari joined the group for an extended version of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the crowd applauded wildly. When Bellari traded solos with drummer Ronnie Greb, it was Bellari’s virtuosity that drew cheers from the crowd. As the performance went on, the interplay among the musicians became more elaborate, the piercing tone of the Indian drums nearly always audible. At the end of the number the crowd gave a long roar of approval. This number was clearly the point at which the audience was won over.⁷⁴ The act of playing together had obvious symbolic importance: it indicated respect for local musical expertise, offering both performers and audiences a mutual experience of cultural exchange. It also allowed a sense of participation that simply observing a performance might not—and this kind of engagement was tremendously moving for audiences. Occasions for playing together occurred in some form on most of the State Department’s jazz tours.

The engagement with audiences was important to musicians’ sense of purpose, as well. When American jazz musicians traveled abroad, especially to Africa, many of them carried vivid ideas about who they should play for. Having been subjected to pervasive racial and class discrimination in the United States, many hoped they would play primarily for ordinary citizens, not intellectuals or elite society parties. Some members of Duke Ellington’s orchestra imagined that they would find a kind of kinship with oppressed people. According to Thomas W. Simons Jr., who accompanied the Ellington tour, the musicians “believed that the lower classes, even if unimportant politically, were more worthy of exposure to good Western music than the prestige audiences for whom they played.”⁷⁵ The State Department’s policy of subvention rather than outright sponsorship meant that usually some fee was charged for tickets, to cover as much of the cost of the concerts as possible—thus, the abjectly poor in any place would not be able to attend concerts unless the entry fee was waived or free tickets distributed by the post. It was customary to invite well-known local political and musical personalities to diplomatic receptions and dinners, but ordinary listeners would typically not be included in these events, and the musicians noticed their exclusion. This custom led to occasional conflict between musicians and diplomatic posts. In one anecdote that exists in several conflicting accounts, Dizzy Gillespie insisted that a group of people (named variously as “urchins” or “shabby laborers”) be admitted to a garden party at the Turkish-American Association. This incident made headlines both abroad and in the United States: it was understood as a demonstration of egalitarian thinking and disregard for class distinctions.76

Max Kaminsky, the trumpet player in the Teagarden Sextet, recalled his disappointment at not reaching mass audiences:

Though it was obvious and understandable that the more out of touch with Western culture the people were, the less meaningful our music would be to them—just as theirs often pulled a blank with us—still I was bothered and uneasy whenever I felt we weren’t playing enough for the common people. It was great, of course, when we played in the big, cosmopolitan cities where there were many jazz fans, and it was a tremendous thrill to have them clap the house down and follow us around as if we were celebrities, but it seemed to me that it was just as much our job to play for the common people, too, however little they seemed to get out of it. I couldn’t get it through my thick head that the poor people in the East were not as hep as poor people in the West, and that perhaps in playing for the students and the elite and the culturally sophisticated our “message” was getting through where it would do the most good.⁷⁷

Yet even at home in the United States, jazz did not reach all mass audiences on a broad scale. Although swing was popular on television and radio, many kinds of jazz remained subcultural music, cultivated by small circles of musicians and fans.⁷⁸ That the musicians expected a mass audience abroad when they didn’t have one at home testifies to the power of imagined connection. Identifying themselves as cultural outsiders, the musicians imagined that the poorest indigenous people would be most receptive to their music.

Even though jazz did not always attract mass audiences, State Department programs did help cultivate new audiences for it, both because they drew attention to it and because they allowed listeners an opportunity to become familiar with it over several successive visits. Posts were always delighted when they could bring in audiences other than the already existing circles of jazz aficionados. The Wilbur De Paris band drew a predominantly non-European crowd in Morocco: the post reported that “as the existing and organized community of young people interested in jazz consists almost exclusively of ‘Europeans,’ it is fair to state that several thousand non-initiates were successfully reached and held by the band.”79 That the concert was reviewed by a Moroccan not known to the Casablanca jazz community was also considered a sign of progress: jazz making its way outside the subculture to reach a wider audience. Sometimes a single attraction would build an audience over the course of a week in a particular place. Although Dizzy Gillespie’s first concert in Dacca was not a great success, by the time he left Dacca, “the students here had adopted modern American jazz wholeheartedly. Tremendous applause, whistling, clapping, and all the other earmarks of a dedicated jazz audience were so much in evidence that Gillespie’s final performance ran nearly an hour overtime.”⁸⁰ Gillespie had failed to draw audiences in Quito, yet when the University of Michigan Jazz Band went to Quito nine years later, it was welcomed by a sophisticated, “hip” audience.⁸¹ Brubeck likewise helped prepare an audience for Teagarden’s and Ellington’s Indian performances.⁸² Interest increased with each tour that passed through, and some cities were visited by a jazz attraction every year or two from the late 1950s through the 1960s. The repeated presentation of jazz appears to have cultivated a broader following for the music over time, though it never became a ubiquitous taste.

JAZZ MUSICIANS AND THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

Some scholars have expressed the opinion that sending African American musicians abroad was a naive act on the part of the State Department because the musicians successfully subverted the intended message. Harilaos Stecopoulos writes that “the U.S. inadvertently offered black propagandists extraordinary opportunities to stage their own counterpropaganda activities.”⁸³ Penny Von Eschen also uses the word inadvertent and notes that policy makers “never dreamed that the musicians would bring their own agendas. Nor did they anticipate that artists and audiences would interact.”⁸⁴ Yet we have seen that the department purposefully set up situations in which musicians would engage with audiences and fellow musicians, and officials were well aware that African Americans would be asked political questions on their tours. By the time jazz musicians began touring, the department had already sent several African American classical musicians on tour. These musicians were asked about race and responded as they saw fit.⁸⁵ There was no reason to believe that jazz musicians would do otherwise.

Did the musicians subvert the State Department’s agenda for the tours? The evidence does not bear out this hypothesis. Jazz musicians certainly criticized the United States during their tours, and they were given many opportunities to do so. The foreign press routinely asked African Americans about their treatment at home, and often enough the musicians would speak frankly about America’s problems. Such criticism was possible even onstage. When Charles Mingus traveled to Portugal to represent the United States at a 1975 jazz festival, he “dedicated a song to ‘Rockefeller at Attica,’ lamented the Watergate Affair, and chanted critical, sometimes profane commentary of former President Nixon.” According to an eyewitness account, though, this performance had no derogatory effect: “Those who understood English and heard his words above the sounds of the percussion were stunned by the fact that a U.S. musician whose attendance at the Festival was made possible through U.S. government support would feel free to criticize his country’s political leaders.”86 Mingus’s words were understood by the audience and by the State Department alike as a practical demonstration of free speech.

American musicians sometimes enacted democratic ideals in a showy manner that they may have intended as subversive. Gillespie’s insistence on inviting poor people into a reception was one such example. The post in Dacca reported that “Gillespie, himself, was well liked by the local population. He was completely natural and spontaneous and even stunned the citizenry on one occasion by arriving at USIS in a bicycle rickshaw which he was energetically pedaling himself, while the rickshaw wallah reclined in the passenger’s seat.”⁸⁷ Playful displays that overturned the local social order could easily be understood as an enactment of liberation, presenting a vivid picture of American democratic ideals that reinforced the U.S. government’s emphasis on upward class mobility and egalitarianism.⁸⁸ Given the rhetoric of freedom that was emphasized in U.S. propaganda and tied closely to the idea of jazz itself, it was very difficult to subvert the State Department’s wishes with defiant words or actions of any kind. Only genuine rudeness or criminal behavior would be truly subversive. Although musicians did occasionally offend their hosts by skipping diplomatic receptions or refusing to give encores, these instances were comparatively few, and they were occasioned less by subversive intent than by exhaustion or frustration with poor performance conditions.

In some respects the mere presence of the American jazz musicians was enough to present a strong positive message. When African American classical musicians were offered, critics could and did say they were a rare few. Classical musicians seemed to represent the cream of culture that would be available only to those with access to an elite education—a sticking point for propaganda while activists at home struggled to desegregate schools and universities. By contrast, a jazz band, black or integrated, carried overtones of popular music, which was assumed to be more widely available. The musicians were obviously affluent, well-dressed, and well-equipped, and they gave the impression that such prosperity was accessible to a broad spectrum of African Americans.89 When the Wilbur De Paris jazz band visited Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the post reported that an Ethiopian bodyguard talked with a member of the band and learned that the musician owned his own automobile and had just purchased a house. The officer later told an embassy staff member that “while he had read of American Negroes having such material possessions, he had doubted that this was true. He told the staff member that he had now revised his opinion of the status of Negroes in the United States. He said he would not have believed these facts had not the American Negro told him himself.”⁹⁰ Whether the music succeeded or failed to reach audiences in any particular place, the appearance of African Americans on behalf of the U.S. government gave the impression that things were improving for black Americans. That the musicians embraced both the historical narrative of stylistic progress in jazz and the idea that jazz represented democracy furthered this impression.

Likewise, the existence of racially integrated ensembles meant a great deal as evidence of cooperation between musicians of different races. Gillespie said in interviews that he was looking forward to countering negative stories about race in America through the example of his mixed-race band.⁹¹ Touring the USSR, Benny Goodman constantly fielded questions about the African American performers in the band: he claimed he “really didn’t have anything particular to say, other than that we’ve had colored musicians in the band for twenty-five years.”⁹² Earl Hines’s integrated band followed Goodman’s four years later, and the Soviet public expressed great curiosity about the relationships among performers in the band. The propaganda value of allowing hundreds of thousands of people abroad to witness firsthand the achievements of African Americans and their white colleagues’ respect for their work was worth a great deal. Against this visible presence, any critical comments about race could be seen as adding a touch of realism to an otherwise rosy picture.

Contrary to Von Eschen’s and Stecopoulos’s claims, many African American jazz musicians worked hard to show the United States in a positive light. The University of Illinois Jazz Band offers a powerful example. The band included four African Americans, all of whom were interested in African studies. The State Department noted that three wore Afros. The post reported that “these four persons exerted a magnetic attraction upon African students studying in the USSR. Whether they were students from Kali studying at the Agro-chemical Institute at Krasnodar, or Somali and Ghanaian students at Leningrad State University, African students were constantly in the company of the black Americans. On numerous occasions they engaged in all-night conversation about the conditions faced by African students studying in the USSR, race relations in the United States and other subjects of mutual interest.”93 The good relations and “natural manner” among the black and white band members appeared to impress the African students. Indeed, the Americans found themselves thrust into an ambassadorial role. At a postconcert dinner in Leningrad’s Hotel Yevropeyskaya, for example,

a Somali student, who spoke impeccable British English, walked up to a table where four black and six white bandsmen were eating. He began in a loud voice to berate the blacks for “pretending” that they could sit and eat as equals with white Americans when the whole world knew that this was not so. The student continued berating the bandsmen about white “imperialism” for about five minutes while one of the whites mistakenly tried to reason with him. At this point one of the black Americans got up from the table quietly and, putting his arm around the Somali, invited him to the bar for a drink and a quiet discussion of race problems in the U.S. Several other African students spoke approvingly of the Americans’ conduct on the next and subsequent days.⁹⁴

The post reported that this and other conversations made a great difference in both Soviet and African opinions about America’s racial conflicts.

That African American musicians chose to contribute to the cause of U.S. propaganda does not necessarily mean that their participation weakened the cause of civil rights. On the contrary, the musicians presented a personal perspective on America’s conflict. By presenting themselves as caring and intelligent interlocutors, they countered stereotypes about African Americans and won allies abroad for the civil rights cause. Likewise, as we will see in the next chapter, the State Department’s advocacy helped jazz gain greater prestige at home.

The musicians likely understood their support for the department’s agenda as a trade-off: U.S. government support was very good press for jazz.⁹⁵ Stecopoulos claims that the United States “cleverly hijacked a black cultural expression of struggle for its own cold war ideological purposes without acknowledging the value of that culture at home.”⁹⁶ Yet the State Department routinely defended jazz at home. Every member of Congress and every citizen who wrote letters vilifying jazz to the State Department received a letter in return that explained the value of jazz for America’s foreign relations. To placate a U.S. congressman who received complaints about jazz from constituents, Robert C. Hill, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, wrote that jazz was important in “exemplifying in a musical form the exuberant, pioneering spirit of this country, which has, in music as in other ways, been an inspiration to many foreign peoples.”97 To Senator John Marshall Butler, Hill wrote that “the particular contribution by jazz, and by the Gillespie group specifically, is that of a musical form uniquely American in origin, evoking a special response from new and otherwise unresponsive groups. To the young people in almost every country jazz represents freedom, vitality and a new kind of expression.”⁹⁸ Whether or not hostile recipients believed these statements, they represented official government support for the music. In a 1957 poll conducted by Down Beat magazine, Gillespie’s tour was rated as the best thing that had happened to jazz that year.⁹⁹

Figure 8. Dizzy Gillespie poses as a snake charmer, Dacca, Pakistan, 1957. Gillespie’s wife, Lorraine, holds a snake. Behind them is trombonist/composer Melba Liston. Courtesy of Mrs. Ilse Poindexter and the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University.

Reception of tours in U.S. newspapers was generally far more positive than constituents’ letters to Congress would suggest. The carefully staged photographs that showed jazz musicians in exotic settings—Teagarden with his trombone on an elephant, Gillespie charming a snake with his trumpet (figure 8)—made appealing copy. Furthermore, the story of American music doing well abroad was flattering even to Americans who did not especially like jazz. Variety, Esquire, the New York Times, and the major African American newspapers regularly covered the tours, usually presenting them as a great opportunity for the musicians and a diplomatic job well done. The tours of jazz musicians typically received more media coverage than any but the symphony orchestra tours. Jazz became the music Americans knew was being sent abroad on their behalf.100

Jazz musicians acknowledged that the tours were good press for their music. Jazz artists and their allies had been campaigning for an understanding of jazz as a genuine American art form since the Harlem Renaissance. If the American public had failed to appreciate jazz in large numbers, they thought, perhaps the government’s support might help.¹⁰¹ In 1967, noting a declining market for jazz in the United States, Down Beat called for the U.S. government to do something about the situation, perhaps offering more government support for jazz at home as well as abroad.¹⁰² Dan Morgenstern noted that there was no danger that “jazz would be clasped in too stifling an embrace by ‘the establishment’”—jazz needed more government sponsorship, not less.¹⁰³ Beginning in 1964, the State Department began sending Music Advisory Panel representatives to collegiate jazz festivals, seeking young jazz bands to send on tour. Some players knew they were being scouted, and they vied for the opportunity to tour. Because jazz was not taken seriously by most university faculties of music, many collegiate bands were still struggling to attain recognition and funding from their home institutions. Often the bands were not even allowed to use their universities’ names or rehearse on campus. The government’s approval of the music meant a great deal to these students.¹⁰⁴ Far from oppressive, the government’s support energized musicians as they looked for ways to promote their music.

At the time of his tour Gillespie believed that U.S. government support would raise the music’s profile. In an article in Esquire magazine he drew a distinction between jazz’s typically warm reception abroad and public ignorance at home. He explicitly asked that jazz be taught to every American schoolchild: “Let them be told that jazz is, in effect, free speech in music, that it’s America’s music.” Noting the decline of jazz on radio, television, and in jukeboxes, Gillespie welcomed the state’s patronage as a means of ensuring the survival of jazz. Citing Congressman Frank Thompson’s interest in creating a National Jazz Collection, he asked the magazine’s readers to write letters supporting that project. Most important, Gillespie also described how jazz served American interests. Anti-American student demonstrators in Athens had stoned the offices of the United States Information Service just before the band’s arrival. By contrast, Gillespie noted with pride, “they loved us so much that when we finished playing they tossed their jackets into the air and carried me on their shoulders through the streets of the city.”105 Far from subversive, Gillespie appears to have been proud that the power of jazz could be turned to the advantage of his country.¹⁰⁶

A frequently cited quotation regarding Gillespie’s attitude toward the government implies that he skipped his State Department briefing before the tour. In a 1979 memoir Gillespie explains that he told his wife: “I’ve got three hundred years of briefing. I know what they’ve done to us, and I’m not gonna make any excuses. If they ask me any questions, I’m gonna answer them as honestly as I can.”¹⁰⁷ No evidence from the time of the tour has surfaced corroborating his attendance or nonattendance at the briefing. When he retold his story in the 1970s, Gillespie may have felt a need to distance himself from his cooperation with the government. As the historian Ben Keppel has explained, the African American intellectuals who fought for integration in the 1950s were dismissed in the 1970s as people “who served in white society rather than fighting for black needs.”¹⁰⁸ From the point of view of the late 1960s and after, cooperation with powerful white people was often regarded as a moral failing, not a success. Even as early as 1961, W.E.B. DuBois had called black Americans’ cooperation with the State Department “selling their souls to the devil.”¹⁰⁹ Gillespie’s memoir responds to this kind of critique by emphasizing that his work helped fight prejudice at home: “One of the reasons we’d been sent around the world was to offset reports of racial prejudice in the United States, so I figured now we had a chance to give the doctor some medicine and fight against racial prejudice and end all those reports.”¹¹⁰ In these statements Gillespie aligned himself more closely with later, more confrontational, thinkers. Whereas in the 1950s musicians who were formed by the struggle for integration were happy to assist the State Department, such cooperation was regarded with suspicion by the 1970s, and it has been downplayed in recent histories of jazz tours. Those who would understand Gillespie and other jazz musicians as having opposed the State Department appear to project a later political agenda back onto earlier events.

The musicians’ newfound cynicism about the U.S. government’s appropriation of jazz as “America’s Classical Music” grew out of having observed how the higher status conferred by government approbation affected perceptions of jazz. Randy Weston, for example, “worried that the latest tendency to call jazz ‘American music’ played down black contributions and indirectly contributed to the marginalization of black musicians.”¹¹¹ As Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has explained, the framing of performance as national heritage often disenfranchises creators: the proprietary rights to a style or manner of performance can be appropriated as “national,” downplaying the role of the community or region in which that style originated.112 This is where Stecopoulos’s claim of “hijacking” has some validity. Still, the state’s appropriation of jazz was not a theft without acknowledgment but rather a theft through the act of acknowledgment.

Once jazz became entangled with the interests of the state, it was not easily disentangled. Some critics have celebrated the development of an official narrative of jazz in institutions such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, while others have bemoaned the exclusivity of that narrative. Wynton Marsalis, the director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, sees the center’s jazz education programs as the realization of earlier musicians’ dream of full inclusion in the American cultural scene. A recent writer, Kabir Sehgal, praises what he dubs “jazzocracy” as the blending of jazz and democracy, fully embracing the narrative set out by the State Department even as he also acknowledges it as “myth.” By contrast, some critics believe that the embrace of jazz as official music has both restricted the history of jazz to a standard story and set limits on present-day creativity.¹¹³ William Maxwell derides “jazzocracy” as the combination of jazz and bureaucracy—an institutionalization of jazz that culminated in the 1987 congressional resolution declaring jazz “a rare and valuable national treasure,” in Jazz at Lincoln Center, and in Ken Burns’s miniseries Jazz (2000).¹¹⁴ Maxwell argues that “jazzocrats” love too well the heroic story of jazz as America’s music and that they suppress the modernist protest embodied in jazz to display a superficially happy ending for all.

The State Department’s eagerness to frame jazz for use in its diplomacy program and the willingness of jazz musicians to serve internationally as symbols of African American success facilitated this institutionalization of jazz and even set the terms for its inclusion in the American canon. Whether or not jazz musicians intended to subvert the government they served, their actions very effectively supported the image that the State Department wanted to project. In return, the inclusion of jazz in a government-funded program fulfilled long-held aspirations of African American musicians to be acknowledged as a valued part of American culture.¹¹⁵ That jazz was recognized as a powerful means of reaching audiences abroad both supported U.S. propaganda goals and strengthened the image of jazz at home.