When the State Division Used Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz to Battle the Chilly Conflict (1956)

It’s been stated that the Unit­ed States gained the Chilly Conflict with­out fir­ing a shot — a state­ment, as P. J. O’Rourke as soon as wrote, that doubt­much less sur­prised vet­er­ans of Korea and Viet­nam. However it might­n’t be whole­ly incor­rect to name the lengthy stare-down between the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union a bat­tle of concepts. Dwight Eisen­how­er cer­tain­ly noticed it that manner, a world­view that impressed the 1956 cre­ation of the Pres­i­den­t’s Spe­cial Inter­na­tion­al Professional­gram for Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Inter­na­tion­al Affairs, which aimed to make use of Amer­i­can cul­ture to enhance the coun­attempt’s picture around the globe. (That very same yr, Eisen­how­er additionally signed off on the con­struc­tion of the Inter­state Excessive­manner Sys­tem, such was the coun­attempt’s ambi­tion on the time.)

For an unam­bigu­ous­ly Amer­i­can artwork kind, one may onerous­ly do guess­ter than jazz, which additionally had the advan­tage of coun­ter­bal­anc­ing U.S.S.R. professional­pa­gan­da focus­ing on the U.S.’ trou­bled race rela­tions. And so the State Depart­ment picked a sequence of “jazz ambas­sadors” to ship on care­ful­ly deliberate world excursions, start­ning with Dizzy Gille­spie and his eigh­teen-piece inter­ra­cial band (with the late Quin­cy Jones within the position of music direc­tor).

Begin­ing in March of 1956, Gille­spie’s ten-week tour fea­tured dates throughout Europe, Asia, and South Amer­i­ca. These would­n’t be his final State Depart­ment-spon­sored excursions overseas: within the movies above, you’ll be able to see a clip from his per­for­mance in Ger­many in 1960. This tour­ing even outcome­ed in reside albums like Dizzy in Greece and World States­man.

Oth­er jazz ambas­sadors would fol­low: Louis Arm­sturdy (who give up over the high-school inte­gra­tion cri­sis in Lit­tle Rock), Duke Elling­ton, Ben­ny Good­man, and Dave Brubeck (whose dim view of the professional­gram impressed the musi­cal The Actual Ambas­sadors). However none went fairly to this point in pur­su­ing their cul­tur­al-polit­i­cal inter­ests as Gille­spie, who introduced him­self as a write-in can­di­date within the 1964 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He promised not solely to rename the White Home the Blues home, but additionally to nominate a cab­i­web includ­ing Miles Davis as Direc­tor of the CIA, Charles Min­gus as Sec­re­tary of Peace, Arm­sturdy as Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture, and Elling­ton as Sec­re­tary of State. This jazzed-up admin­is­tra­tion was, alas, nev­er to take pow­er, however the music itself has left extra of a lega­cy than any gov­ern­ment may. Positive­ly the truth that I write these phrases in a café in Korea sound­tracked whole­ly by jazz speaks for itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­males­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Movies

Louis Arm­sturdy Performs His­toric Chilly Conflict Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

When Louis Arm­sturdy Stopped a Civ­il Conflict in The Con­go (1960)

Louis Arm­sturdy Performs Trum­pet on the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Dizzy Gille­spie Runs for US Pres­i­dent, 1964. Promis­es to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Summary Expres­sion­ists to Battle the Chilly Conflict

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.