The Failings of Jazz Diplomacy

Rita M. Hynes Radboud University Nijmegen

The Real Ambassadors?

The Failings of Jazz Diplomacy and the Cold War Art of Duke Ellington and Josephine

Baker

“No commodity is quite so strange

as this thing called cultural exchange

Say that our prestige needs a tonic

export the Philharmonic,

That´s what we call cultural exchange!”

(see Louis Armstrong)

In 1962, the bandleader and trumpeter Louis Armstrong, along with the jazz vocalist Carmen

McRae, recorded the song “Cultural Exchange” and celebrated an emblematic freedom of

American democracy during a Cold War crisis. Their jazzy rendition of the American dream

supposedly charmed and beckoned those outside the U.S. to participate in their world-wide

concert series and later concept albums.

The Real Ambassadors (1962) was just one of the many socio-political jazz albums of the

decade that was inspired by these concerts. It claims to have artistically dealt with themes of an

ideal American democracy through explicit tactics of “white” political propaganda. In

Armstrong’s “Cultural Exchange” lyrics, one can see how popular culture and the Cold War,

civil rights and democracy, jazz and U.S. diplomacy became intermittently bound together in a

complex network of American international policy making. This essay argues that lurking

underneath the cheery, patriotic notes of the jazz ambassadors were bludgeoning racial tensions,

drastic codes of censorship and an uncontainable fear of internal communist liaison which

painfully cut through the propaganda it had set out to achieve.

In the 1950s and 1960s, jazz music starkly critiqued Cold War governed democracies and

expressed a much more radical view of American society. It subverted the way America

presented itself as a democratic nation, and in this regards it was not a democratic art form in the

way the U.S government had framed it. During this Cold War era, jazz music became a

consciously ideological weapon utilised by jazz players against foreign policy makers and by the


end of the 1960s, it had completely failed to be used as tool of propaganda by the U.S. State

Department.

I therefore ask were the jazz ambassadors of the Cold War actually diplomatic? Focusing on a

cultural comparative case study of the renowned pianist, Duke Ellington and the acclaimed

singer-dancer, Josephine Baker I argue that jazz never stood for ideals of the American

government. I have selected these artists specifically to highlight two very different Afro

American jazz performers of the 1960s and overall re-examine some issues that linger behind

cultural diplomacy and Cold War metanarratives.

During and after World War II, there was a great sense of expanding U.S. cultural democracy on

a European and international scale, both to counter the threat of a post-war communist uprising

and to firmly re-establish America as an infallibly democratic determinant of world power.

Americans had aimed for unilateralism in international affairs. They were sceptical of

international institutions and were less inclined to work cooperatively with other countries for

common goals (Kagan 1). Originates of this can be traced in the spreading of American cultural

ideas through the Secretary of State’s Marshall Plan initiative of 1947, but came in more

concentrated projects of the State Department in the 1950s and 1960s. America held itself up to

the world as an enduring democratic and just society. However, after World War II America was

the exact opposite of its own self-fashioned image. Civil rights for Afro Americans were still a

contested and debated issue in American politics. Segregation was a permanent aspect of day-to-

day living and people were continuously discriminated and penalised in work, education and

marriage based entirely on the origin of race. Black American people could not vote until 1957,

and were still subject to legislated white segregation until the late 1960s. Race relations in

America were terse, and soon became a volatile weapon caught in the cross-fire of Cold War

politics. Harvey G. Cohen argues that pro-Soviet propaganda ridiculed the irony of America’s

civil rights abuses and violence in the face of their idealistic vision of democracy (Cohen 412).

These kinds of pro-Soviet campaigns persuasively asked how American democracy can work for

the world if people in their own society did not even have the right to vote. Politically, it was a

strong argument against the unilateral vision America had set itself up for. Race relations in

America were terse, and soon became a volatile weapon caught in the cross-fire of Cold War

politics. Harvey G. Cohen argues that pro-Soviet propaganda ridiculed the irony of America’s


civil rights abuses and violence in the face of their idealistic vision of democracy (Cohen 412).

These kinds of pro-Soviet campaigns persuasively asked how American democracy can work for

the world if people in their own society did not even have the right to vote. Politically, it was a

strong argument against the unilateral vision America had set itself up for.

Mary Dudziak contends that ‘Soviet propaganda on race was uniquely effective because there

was so much truth to it’ (Dudziak 546). It had tainted a national post-war image modelled

distinctly on domestic democracy and made the world question the integrity of a leading

superpower. To compensate these arguments and convince the rest of the world, the American

government invested heavily in culture programs that would act subtly (and sometimes not so

subtly) as propaganda for U.S. democratic conservatism. It was the nation’s obstinate belief in

democracy over active “threats” of communism, Anti-Americanism, and totalitarianism that lead

U.S. information officials at the State Department and the United States Information Agency

(USIA) to form America’s first peacetime propaganda offensive (Nelson Blake 123).

Jazz, became an ideal American cultural product of propaganda because it was first and

foremost a kind of “race” music. By performing jazz for the Soviets and other communist

affiliates, U.S. foreign policy had attempted to communicate the idea that civil rights were

changing in America and that black people were given a democratic voice in their own country.

Popular and revered jazz players were hence selected by the State Department to display ‘the

status and opportunities available to blacks in America’ (Cohen 414).

Jazz diplomacy officially began in 1954, when the U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower sent the

first musical ambassadors to tour abroad as part of the President’s Special International Program

for Cultural Presentations. President Eisenhower charged the music panels of the Academy of

National Theatre and Art (ANTA) to ‘make nearly all of the important decisions about the U.S.

government’s most visible music propaganda program. Its members had agreed to promote jazz

in a limited capacity, recognizing that their power might be reduced if they refused.’ (Abrams

Asari 51). Eisenhower’s reasoning for this was to “contribute to the better understanding of the

peoples of the world that must be the foundation of peace.” (Eisenhower in Abrams Asari 41).

However, Emily Abrams Asari points out in her essay on Cold War musical diplomacy that in

private the president had expressed ‘additional strategic goals depicting music as a psychological

tool that could counteract the stereotypical perception of Americans as “bombastic, jingoistic,


and totally devoted to the theories of force and power.”’ (Abrams Asari 41). But as well as this,

Eisenhower must have been aware that the Afro American element in jazz music would signify a

much more tolerant national model for race relations.

Although popular jazz music was everywhere during this time, many in government had little

or no interest in jazz themselves. The Republican State department evidently saw the cost of

sending black jazz ambassadors on tour as an outrageous expense on the government’s part, and

would not fund such tours until the year 1960 (Cohen 417). Regardless of these attitudes towards

jazz, the American government had sponsored the first black musician (jazz trumpeter and

bandleader Dizzy Gillespie) to headline a tour as a cultural ambassador in 1956, only two years

after the president announced his Special International Program for Cultural Presentations.

At first glance, these early “Cultural Presentations” of jazz had received momentous political

success. The touring concerts were well received all over the world and gradually the issue of

race relations seemed less threatening to the nation’s democratic morale, steering America

towards internationalisation. But there was something much more sinister at play. Writing on

jazz diplomacy of the late 1950s, Stephen A. Crist observes that the Cold War project of Cultural

Presentations ‘did not advance in an orderly and self-evident manner. Rather it was an extremely

contingent enterprise enacted through countless individual actions and statements by a motley

assortment of bureaucrats and businessmen, and frequently teetered on the brink of chaos’ (Crist

137). By the 1960s, when Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker performed in these political

circles, jazz diplomacy had spun out of control in a full swing of chaos. Evidently most jazz

players could not and would not embrace the paradoxical idea of a black artist representing a

still-segregated American state (Von Eschen 58). Their art had undermined the project’s

propagandised goals and international policies which the U.S. government had so forcefully set

out to tell to the world. In its place, these artists had created a new, riotous form of Cold War

protest, giving a political voice to those who otherwise had none and heightening awareness of

civil rights across the globe.

Edward “Duke” Ellington was ambitious when it came to making a name for himself in jazz,

and whether or not it was for his career or his personal politics he was greatly aware that his

music was voicing out black interests. When John F. Kennedy was elected to presidency in 1961,

he showed little or no interest in the cultural programmes of jazz and there was a brief lull in the


State Department tours until a reprisal was released in 1962 (Cohen 418-423). Duke Ellington

was the first headlining black jazz artist to play for the American government in over three years

since Kennedy’s election. He played forty-three official concerts all around the world and spoke

informally for twenty minutes about the tense race struggles in America (Cohen 429). While

touring in 1963, Ellington participated in an interview with the Swedish television channel SVT

and talked about American race relations and politics. In this television programme we see how

direct Duke could be when it came to denouncing a conservative American diplomacy and to

speak of a more controversial underbelly of American race politics. On air, Duke urges that the

demands of coloured people “are coming more strong – as they should be” and continues to

describe how black people had built America up to what it was today (Duke Ellington with Sven

Lindahl). In 1963, this was the kind of Duke Ellington who adamantly used his jazz as a political

statement. He choose not to gloss over the issue of race relations in America and spoke directly

against the government by sharing his views of black civil rights in a troubled American

democracy. He astutely stood aside from his pre-designated role as cultural ambassador and

placed himself in the wholly undiplomatic position of a black activist seeking out a fairer future

for Afro American peoples.

Josephine Baker was much more audacious when it came to outwardly establishing her

political views on America’s race relations. As a result, she was never sponsored by the State

Department to tour. With her own finances, she funded her concerts across Europe and later

South America to communicate radically opposed views of the American government’s

propagandised democracy.

Unlike Duke Ellington, whose calm veneer and intellectual, subtle and high-brow

compositions had, at first glance, made him a suitable cultural ambassador of the Cold War,

Josephine Baker had never been considered by the State Department as a jazz ambassador. The

reasons were simple, her political voice was too persistent and her jazz was not diplomatic in an

international sense. Her concert lectures did not talk about the progress of black Americans, she

alternatively spoke of lynching, segregation and the discriminatory practices in sexual politics

(Dudziak 569). Josephine Baker’s work had belonged to the rejected art of the Cold War

“Cultural Presentations” exactly because her politics did not meet the criteria of the American


government. Mary Dudziak’s excellent essay, “Josephine Baker, Racial Protest, and the Cold

War”, succinctly notes the strategy behind the State Department’s ideological intentions:

‘The State Department could and did attempt to counter the influence of such critics on

international opinion by sending speakers around the world who would say the right things about

American race relations. The “right” thing to say was, yes, there were race problems in the

United States, but it was through democratic processes (not communism) that optimal social

change for African Americans would occur.’ (Dudziak 546)

But even before the State Department ambassador tours showcased jazz all over the world,

Josephine Baker had already paved her way abroad. By 1952, she began an independent tour of

South America and associated herself with the left-leaning politician, Juan Perón while

performing in Argentina. This immediately caught the attention of the F.B.I who sought to

discredit her. In the midst of her nearly ruined reputation and career, Baker gained an infamous

notoriety. As seen in interviews with Duke Ellington, the pressure from the government further

radicalised her art and gave a rising prominence to the rather undiplomatic critique of American

democracy. Baker, like Ellington, discussed some of the most taboo issues of racial and sexual

discrimination in minority groups before she would perform so even when her songs weren’t

making an obvious political statement it was clear where Baker set the tone of her activist

beliefs. When Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong began taking part in the President’s Special

International Program for Cultural Presentations less than a decade later, Baker was reported by

the New York Amsterdam News to have stated ‘her disapproval of Negroes who come to Europe

as “good-will” ambassadors of the U.S. Government and attempt to sell the European people on

the idea that all is well for Negro citizens in America’ (Dudziak 560). In this testimony, Baker

had sharply observed that clinching argument against the President’s Special International

Program, and articulated it in such a forceful way that few jazz players had dared to do before

her. She presented herself throughout the 1960s as a transparent radical but her politics appeared

somewhat dated in the face of the new civil rights movements.

When compared to the subtle refineries of Duke Ellington’s art, Baker was different in style

but ideologically both of these artists aligned themselves with their critique of race politics and

the refusal to be left unheard in the rhetoric of U.S foreign policy. They put a pressure on the

political system that President Eisenhower and later President Kennedy’s administration had so


tentatively put in place to repeal the uglier side of a dysfunctional U.S democracy. Ellington,

Baker, and many, many more inspired jazz musicians had realised that diplomacy did not mean

representing the U.S truthfully and so they incorporated a new truth into the performance of their

art in order to stand up against it. This kind of racial protest, however subtle and seemingly small

in the face of larger political threats, was sceptically noted by ANTA and the U.S State

Department and was then formally passed onto the F.B.I and the House Committee on Un-

American Activities (HUAC) throughout the1950s and 1960s era of Cold War politics. The

American government did not allow black artists like Duke Ellington and certainly not like

Josephine Baker, to speak for themselves without a repressive regime of containment and

censorship to get in their way and diminish the power of their musical protests.

Ellington’s suave demure and private political life had saved his career but only because the

State Department had somewhat controlled him and his political potential in the cultural

ambassador tours of the 1960s. Josephine Baker was not so fortunate and her career and

reputation was held back because of scathing articles in the media and threatening files held

against her by the F.B.I. Both these artists were caught in the middle of a cultural Cold War

propaganda campaign of the United States government and their own views of America were

perceived as a threat during a communist scare. Jazz as a way to represent America

diplomatically had undeniably failed, and instead the government had spent more time try to

repress their “national” art rather than promote it.

American foreign policy, where it touched upon non-white peoples of the Cold War, had been

marked, in political terms, by white imperialism (Moss 233). It became ever more apparent that

U.S domestic problems during the Cold War were to be shielded from the outside international

world. The discourse on civil rights was bounded by the terms of Cold War liberalism and

although some level of liberal activism would be tolerated, it could only be articulated in a way

that did not challenge the democratic order (Dudziak 569). Many jazz players, including Duke

Ellington and Josephine Baker, had consciously denied replicating this democratic order in their

art. Their music, interviews and concerts abroad did not represent an America of the United

States government, but an America representative of them. As black performers and artists, civil

rights became an integral part of their re-presentation of American democracy and decried the

foreign policy of diplomacy that the States Department had hoped for.


Using both Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker’s popular Cold War jazz as contrasting

examples, I have demonstrated that the aesthetic make-up of structured jazz forms inevitably

ended up delegitimizing Cold War democracy without ever attempting to fully reinforce it. There

were many artists who made jazz fans rethink the entire image of the American nation through

acts of individual jazz performance.

Jazz was therefore inherently undiplomatic during the Cold War because the aesthetic values

of black jazz music immediately clashed with the principles of the white supremacist political

propaganda of American politics. Contrary to what the State Department believed, there were no

“real” ambassadors of jazz only musicians and performers who expressed their own intuition and

political agendas in their art.


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The Failings of Jazz Diplomacy

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