The United States is said to have won the Cold War without firing a shot. This appears to have surprised Korean and Vietnamese veterans, as PJ O’Rourke once wrote. However, calling the long gaze between the US and the Soviet Union a battle of ideas is not entirely wrong. Dwight Eisenhower certainly saw it. This saw a worldview that influenced the creation of a special international programme for the President’s participation in international affairs in 1956. (In the same year, Eisenhower also registered for the construction of the interstate system, which was such a national ambition at the time.)
Clearly, for American art forms, they couldn’t do better than jazz. This also had the offsetting advantage of USSR propaganda’s focus on problematic race relations in the United States. and, State Department We chose a series of “jazz ambassadors” and sent us on a carefully planned world tour starting with the dizzy Gillespie and his 18-piece interracial band (with the late Quincy Jones in the role of music director).
Since March 1956, Gillespie’s 10-week tour Dates throughout Europe, Asia and South America. These will not be his last international tours hosted by the State Department: in the video above you can see clips from his performance Germany in 1960. This tour brought live albums like Greece’s dizziness and World Politicians.
Other jazz ambassadors follow: Louis Armstrong (retired from Little Rock’s high school integration crisis), Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck (the dim view of that program affected the musical The real ambassador). But so far no one has been in pursuing their cultural and political interests as Gillespie, who announced himself as a writer candidate in the 1964 US presidential election. He has pledged to rename the White House Blues House, as well as appointing Cabinets, including Miles Davis, as CIA director, Charles Mingus, Secretary of Peace, Secretary of Agriculture Armstrong and Secretary of State. Alas, this jazz-up administration was never going to take power, but the music itself left more legacy than the government. Certainly, the fact that I write these words in a Korean cafe is completely soundtracked by jazz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlayList
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Based in Seoul Colin marshall Write and broadcasting stationTS about cities, languages, and culture. His projects include the Substack Newsletter Books about cities And the book The Stateless City: Walking through 21st century Los Angeles. Follow him on social networks previously known as Twitter @colinmarshall.
