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In this book, Penny Von Eschen chron­i­cles the U.S. State Department’s spon­sor­ship of jazz musi­cians as cul­tural emis­saries between 1956 and 1978. These pro­grams were ini­ti­ated by Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower as a follow-up to a four-year government-sponsored tour of Porgy and Bess that had met with great suc­cess in Europe, South Amer­ica, and the Mid­dle East. The selec­tion of Gershwin’s opera for offi­cial cul­tural export was no acci­dent — the focus on African-American char­ac­ters and per­form­ers was cal­cu­lated to com­bat Soviet cri­tiques of Amer­i­can racial pol­icy. The same impe­tus lay behind the idea to send jazz musi­cians — espe­cially racially inte­grated groups — abroad.

In addi­tion to Porgy and Bess, Louis Armstrong’s 1955 com­mer­cial tour of Europe attracted the Eisen­hower administration’s inter­est. Armstrong’s recep­tion in Switzer­land led a New York Times cor­re­spon­dent to dub him America’s “most effec­tive ambas­sador,” and ask why the U.S. gov­ern­ment wasn’t export­ing jazz along with its other demo­c­ra­tic pro­pa­ganda. Later that year, Arm­strong became the first jazz musi­cian approved for a State Department-sponsored tour. He refused, how­ever, to rep­re­sent an admin­is­tra­tion that at the time did not sup­port desegregation.

Dizzy Gille­spie led a 22-piece band on the first State Department-sponsored jazz tour in 1956. The group — assem­bled for the tour and much larger than would have been finan­cially sol­vent in the U.S. at the time — per­formed in the Mid­dle East, Pak­istan, and Brazil. From the begin­ning, there were clashes between the desires of the gov­ern­ment and those of the musi­cians. Gille­spie resisted attempts to con­trol his por­trayal of the United States, espe­cially in regard to its racial poli­cies; the band was racially inte­grated, but he refused to pro­mote the idea that this was an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the coun­try. The com­po­si­tion of the band was, in fact, hid­den as much as pos­si­ble from Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives — fur­ther evi­dence that the gov­ern­ment wished to por­tray race rela­tions as bet­ter than they actu­ally were. The musi­cians were also dis­mayed by the makeup of their audi­ences. Rather than play­ing for the gen­eral pop­u­lace, as they’d thought, they often played for only the elite mem­bers of soci­ety. Thus, the musi­cians used every oppor­tu­nity to stage infor­mal jam ses­sions with local musi­cians, play­ing for local audiences.

These ide­o­log­i­cal con­flicts per­vaded the State Depart­ment tours. The issues of race and rep­re­sen­ta­tion became more and more crit­i­cal as the Civil Rights Move­ment expanded in the 1960s, and with the rise of the Black Power Move­ment. Most black musi­cians on the tours rec­og­nized that they were being used to project an ide­al­is­tic view of Amer­i­can, and fol­lowed Gillespie’s lead in advanc­ing their own racial agen­das. Sim­i­larly most musi­cians, regard­less of racial back­ground, took it upon them­selves to make con­nec­tions with local musi­cians and jazz fans wher­ever they played. Much to the cha­grin of their U.S. gov­ern­ment han­dlers, late-night jam ses­sions often led to missed offi­cial func­tions the fol­low­ing day.

The tours cov­ered large por­tions of the world, ini­tially focus­ing on the East­ern Europe, the Mid­dle East, south­east Asia, and Cen­tral and South Amer­ica. In 1962 — after years of peti­tion­ing the Soviet gov­ern­ment — Benny Good­man became the first jazz band­leader to be admit­ted to the USSR. His music was by this time seen as old fash­ioned in the U.S. (and by die-hard fans behind the Iron Cur­tain), but appealed to the Soviet gov­ern­ment. The band’s empha­sis on intri­cate arrange­ments was seen as rel­a­tively non-threatening com­pared to more mod­ern styles that focused on solois­tic expres­sion. Goodman’s abil­ity to per­form clas­si­cal reper­toire added to his appeal.
The Good­man orchestra’s tour of the USSR marked the entry of jazz into exist­ing cul­tural exchange pro­grams between the super­pow­ers. Von Eschen argues that tours to other areas of the world were in many cases linked either directly or indi­rectly to covert or overt U.S. actions in those locales. She iden­ti­fies Duke Ellington’s 1963 tour of the Mid­dle East as part of efforts to sta­bi­lize the region fol­low­ing a CIA-sponsored coup in Iraq. Sim­i­larly, State Department-sponsored tours of South­east Asia increased as U.S. involve­ment in the Viet­nam con­flict esca­lated. Although the musi­cians weren’t always aware of the U.S. actions they were appar­ently meant to dis­tract from, many made it very clear that they saw them­selves as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of jazz and Amer­i­can (or African-American) cul­ture, rather than of the gov­ern­ment and its often ques­tion­able policies.

By the mid-1960s, the State Depart­ment tours began to expand to include an array of African-American musi­cal gen­res, such as gospel and R&B. This expan­sion was part of a “cul­tural blitz” of Africa that began in 1966. Iron­i­cally, this focus on pre­dom­i­nantly black forms artists (in con­trast to inte­grated jazz bands) diluted the pre­vi­ous direc­tive to rep­re­sent race as irrel­e­vant. This period also saw the first real crit­i­cal attacks on the cul­tural pro­grams for coopt­ing black music — jazz in par­tic­u­lar — for use as a Cold War weapon.

After years of orga­niz­ing tours them­selves, the State Depart­ment started a rela­tion­ship with impre­sario George Wein in the early 1970s. Wein, with his com­pany Fes­ti­val Pro­duc­tions, was the orga­nizer of the New­port Jazz Fes­ti­val and numer­ous inter­na­tional tours by Fes­ti­val artists. This rela­tion­ship proved ben­e­fi­cial to every­one involved. The State Depart­ment gained a con­cert orga­nizer highly expe­ri­enced in orga­niz­ing tours and deal­ing with musi­cians. Musi­cians who might have oth­er­wise been deemed too con­tro­ver­sial for gov­ern­ment spon­sor­ship were able to per­form under the umbrella of New­port. Audi­ences were treated to a larger vari­ety of per­form­ers, often with mul­ti­ple stars on each billing.

The 1970s also marked a shift in the stated pur­poses of the tours. Ini­tially, the goal had been to present high-minded mod­ernist Amer­i­can music with an empha­sis on racial equal­ity. Now, how­ever, the focus shifted to pure enter­tain­ment. The bulk of the per­form­ing groups (espe­cially in the expanded offer­ings of gospel, R&B, and soul music) were all black, thus pre­sent­ing a very dif­fer­ent pic­ture of race in Amer­i­can cul­ture. Also, con­trary to the ear­lier prac­tice of stag­ing con­certs for the local elite, a greater empha­sis was now placed on per­form­ing for the gen­eral pop­u­lace, and col­lab­o­ra­tions with other musi­cians — even stars like Nigeria’s Fela Kuti — were encouraged.

Clark Terry and his Jolly Giants made the last State Department-sponsored jazz tour in 1978. After this, the respon­si­bil­ity for cul­tural export was shifted to the United States Infor­ma­tion Agency, and the rela­tion­ship with George Wein was sev­ered. Von Eschen attrib­utes the deci­sion to end the tours to eas­ing of inter­na­tional ten­sions, dras­tic changes in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal realm, and –per­haps most impor­tantly — to the fact that jazz and other African-American and African dias­poric musi­cal gen­res were by this point com­mer­cially viable in much of the world. Thus, there was no longer a need for the gov­ern­ment to actively spon­sor and export these forms of Amer­i­can musi­cal culture.

Von Eschen is a his­to­rian, thus it is nat­ural that she takes a his­tor­i­cal approach to her topic. She pro­vides a wealth of social and polit­i­cal con­text, which helps to explain the gen­eral con­di­tions sur­round­ing the events in ques­tion, as well as some more spe­cific causal­i­ties. She spends very lit­tle time dis­cussing music itself, focus­ing mainly on the musi­cians’ inter­ac­tions with audi­ences and gov­ern­ment offi­cials. What musi­cal dis­cus­sion she does engage in is gen­er­ally related to audi­ence recep­tion of par­tic­u­lar groups.

The book is some­what scat­tered in its orga­ni­za­tion — it is not quite chrono­log­i­cal and not quite geo­graphic, but some com­bi­na­tion of the two. Von Eschen has a ten­dency to go off on tan­gents, weav­ing around the topic she sets up for dis­cus­sion. These two char­ac­ter­is­tics serve to mud­dle the time­line some­what — it is often dif­fi­cult to deter­mine exactly when or in what order the events she dis­cusses occurred, and some of her infor­ma­tion seems con­tra­dic­tory. This is a bit of a prob­lem if one is actively try­ing to extract infor­ma­tion. But, if one is sim­ply read­ing the book for plea­sure — which I would highly rec­om­mend — these traits actu­ally make for an enjoy­able experience.