“Jazz—Made in Germany” and the Transatlantic Beginnings of Jazz Diplomacy

Abstract

Historians and musicologists have described jazz diplomacy predominantly as a political and cultural practice with transnational reverberations that was launched by the US State Department during the early years of the Cold War. In her pioneering study of American jazz diplomacy, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, Penny Von Eschen, for instance, details how the US government started to employ jazz as a diplomatic instrument in 1956 when it funded Dizzy Gillespie’s tour to the Middle East. Over a period of more than two decades, the State Department sent many of the most famous American jazz musicians abroad, often to the trouble spots of the Cold War. Encouraged by the success of Gillespie’s tour, the State Department sent Benny Goodman to Southeast Asia in 1957 and funded Dave Brubeck’s 1958 performances in Poland and the Middle East. In the following years, the growing list of American jazz ambassadors included Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Stan Getz, and Charles Mingus among others. US jazz diplomacy’s primary aim was to promote American culture in countries “where communism has a foothold,” as Adam Clayton Powell put it.¹