Thursday, December 02, 2004
Book Alert
A savvy look at Jazz and Civil Rights Playing on a World Stage, a book review by Jonathan Yardley)
SATCHMO BLOWS UP THE WORLD
Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War
By Penny M. Von Eschen
Harvard Univ.
329 pp.
$29.95
In the mid-1950s, one of the world's most influential Americans was a man most Americans had never heard of: Willis Conover, whose "Music USA" broadcasts over the Voice of America reached, according to Penny Von Eschen, "an estimated 30 million people in 80 countries -- a number that would more than triple, to 100 million, over the next decade." Taped in Washington, Conover's nightly program brought jazz to listeners everywhere. At a time when Cold War tensions were at their peak and American popular culture was still revered rather than resented, "Music USA" was a powerful goodwill ambassador:
"While Conover shunned overt propaganda, he believed deeply in the political importance and potential of jazz. He described jazz as 'structurally parallel to the American political system' and saw its structure as embodying American freedom; 'Jazz musicians agree in advance on what the harmonic progression is going to be, in what key, how fast and how long, and within that agreement they are free to play anything they want.' For people behind the Iron Curtain, 'jazz represents something that is entirely different from their traditions.' Conover believed that people who were denied freedom in their political culture could detect a sense of freedom in jazz."
The State Department bureaucracy, no citadel of imaginative thought, somehow figured out that Conover had a good thing going and decided to follow his example. Beginning in the spring of 1956, it sponsored a series of foreign tours by "jazz ambassadors" that spanned two decades and had a real if incalculable effect on the world's perception of the United States. Not merely did it send jazz musicians, it sent black jazz musicians, at precisely the moment when events in the South had focused attention on the grievous state of race relations in America.
(jump from the link and read the whole thing!)
¶ 12/02/2004 11:41:00 AM
A savvy look at Jazz and Civil Rights Playing on a World Stage, a book review by Jonathan Yardley)
SATCHMO BLOWS UP THE WORLD
Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War
By Penny M. Von Eschen
Harvard Univ.
329 pp.
$29.95
In the mid-1950s, one of the world's most influential Americans was a man most Americans had never heard of: Willis Conover, whose "Music USA" broadcasts over the Voice of America reached, according to Penny Von Eschen, "an estimated 30 million people in 80 countries -- a number that would more than triple, to 100 million, over the next decade." Taped in Washington, Conover's nightly program brought jazz to listeners everywhere. At a time when Cold War tensions were at their peak and American popular culture was still revered rather than resented, "Music USA" was a powerful goodwill ambassador:
"While Conover shunned overt propaganda, he believed deeply in the political importance and potential of jazz. He described jazz as 'structurally parallel to the American political system' and saw its structure as embodying American freedom; 'Jazz musicians agree in advance on what the harmonic progression is going to be, in what key, how fast and how long, and within that agreement they are free to play anything they want.' For people behind the Iron Curtain, 'jazz represents something that is entirely different from their traditions.' Conover believed that people who were denied freedom in their political culture could detect a sense of freedom in jazz."
The State Department bureaucracy, no citadel of imaginative thought, somehow figured out that Conover had a good thing going and decided to follow his example. Beginning in the spring of 1956, it sponsored a series of foreign tours by "jazz ambassadors" that spanned two decades and had a real if incalculable effect on the world's perception of the United States. Not merely did it send jazz musicians, it sent black jazz musicians, at precisely the moment when events in the South had focused attention on the grievous state of race relations in America.
(jump from the link and read the whole thing!)
¶ 12/02/2004 11:41:00 AM
