Satchmo and the Cold War

Cultural dimension has been on the interest of many Cold War historians for quite sometimes, especially since the latter half of the 1990s onwards.

They see that the US domination in the global scale during the height of the Cold War (after the 1950s) did not come by accident. It was well planned. In order to protect the US led capitalism to other places of the world, a line was drawn to prevent the spread of Russo-Sino Communism (so called the Containment policy).

Cold War in Southeast Asia began after the area of conflict moved from the Korean War down to Vietnam.

By preventing the spread of communism, solid cultural policies were needed in order to fight against the Communist propaganda.

Including jazz.

Satchmo blows up the word: Jazz ambassadors play the Cold War (2004) is one of the recent works trying to point out how American jazz musicians were one of the forces to assimilate American values (democracy, freedom, etc.) abroad. Jazz was picked by Washington seeing as fit to the image of the US, as it is a distinct form of art unlike Europe's Ballet, Classical music and all that.

However, jazz ambassadors carried more that what they were assigned to do. Read this interesting book and you'll see why.

I think it should be good to end with this quote :

From 1955 on, Armstrong was greeted enthusiastically by foreign audiences wherever he went. Whether on official State Department tours such as his 1960-61 African trip, or on unofficial journeys such as those to Ghana in 1956, Latin America in 1957, and East Berlin, Armstrong was Ambassador Satch. (p.12)

If you love jazz, and if you love history, this book is worth reading, indeed.