5.1 The tours in the U.S. media
310 Nye, Soft Power, 13-14.
311 Kenneth Kalu, “The Cold War and Africa’s Political Culture”, Vestnik RUDN. International Relations, Vol.
20, No. 1, (2020), 11—21.
312 Ana Naomi de Sousa, ‘Africa and the Legacy of the Cold War’
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/2/22/between-east-and-west-the-cold-wars-legacy-in-africa>
[Retrieved May 31, 2021].
313 Kalu, 11-13.
The U.S. newspapers had exotic-looking photographs, cheerful titles, and patriotic sentiment, with titles like: ‘100,000 IN AFRICA CHEER 'SATCHMO'; ‘Gold Coast Makes a Holiday of Concert’, ‘THROUGH AFRICA WITH DRUMS AND FLUTE’, ‘SATCHMO PLAYS FOR CONGO CATS’, ‘ARMSTRONG HORN WINS NAIROBI, TOO’, ‘AFRICA HARKS FOR SATCH’S HORN’, ‘Duke Ellington's Slick Jazz Is a Solid Smash in London’, ‘Jazz as Aid to World Peace Is Demonstrated for Congress’, ‘Polish Jazz Group, at U.N., Praises Goodman's Tour, 80,000 Hungarians Cheer Armstrong Jazz’, ‘LOUIS ARMSTRONG HERE; Arrives From Latin America, Sold on Jazz Fans There’.314 Between March 1956, when the first jazz artists were sent abroad, and January 1965, the New York Times published over 150 articles on the overseas jazz tours.315 Of these articles, forty percent contain Africa as a whole or a specific country. Many of these articles were written about Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman.
Benny Goodman was a Jewish jazz artist who was very popular with the white American audience.316 Goodman lowered the threshold, especially for European Americans, to like jazz.
Goodman was sent by the U.S. Government to perform in several parts in the Soviet Union, partly because of the trouble sending Armstrong. It took a few years, and many attempts to send any jazz artist to the Soviet Bloc, which eventually worked with Goodman.317
The New York Times was not the only newspaper; LA Times, Variety, Esquire, the magazine Ebony, and smaller newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier all wrote about the tours.318 The magazine Ebony, and the Pittsburgh Courier, the Evening Star, and the Arizona Tribune were the only sources in this list this thesis could use due to limited accessibility. ‘A diplomatic job well done’, was the consensus in the newspapers. The reception of the tours in these newspapers was almost always very positive, even though the actual tour may have been less so. One example, which was briefly discussed in the last chapter, is the very first tour under
314 See Bibliography for New York Times Archive sources.
315 Found via: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser.
316 Polish Jazz Group, at U.N., Praises Goodman's Tour, New York Times Archive (New York, NY: United States, June 16, 1962); Davenport, 110-112.
317 Monson, Chapters 2 to 4.
318Jackson Advocate (Jackson, Miss.) 1939-Current, January 21, 1956; Arizona Tribune (Phoenix, AZ) February 10, 1961, 3;The Pittsburgh Courier, 21 September 1957, 14, 28 September 1957; Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, November 6, 1957, September 28, 1958, May 31, 1962; Ebony (Johnson Publishing Company, 1960-1961).
the President’s Emergency Fund for International Affairs. Dizzy Gillespie went on a two-month tour through fifteen cities in six countries in the Middle East from March 1956. According to the general manager of the International Exchange Program, Robert C. Schnitzer, the tour resulted in a deficit of $92.000.319 The deficit was paid by the Emergency Fund. The reason given by Schnitzer as to why the tour was not as successful as budgeted, was the fact that many people were not familiar with jazz, saying that for some cities the Gillespie jazz band was the first appearance of jazz.320 The goals for this program were political, and not economical, but it became harder to defend the program that was arguably unsuccessful in both political and economic dimensions.321
There was a difference in approach between the ‘white/conventional’ media and the so-called Black Press. Although both were positive in the beginning, the opinions changed throughout the years on the tours. The best example is Ebony, a well-known African American magazine. Its first articles on the African music tours were titled: ‘Nigerian and U.S. Negro artists blend talents at AMSAC Festival in Lagos’, but later voiced criticism about the inequality between the Africans and the artists visiting, stating that there was no ground for equal relations between the hosts and visitors.322 Lonneke Geerlings states: “These [Nigerian] newspaper articles also reached African American newspapers, which worried AMSAC. An internal memo advised to ‘ignore the whole thing’. To smother further criticism, they sent a letter to Ebony magazine saying that the American artists ‘gave their services free (…) before their African brothers’.”323 Unfortunately, white Americans were not exposed as much to these negative outcomes of the tours because they were not discussed much in the press like the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, or the Washington Post.
The reputation of jazz changed through the tours. In the US media, jazz was often framed as
‘American jazz’ or ‘American music’, the patriotic element of the tours was enhanced. Jazz became important, and part of America’s pride abroad.
At home, music schools and jazz institutes were poorly funded, but jazz abroad was richly supported. Jazz was not seen as an actual pleasurable music genre that needs
319 Gillespie, Chapters 46 to 51; Mueller, 239–269; 'Gold Coast Makes a Holiday of Concert--Gillespie Is Back After Jazz Tour Gillespie Tour Loses $92,000', New York Times.
320 Mueller, 239-269; ‘Gold Coast Makes a Holiday of Concert--Gillespie Is Back After Jazz Tour Gillespie Tour Loses $92,000’, New York Times.
321 Fosler-Lussier, Conclusion.
322 November Issue, Ebony, 27-32; December Issue, Ebony, 144-160 (1960-1961).
323 Geerlings, 12.
“the state’s appropriation of jazz was not a theft without acknowledgment but
rather a theft through the act of acknowledgment”.
Danielle Fosler-Lussier, 100
high funding, in the US.324 Nevertheless, jazz became finally American. Historian Harilaos Stecopoulos states that the U.S. “... cleverly hijacked a black cultural expression of the struggle for its own Cold War ideological purposes without acknowledging the value of that culture at home.”325 But the State Department had to defend jazz as their music of choice for almost two decades, so they did care in a way.
5.2 How did the Nigerian public react to the tour?
The Lagos Music Festival caused a lot of controversy in several aspects. The Nigerian press was especially negative against the United States and the American Society of African Culture, calling the festival a flop and an insult to the Nigerian people. Starting with the ‘welcoming ceremony’, intended to show African Americans the tribal elements of culture. The advertisement of the festival was also bitter for the Nigerians, as there was a clear separation in the program between American performers and the Nigerian performers, who were listed as
‘guest stars’ at the bottom of the page.326 This was perhaps thought of as not very important by the Americans but it was quickly seen by the Nigerian audiences. The amphitheater in which the festival was held, the King George V stadium, now the Onikan stadium, had 5100 seats.327 According to the actor, musician, and AMSAC delegate Geoffrey Holder, the stadium was completely packed on the first evening, but Nigerian reporters estimated around 3000 visitors on that day. Additional advertisements and free leaflets were handed out the day of the festival to fill more seats.328
The performances themselves were not always well received. The War Dancers were described by critics like Babatunde Jose and his journalists at the Nigerian Daily Times, based in Lagos as; “poor in taste but also a downright insult towards Nigerians who truly represented the cultural artistry of the country”.329 They were described as a ludicrous group, and the decision to book them was felt as tone-deaf.330 As with the Nigerian drummers at the airport, this was
324 Fosler-Lussier, 98.
325 Harilaos Stecopoulos, Reconstructing the World: Southern Fictions and U.S. Imperalisms, 1898-1976 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 214; Fosler-Lussier, 95.
326 See figures 5-9 for Lagos sources.
327 Geerlings, 14-18.
328 Geerlings, 17.
329 Ismail Babatunde Jose: Newspaper Editor Who Dominated Journalism Ina, The Independent, 2011,
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/ismail-babatunde-jose-newspaper-editor-who-dominated-journalism-in-nigeria-for-three-decades-941408.html> [Retrieved October 7, 2021]; Alhaji Babatunde Jose,
"Press Freedom in Africa", African Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 296 (1975), 255–262.
330 Geerlings, 11-14.
an American vision of Africa, instead of a true image of Africa. The ‘guest stars’ all wore traditional clothing and sung century-old tribal songs, carefully picked out by the Americans, and resonated with the primitivistic conceptions of Africa.331 It did not help that one of the American artists put on traditional clothing and joined a group of Nigerian dancers. AMSAC also did not work with NIGERSAC, the Nigerian Society of African Culture, the French-Nigerian organization who were also located in Lagos. or any other local organization.
The Nigerian Morning post had articles with titles as; ‘That failure of a Show’, and ‘the Shortcoming of the AMSAC Show’. The Lagos Times captioned an article with ‘Stop Faking African Culture’, and the Daily Express tried to research the issues in ‘Why AMSAC Festival Was a Flop’.332 These journalists recognized that Lagos was being used as a playground for the Americans and as a weapon in the Cold War.333 The terminology around neo-colonialism and American imperialism flew around in the media. Nigeria claimed its voice, especially since the Nigerian politicians and press were aware of the situation in America, partly because of communist propaganda.334 The Nigerians were the ones who were liberated while America was segregated and the ‘wealthy Americans’ were still suffering at home. This caused a form of pride for Nigeria that was felt for longer than the festival itself.
These festivals and tours also strengthened the relationship between Africans. This is a very important outcome, which derived immediately from the festival and the tours, especially those after 1960.335 The festivals, tours, and other efforts from the American State Department symbolize confidence and pride for an Africa that was in the middle of creating a new identity.
It was mainly the feeling of pride, that the Soviet Union and the United States tried so hard to win them over. The sense of common identities, which was restricted during the period of colonization, became stronger again because of the Cold War.336 This is of course drifted away from the subject of US Jazz Diplomacy but indirectly changed the course of the Cold War in the Third World, and therefore the Cold War.
The headlines in the Nigerian press also show that the main goal of the AMSAC was not achieved, rather the opposite. The Americans, whether they were black or not, were still seen as Americans. This was a common view in the other host countries in Africa like Ghana,
331 Geerlings, 11-14.
332 Geerlings, 11.
333 Geerlings, 11.
334 Legvold, Part IV, section 4; Trends in Soviet Policy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, December 5, 1962, CIA, FRUS, 1961-1963, Africa, Volume XXI, No.11.12.62 (375); Nwauban, 1-28.
335 Geerlings, 14.
336 Legvold, Part IV; Nwauban, 1-28.
the Congo, Tanzania, and Kenya.337 Americans were Americans, and there was no need to search for a shared heritage, especially when the US were thought of as trying to culturally colonize African countries. Another immediate outcome of the tours and festivals is that several African countries organized their own festivals in the years after the Americans organized them.
New locations were built or expanded, so African cultural centers could use them. There is still a festival each year in the now renamed Onikan Stadium in Lagos.338
To sum up, the festivals and tours had no direct positive results for U.S. interests in Africa. The pro-Western countries mostly stayed pro-Western, communist leaders, and the socialist countries did not opt for a capitalist orientation. On a personal level, experiences will have differed. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Wilbur De Paris performed with his band, and one of the band members struck up a conversation with an Ethiopian bodyguard, talking about the house he bought, and the car he recently purchased.339 This conversation stood out for the bodyguard: “he told the staff member that he had now revised his opinion of the status of Negroes in the United States. He said he would not have believed these facts had not the American Negro told him himself.”340 So, in small installments the State Department did give the impression that the lives of African Americans were improving.