ABSTRACT
This chapter considers ideas around the universality and particularity of jazz by focusing on five jazz musicians who were sent around the world during the 1950s: Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Wilbur De Paris, Dave Brubeck and Jack Teagarden. As a result of the shift in global politics during the 1950s, the US government came to recognize the importance of government-sponsored cultural exchanges – cultural diplomacy – while simultaneously promoting their own reinterpretation of jazz. Increasingly, jazz, long denied any public status in symbolizing America abroad, became “American music,” representing the nation’s founding principles. Against this background, the US government’s jazz ambassadors program commenced in 1956. This chapter re-examines the various interpretations of jazz these musicians took, and the underlying Americanism that inevitably led to frictions among State Department officials, American musicians, and even local fans and musicians outside America.
