Jam Session HS.fi (Helsingin Sanomat) Helsinki, Finland July 12

Jam Session
HS.fi (Helsingin Sanomat)
Helsinki, Finland
July 12, 2008
Jam Session
HS.fi (Helsingin Sanomat)
Helsinki, Finland
July 12, 2008
Page 2
Jam Session
HS.fi (Helsingin Sanomat)
Helsinki, Finland
July 12, 2008
Page 3
Abridged Translation
Jazz was America’s weapon in Cold War diplomacy
Helsingin Sanomat July 12, 2008
By: Markku Saksa
Translated by Helen Gästrin
An exhibit consisting of a hundred rare photographs of the jazz diplomacy used by the US
during the Cold War, Jam Session, will tour the US.
During the 20 years the US sent hundreds of American jazz musician to Africa, the Middle-East,
Eastern European countries, the Soviet Union, Asia and Latin America.
The exhibit is based on the rare pictures by both professional and non-professional
photographers. Pictures of Dizzy Gillespie enchanting a cobra in Pakistan, Louis Armstrong and
his All Stars band playing to half a million people in soon-to-be-independent Ghana and Benny
Goodman on the Red Square.
The idea of jazz diplomacy came in 1955 from Congressman Adam Clayton Powell from
Harlem, New York.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration promoted jazz to challenge the international
excitement raised, especially among cultural circles, by the Soviet ballet and symphony
orchestra.
Jazz players got some general guidelines from government officials, but they were at liberty to
speak as they wished. Their candor and sincerity actually worked in their sponsors’ favor, as
Exhibit Curator Curtis Sandberg points out.
When base player Charles Mingus, who grew up in the ghettos of Los Angeles, spoke out
against the American establishment in Portugal, his audience was impressed by a country that
lets its citizens criticize their own government so freely. The Portuguese could not even dream
of it under the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar.