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The Politics of Ellington Abroad
From: Columbia University
| By:
Penny Von Eschen |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
During the height of the Cold War, the US State Department sent artists as cultural ambassadors to countries around the world. Perhaps the most pre-eminent was Duke Ellington, who toured during the 1960s and 1970s. While a showcase for American art, especially African-American art in the civil-rights era, these tours also showcased American foreign policy. There was some tension between the State Department and Ellington's orchestra, centering on Ellington's civil-rights stance and the band members' desire not only to play for elites in US embassies but also to bring jazz to the ''man on the street.'' Penny von Eschen, author of Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anti-Colonialism and a professor of history at the University of Michigan, visited Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies to speak about the politics of Ellington's overseas tours, and how they served both political and musical agendas. |
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| Duke Ellington. | |
 n late August of 1971, while preparing to tour the Soviet Union for the US Department of State, Duke Ellington told reporters for the Evening Star, ''After the Russian tour, we have our regular European concert tour. Then, after that we go to South America then, we come back to the Rainbow Grill in New York, then to Japan and the Orient, then back to Australia, New Zealand and then, we'll come back and probably catch another blizzard in Buffalo.'' As he went on in the interview to reject for the umpteenth time the category of jazz, Ellington concluded, ''I live in this music and this is the world.'' |
Ellington was certainly a traveler and an international figure long before his first State Department-sponsored tour, but I want to suggest that Ellington's extraordinarily expansive sense of ''the world'' was in no small way shaped by his experiences as a goodwill ambassador. The tours expanded the boundaries of Ellington's world in a remarkable and perhaps unparalleled way. Not only did Ellington tour more than any other musician, but the tours took him to places that would simply not have been possible, not commercially viable and not politically or logistically negotiable, without government sponsorship. |
Why was the State Department sending Ellington abroad? The State Department programs represented the international arm of what Casey Blake has described as a distinctly modern moment in American art that was self-consciously tied to definitions of Cold War freedom. For those who selected artists for the State Department tours, the embrace of modernism was a way of distinguishing American art from classical Soviet forms, and jazz was the pet project of the State Department. |
Unlike classical music, theater or ballet, US officials could claim jazz as a uniquely American art form, and critically jazz was an African-American art form. The State Department sent African-American jazz musicians abroad, beginning with Dizzy Gillespie in 1956, as part of a self-conscious campaign against worldwide criticism of US racism and as an attempt to build cordial relations with formerly colonized peoples in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. |
Between his first government-sponsored tour in 1963 and his death in 1974, Ellington toured the Soviet Union and made three separate trips to the continent of Africa and several trips to South America and South Asia for the State Department. Like many of his generation, Ellington was not only a patriot but a sincere believer in the American Cold War mission of promoting the superiority of American democracy. Ellington even volunteered to travel to Vietnam in 1971. He didn't go, but he volunteered nonetheless. |
Thus, for Ellington, whether at the L.B.J. White House, launching the National Endowment for the Humanities with Martha Graham and Dave Brubeck, or being honored at the Nixon White House upon receiving the Medal of Freedom, this liberal integrationist embrace of jazz must have seemed a confirmation of all he had been working for in advancing civil rights for black Americans and fighting for a recognition of excellence in music. |
For Ellington, being asked to serve as an ambassador represented a belated, long-overdue recognition and legitimacy. And in an ongoing battle over the politics of the representation of black people, black musicians and their allies, he perceived the State Department jazz tours as a global platform from which to promote the dignity of black people and their culture in the US and abroad in the era of Jim Crow. As we shall see, touring was a way to fight for civil rights. |
Yet Ellington's very closeness to this national project meant that he, along with members of his band, was uniquely situated to experience and negotiate the enormous tensions in this project. In exploring some of the tensions that arose during the tours, I want to suggest that we might see the Ellington organization as a political entity unto itself, invested in diplomatic relations and often advancing an interpretation of events that ran counter to the State Department. |
In these tensions we glimpse--to borrow a phrase from Paul Gilroy (author of The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness)--a black counterculture of modernity in, but not necessarily of, the incredibly bold and original and violent US project of hegemony, through modernization and development, that drove US foreign policy in the post-1945 years. |
Clashing with the State Department over civil rights
The Duke Ellington Orchestra's first tour was in 1963 to the Middle East, including Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Iran and Iraq. The tour came just two months after the March on Washington and followed Ellington's production of ''My People,'' a music and dance production written to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. |
''My People,'' which opened a week and a half prior to the March on Washington and ran daily at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago until September 2, included a segment that refashioned the spiritual ''Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho'' into ''King Fit the Battle of Alabam'' and described some of the most dramatic moments of the spring 1963 SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) campaign. |
Ellington did not hesitate to carry the civil-rights agenda abroad. The New York Times reported from Tehran, Iran, on November 6, 1963, that ''Ellington tonight condemned racial segregation in the United States. He said he hoped the race problem in the United States would soon be resolved in favor of the Negro.'' Reflecting on the significance of the tour, the New York Herald Tribune reported later that month, on November 29, that Ellington emphasized that ''aside from jazz, the people he met were most interested in talking about the United States civil rights struggle.'' |
Playing for the people
If the State Department's agenda of emphasizing progress in civil rights and black freedom to win allies abroad could at times allow the space for artists to promote civil rights, the agendas of the State Department and Ellington and his band did not always coincide. Band members felt that their own desires to play music and meet local musicians, as well as their genuine desire to bring jazz to new audiences, conflicted with the State Department's focus on neocolonial elites as target audiences. The State Department's views of cultural exchange were overtly challenged by members of the orchestra. |
Thomas W. Simons, the African-American escort for the 1963 Ellington tour, was deeply sympathetic to the musicians. When the musicians protested that they were playing only for elites already familiar with jazz, when they had expected to play for the people, Simons struggled to reconcile his role in the State Department with the musicians' view of the people. |
The orchestra members, Simons explained, had ''a different conception of what they were to do than the State Department.'' Simons reported, ''The orchestra members had misunderstood the word 'people' and were disagreeably surprised.'' Positioning himself as a mediator between the musicians and the State Department and not attempting to mask his sympathy for the musicians perspective, Simons adopted the third person in his report: |
He could point out that societies in that part of the world are less fluid and more highly stratified than American society. That the people, the lower classes, do not, in fact, count as much as they do with us and we are trying to reach those who do count. Two of these arguments made any real impression, band members continued to feel that they would rather play for the people. For the men in the streets who clustered around tea shop radios. More rationally, he believed that the lower classes, even if unimportant politically were more worthy of exposure to good western music then the prestige audiences for whom they played. |
The theme of playing for the man on the street was raised repeatedly by members of the orchestra, and tensions about this came up in numerous tours. Mercer Ellington explained that during the next State Department/commercial tour of Latin America, in 1971, the performance in Uruguay had been especially rewarding because they had reached ''the man on the street.'' Similarly, playing the Sports Palace in Moscow was singled out for the same reason. |
For the State Department, Duke Ellington, himself appeared the model gentleman and statesman. Moreover, other members of the band were also invested in being ''a diplomat.'' Mercer Ellington explained that during a later mixed commercial/State Department tour of Latin America it was ''good to go to the embassies even when the tour wasn't State.'' So, in other words, in many of their commercial tours they still acted as ambassadors and went to the embassies. |
Yet, the differences between the musicians' and government personnel's sense of ideal audiences in the 1963 tour points to a number of tensions among these groups. State Department officials' coded and not-so-coded discussions of ''behavior,'' a word they love, revealed anxiety about musicians' sexuality and drug use. |
Nance's breakdown
These tensions came to a head during the 1963 Middle Eastern tour, when trumpeter Ray Nance suffered an emotional breakdown apparently brought on by drinking, stress and fatigue. With officials angry about what they deemed inappropriate behavior and assumed drug use, Ellington and members of the band worked to protect and defend Nance. And I should say that reports from all sides of this incident tell of erratic behavior by Nance, culminating in Nance's refusal to stand for the American national anthem while in Amman, Jordan. And Nance had previously served time on narcotics charges. |
In this context, Ellington and other orchestra members spent hours with the State Department officials defending Nance. First, they insisted that Nance was not using drugs. To the contrary, they argued, he was drinking and depressed precisely because he was not using drugs. Now, following these discussions, all parties did agree that Nance was having emotional problems and that he should go back to the States. |
Simons, the escort officer, found himself in a position of interpreting the musicians' concern in the face of the officials' cold and instrumental approach to Nance's problems. He read this discrepancy very much as black compassion versus white indifference. ''Officials,'' Simons argued, ''don't understand the feelings our people have for one another.'' |
In a final comment on the Nance incident, I think that, while there certainly isn't enough evidence to conclude that there was political intent behind Nance's refusal to stand for the anthem--given his clear emotional problems, and given other band members' criticisms of the US government on the tour--a political reading certainly can't be dismissed out of hand. |
In another example, an African-American army private was delighted to be invited to have dinner with Sam Woodyard at the home of an African-American couple who were doing technical work for the State Department. He was then, however, deeply disappointed and devastated when Woodyard refused to sign the LPs that he had brought with him and was, in fact, cold to him and making it very clear that he did not approve of his military activities. |
Underscored by Nance's departure and some of these tensions, the 1963 tour turned out to be strange, sad and ultimately tragic. Not only were the musicians often stunned and depressed by the poverty they witnessed, but the band was playing in Baghdad next door to the Presidential Palace when it was attacked by Iraqi Air Force jets in an attempted coup d'état on November 12. Now, in this case, Ellington had been warned of the impending coup, and he agreed that they would go on and play. |
Following all these events, the tour was then cut short by the Kennedy assassination, when the band was in Ankara, Turkey. As David Hajdu has told the story in Lush Life (a biography of Billy Strayhorn), Ellington, a close friend recalled, ''was besides being beside himself. The whole tour was already strange and now the President went and died on him.'' |
African-American artists in the spotlight
Ellington's next government-sponsored trip abroad, and his first trip to the continent of Africa, was for the First International Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in April 1966. Ellington would return to the continent for State Department tours in 1971 and again in 1974. By the time of the festival, the United States Congress had formally dismantled Jim Crow with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. |
For the State Department, Ellington's presence at the festival, along with that of Alvin Ailey, Marion Williams and Langston Hughes as the senior emissaries of black America, represented the triumph of American liberalism. The State Department personnel were intensely proud of Ailey's and Ellington's art, of America's progress in civil rights, and of the wide recognition of black American culture. It was a moment of great triumph for African-American artists. With Ellington carrying away the greatest critical acclaim, many African-American artists won awards. Mahalia Jackson won Best Female Vocalist for Greatest Hits of Gospel. Louis Armstrong won Best Male Vocalist for Hello, Dolly. |
Ellington's triumph in the Soviet Union
Of all the State Department tours by all artists, the State Department and observers alike considered Ellington's 1971 trip to the Soviet Union to be the greatest diplomatic triumph. The political context is critical. Ellington's trip followed the announcement of Richard Nixon's impending visit to the Soviet Union, and promotions and publicity for the tour presented Ellington as the front man for the president, greatly playing up their friendship. According to State Department officials, this struck fear in the hearts of the Soviets, who considered Ellington, close to the president, a very important man, and they subsequently, in the eyes of the State Department, really behaved on the tour. |
Prior to this tour of September 13 through October 13, 1971, jazz had been incredibly embattled in the Soviet Union. There had only been a couple of State Department tours, one by Benny Goodman and one by Earl Hines. The Ellington tour moved through five cities with 22 concerts. |
According to State Department reports, ''Ellington was a mythical figure for the hard-core thousands of truly dedicated Soviet aficionados that waited for his arrival in the USSR with something akin to the anticipation of a second coming.'' For some Soviet fans, it was as if modernity itself had walked through the door with Ellington. ''We've been waiting for you for centuries,'' one young fan yelled. And this was reported in a letter and report to Richard Nixon by one of his State Department officials. |
During the band's appearance in Moscow, hundreds of travelers from distant places arrived in Moscow, paying as much as $50 each for a ticket, and I can't even imagine what that kind of 1971 Moscow money would mean today. Ellington is described as ecstatic, the State Department and Soviet public as overjoyed, noting that ''Even Pravda rocks rapturous with a long glowing review.'' The first such acknowledgment of the artistry of a visiting American musician, Leonard Feather called the 1971 Ellington tour of the USSR the greatest coup in the history of musical diplomacy. Just to reiterate that that was widely taken to be the case. |
Subsequent to the Soviet tour, and I think this comes as a surprise because this was in the last three years of Ellington's life, Ellington's activities for the State Department actually accelerated. And I'm not going to go into any details about the tours, but he traveled widely through Latin America, South Asia and Africa. |
Ellington's politics and his music
Finally, I want to return to the issue of the relationship of Ellington and his band to this broader national project. I, too, have wondered how to make sense of Ellington's ideas about being influenced by or absorbing rather than copying music. And I've tried to make sense of that in light of the fact that while these ideas are really appealing and persuasive, I also try to look at it in the context of Ellington being a patriot who is very much a part of this broader US project. |
When Ellington talked about absorbing rather than copying, he often emphasized the difficulties in doing this, stressing with great humility how difficult it was to embrace the world this is the metaphor that I think he increasingly used in the latter part of his life. For example, he said, ''It takes quite a bit of doing. I don't want to underestimate or understate the world out there.'' Again this notion of the world and worldliness is critical. |
Initially, this has struck me as acknowledging a very humble and delicate relationship to the world- not appropriating, with no pretense of authority or even comprehension. Reading some of Travis Jackson's work has pushed me to think about that more and to bring that together with the political context of the broader political projects of the tours. Indeed, to be involved in these tours at all was to be steeped in a project of power and appropriation. |
It is certainly no accident that jazz tours circled the quintessential Cold War commodities, oil and uranium, along with hitting the Cold War hot spots of the period. As we've seen, Ellington himself ended up in the middle of a coup in Iraq, an oil area. He would later travel to uranium- and mineral- rich southern Africa. Looking at that political context really makes one want to ask, Is it an American privilege to take up bits and pieces here and there from around the globe to use or discard as we see fit? |
And while I think the answer to that question has to be yes, I also think the conflicts within the tours--over civil rights, over US military power, over the audiences of the tours, the conflicts over musicians' desires to meet local musicians and hear new instruments and music instead of attending official functions, and, indeed, the musicians' insistence on putting their own stamp on diplomacy--all speak to the impulse to refuse appropriation and the very different project of foraging a black counter-culture of modernity. |
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