Jazz in US Public Diplomacy towards the USSR (1962-1971): Is Music an Effective Tool of Strategic Communications?

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In the 1950s jazz became the primary force in Americancultural diplomatic efforts. It consolidated itself as ametaphorical representation of the core principles ofAmerican democracy, as the two shared an inherenttension between structure and agency, rigid rules andimprovisation. This simple but powerful metaphorprompted the Eisenhower administration to establish theCultural Presentations Programme, which paid so-called'jazz ambassadors' to perform all over the world, therebyadvertising the appeal of American cultural and politicalvalues.This PhD explores US-sponsored jazz tours to the USSR-byBenny Goodman's big band in 1962 and Duke Ellington'sband in 1971-from a Strategic Communicationsperspective. It locates these tours within a broaderframework of Public Diplomacy, which ran against thebackdrop of heightened tensions between the superpowersand was woven into discourses around threats of violenceand mutually assured destruction. By investigating the roleof the jazz tours in superpower cultural relations, this studywill illuminate their relationships with geopolitical andmilitary contexts of the Cold War. Ultimately, this PhD aimsto offer a fresh conceptual understanding around musicculturaldiplomacy. It argues that the jazz tours (i)underpinned US foreign policy with a values-baseddiscourse; (ii) opened a direct route to networks of'persuadable' soviet citizens; (iii) acted as a safety-valve tokinetic threats in geopolitics of the US-USSR.