Did anyone catch the article "When Ambassadors Had Rhythm", in Sunday's New York Times Arts & Leisure section? This article discussed the current photograph exhibit at the Meridian International Center in Washington of the jazz diplomacy tours during the Cold War. The photographs from "Jam Session: America's Jazz Ambassadors Embrace the World" were rescued from old library files and digitally fixed up by archivist James Hershorn of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. This exhibit tells the story of the State Department's methods of portraying Americans as nice, normal people to the rest of the world by showcasing the talents of America's premier jazz artists including Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, etc. The recent New York Philharmonic trip to North Korea was quite similar to these earlier efforts.
It was quite interesting to learn how Armstrong cancelled a 1957 tour to the Soviet Union due to the government's mishandling of school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas. His temerity caused the United States government to reconsider their position, and Armstrong later led a jazz trip to South America. This cultural diplomacy was described in great detail by Penny Van Eschen in Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War.
It is quite fitting for our Library to host a lecture on Louis Armstrong two days before his purported birthday of July 4th. Author and scholar Todd Bryant Weeks, who has taught Jazz History and Introduction to Music at Rutgers University and has lectured at the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark and at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, New York, will share his knowledge of this remarkable musician on Wednesday, July 2 at 7:30 p.m. in the McManus Room.