In 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet embarked on a tour of Europe and Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department.  HEAR THE STORY.

This episode features interviews with Keith Hatschek, Program Director for Music Management and Music Industry Studies at the University of Pacific; and Mike Wurtz, Assistant Professor and Head of Special Collections and Archives at the Holt-Atherton Special Collections at the University of Pacific Library.

The archival recording of Dave Brubeck is from his interview with Monk Rowe from the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College.

Dave Brubeck and The Jazz Ambassadors

Dan Brubeck:  The more repressed a society is, the more they admire the freedom you can find in jazz. Jazz is America.  People behind the Iron Curtain started falling in love with jazz. Chris Brubeck:  The idea was if we get jazz musicians to go out, that represents freedom.  People could express themselves in this kind of way out of that kind of democracy comes that kind of expression.ARCHIVAL:  Louis ArmstrongChris Brubeck:  You're not going to get a repressed environment like communism. That seemed to be the idea. I mean, if you saw a Louis Armstrong back then you know, your heart opens up and you're like, wow, this is great.  This guy is totally cool. He loves everyone and he's expressing himself and he just made people happy all over the world. So that's a way better defense against fighting communism than fighting might with might and all that, you know.  It's like nowadays, maybe we would just bomb them or something.Brandi Howell:  Welcome to The Echo Chamber. I'm your host, Brandi Howell.  On today's episode, The Jazz Ambassadors, a blue note and a minor key, America has its secret sonic weapon, jazz. This was a headline in 1955 when the United States seeing jazz as propaganda to promote democracy abroad sent its top musicians overseas.  The music they thought was a universal language, knowing no national boundaries.  So off they sent the so-called jazz ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, and lastly, Dave Brubeck. His experience with the program is the focus of this episode.Keith Hatschek:   It was a brilliant use of what we have come to term soft power.  Eisenhower realized that bullets and bombs ultimately would never decide the outcome of the future of this battle between the capitalist system and the socialist system. He very wisely invested in cultural exchanges. They were dubbed unofficially the "jazz ambassadors", Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie. The groups were chosen to go overseas and play their music.  This battle for the hearts and minds of all these territories around the world who were not directly linked to either the Western powers or the Soviet Union played out not so much in a military sense, but in a cultural sense.  Why not send a jazz quartet and have them go and do their thing in these various countries and territories?  I'm Keith Hatschek. I'm the author of "The Impact of American Jazz Diplomacy in Poland During the Cold War Era". As far as my interest in the jazz ambassadors, I teach at the University of the Pacific and we are the place where the jazz musician Dave Brubeck and his wife Iola decided to bequeath their papers and all of their archival materials.  They both attended school here in the 1940s. Dave went on of course to become a world renowned jazz musician and composer and humanitarian. And one of the things that really struck him was that he was a GI during World War II. He was in the European theater of operations and he ended up leading a band called the Wolf Pack. And after the war, after hostilities had ceased. the band stayed on and they played both for GIs, but also refugees who were displaced over there. And it really gave him a look into what it was like in Europe in the aftermath of the devastation of World War Two. Later, when he became more popular in the 1950s,

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