WHEN JAZZ REACHED INDIA: BEBOP AND FILM SCORES

The U.S. State Department's jazz diplomacy reached India as part of the first wave of mid-to- late-1950s tours. Dizzy Gillespie's big band itinerary threaded the Middle East and South Asia, presenting an integrated ensemble at a time when American racial politics were headline news. To Indian listeners accustomed to All India Radio's classical broadcasts and Hindi film songs, bebop's call-and-response and polyrhythms sounded foreign yet somehow familiar—an improvisational daring that mirrored Hindustani alap's searching opening or a thumri singer's ornamentation.

- RUCHIRA TALAPATRA

Dave Brubeck in India, 1958 — On a U.S. State Department tour, jamming with local musicians. Image: Brubeck Collection, Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library.

Even at the height of military and ideological tension, the Cold War was also waged with music, dance and movies.

In the 1950s and '60s, the United States and the Soviet Union each sent artists abroad as informal "ambassadors" to woo postcolonial nations. This was an early form of today's "soft power" diplomacy-long before Twitter or Instagram. In practice, U.S. programs like the State Department's Cultural Exchange Fund funded jazz tours and cultural centers from Accra to Karachi, while the USSR sponsored film festivals and ballet shows in Delhi, Cairo and elsewhere. Jazz greats, movie stars and dancers carried culture (and politics) across Asia, Africa and Latin America, forging a new nonaligned cultural commons. Although India, Ghana, Brazil and other countries never formally joined either superpower bloc, people there enthusiastically embraced and reshaped these imported art forms. As one observer noted, "the music of jazz [became] a bridge—one that carried ideas of freedom, dialogue and creativity" between the U.S. and countries of the "Third World".