Additional Artists
Woody Herman and his orchestra jam with local musicians. North Africa, 1966. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville; Courtesy of the Jack Siefert Woody Herman Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
The State Department Does It All
Many musicians served as Jazz Ambassadors between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s when the State Department program ended. In this exhibition, images of renowned performers such as Count Basie, Charlie Byrd, Benny Carter, Woody Herman, Clark Terry, Randy Weston, and even university jazz bands tell the story of their travels throughout the world.
Clarinetist and band leader Woody Herman visited Latin America for the State Department in 1958, and continued to delight audiences on a far-reaching tour of Africa in 1966. In Northwest Africa, Herman and his orchestra relished the opportunity to play with locals and to blend instruments from different musical traditions. The following year Randy Weston also made an extensive trip around Africa. In Algiers, he talked with reporters about his interest in Pan-Africanism and African music, explaining that this genre had given birth to jazz. He further noted, “if there had not been any Africa there would not be any jazz.” U.S. embassies praised Weston’s skills as an ambassador, and one official noted that “jazz speaks in a special idiom” and is uniquely effective in communicating American ideals to Africans.
State Department officers similarly appreciated the unique appeal of guitarist Charlie Byrd’s ensemble in Dahomey, suggesting that Byrd’s involvement with Brazilian music and the band’s performance of bossa nova compositions had meaning for listeners in this West African nation because of its “strong historical and cultural ties with Brazil.” Byrd was equally effective on his 1975 Asian tour where U.S. government representatives feared that his popular appeal would exhaust the number of tickets available. In Rangoon, hundreds of young people climbed fences and onto rooftops to reach box offices more quickly. Officials at American embassies around Asia commended Byrd and were delighted by his group’s ability to communicate with musicians in host countries. An excellent example was his participation in a workshop for 150 members of the Singapore Guitar Society.
Benny Carter and his group opened U.S. Bicentennial celebrations in the Middle East and South Asia in 1975 and 1976. At performances in Ankara and Cairo, Carter asked several local musicians to play with the band. Later, the Pakistani newspaper Viewpoint declared that the American Cultural Center in Lahore “couldn’t have chosen better ambassadors of American culture than the Benny Carter Quintet.”
Clark Terry and his Jolly Giants made the last extended State Department jazz tour, reaching Southern Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia in 1978. Terry and his band took advantage of every possible opportunity in Pakistan to connect with people from all walks of life. In Lahore, he invited three well-known artists – a tabla player, a clarinetist, and an accordionist – onstage for an impromptu jam session, merging Pakistani and American musical expressions. On the group’s night off, they played a free concert for personnel at their hotel. In the grand finale of two remarkable decades of touring by the Jazz Ambassadors, Terry then flew to Bombay to head-up an ensemble consisting of musicians from over ten countries at the Bombay Jazz Yatra – a festival that signaled the growing internationalization of jazz music.
