The Foreign Service Journal, March 2005

their talents in government, science and the arts to create a universal Islamic civilization that broke the limitations of the religion’s original ties to the Arabian Peninsula. More recent observers have noted how Iranians have applied their talents to cinema and the Internet and have, in the process, created something unique and powerful from these imported media. So we should be wary of authors who seek an explanation for the excesses of the revolution and the Islamic republic in phrases such as “xenophobia” and “Shia martyr com- plex.” Such explanations may not be entirely wrong, but they usually dis- tort more than they clarify, implying that certain unchanging personal character traits will always explain Iran’s political decisions. One also wishes that Pollack had resisted the temptation to write about how the Iranians need to “change their behavior.” Such phraseology connotes tutelage and suggests that we are dealing with a group of unruly children. If we and the Iranians are ever going to have serious conversations about our mutual concerns — a course of action the author urges — the first step will be to end the use of such phrases. Such caveats aside, this book is a good addition to the discussion of the difficult U.S.-Iranian relation- ship. The reader should, however, read it in combination with other accounts by authors with more first- hand knowledge of the subject. Ambassador John Limbert, the pres- ident of the American Foreign Service Association, served in Iran both as a Peace Corps Volunteer and an FSO in the 1970s (and was one of the diplomats held hostage from 1979 to 1981). The Lessons of Jazz Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War Penny M. Von Eschen, Harvard University Press, 2004, $29.95, hardcover, 329 pages. R EVIEWED BY J OHN B ROWN Between 1956 and 1978, at the height of the Cold War, the State Department sponsored U.S. musical groups to perform American music in socialist countries and the Third World. These “jam-bassadors” includ- ed some of the most talented musi- cians our country has produced: Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, as well as lesser-known but still impor- tant performers such as Marion Williams and Randy Weston. In her splendid Satchmo Blows Up the World : Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War , Penny M. Von Eschen, an associate professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Michigan, tells the story of this all-too-rare example of American cultural diplomacy. She focuses on individual “goodwill” tours, the first being the excursion of Dizzy Gillespie’s band through the Middle East and the last, trumpeter Clark Terry’s tour (with his Jolly Giants) from Athens to India. She brings these events engagingly to life, using a variety of sources, including interviews and archival materials. (Regrettably, however, the book lacks a bibliography and its index is not entirely adequate.) Von Eschen’s book is much more than just a narrative history of the tours. She also makes important points about cultural diplomacy. Among her well-documented theses, two stand out. First, she says that “to export American culture was to export its hybridity, its complexities, its ten- sions and contradictions.” Second, she observes that “the export of America’s conflicts and fissures was critical to the success of cultural exchange.” She reveals the tours’ tensions in fascinating (and at times hilarious) detail, noting that stiff State Depart- ment personnel were often ill at ease with the bons vivants performers. Then there were the conflicts among the musicians themselves (who were expected to be on their best behavior, of course): During Benny Goodman’s tour of the Soviet Union in 1962, Life magazine reported, “trumpeter Jimmie Maxwell went on a hunger strike, singer Joya Sherrill couldn’t sleep, and alto sax Jerry Dodgion took sick for days.” The list of “ironies” (a favorite Von Eschen word) goes on and on, starting with the fact that the mostly black musicians were representing a country that discriminated against them. (“Forget Moscow,” said Louis Arm- strong. “When do we play in New Orleans!”) Jazz was already largely passé in the U.S. but admired in many other countries, whether as art, enter- tainment, or both. (Of course, to the White Citizens Council of Alabama in 1956, jazz was a “plot to mongrelize America.”) Even though foreign audi- ences loved the tours, the program was underfunded and criticized by Congress throughout its existence. Finally, the participants in what was billed as a goodwill program were for the most part unaware of what their government was doing to undermine the leadership of some of the very countries they visited. Perhaps the greatest irony of the State Department tours — and the key to the jazz diplomats’ success — was that they, “as vibrant representa- tives of the nation, refused to be exclu- sively defined by it.” They were M A R C H 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 55 B O O K S u