In 1963, Duke Ellington gave an interview on Swedish Television remarking that in the hundred years since the Emancipation Proclamation the demands for equality were growing stronger. At the time, President Kennedy had promised to introduce a Civil Rights bill in Congress, and Ellington was about to go on an official State Department tour representing American culture in the middle east and India.
African Americans, he noted, fought in all American wars, contributed tremendously to culture, and most pertinently, created the quintessential “American” music: jazz. “That is the music that is recognized as the American music, which of course is mostly negro.”
Ellington toured for the State Department on cultural diplomatic missions more than any other musician at the time, and would later visit the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. Officals at the State Department described him as “without fail gracious, articulate, charming, and absolutely winning.”
This clip is from The Jazz Ambassadors. Discover how the Cold War and Civil Rights movement collided when America asked Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman to travel as cultural ambassadors and combat racially-charged Soviet propaganda through their music.
