African-American Jazz Diplomacy

First of all, American jazz diplomacy and even the entire music diplomacy are to a large extent an ideological countermeasure based on the “threat” of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s ideological criticism of the United States is quite powerful: The freedom claimed by the United States is hypocritical, because only white people had full freedom at the time, while African-Americans were discriminated against. In this context, black jazz is regarded by the United States as a means of “containment” of Soviet propaganda, because whether the performance of African-American musicians on the stage or their demeanor under the stage can reflect the freedom enjoyed by African Americans. Second, the attitude of the U.S. government towards black jazz

Soviet jazz musicians represented a high level of professionalism; their concerts were quite popular. At that time, many propaganda concerts were organized in cities and in villages with performances of "right", then popular performers, along with literary readings, where Lenin and Stalin's directives were read alongside poetry.

Jazz, both in democratic and undemocratic countries, is actually a small part of the commercial turnover of music. Jazz enthusiasts mostly include intelligence, progressive youth or people of art. Jazz in the USSR has become an additional justification in the fight against intelligence, as a dangerous social class, threatening the preservation of peace and prosperity in the USSR, as well as the Soviet authorities themselves. The fight against jazz has become a universal instrument, and after the Second World War, during the so-called Cold War has evolved into a means of fighting against

The aim of this organization was to bring music closer to the Soviet reality, to implement musical and educational work among the working masses, to combat the influence of bourgeois ideology in the composers' work and musical life [2]. People suspected of violating ideological principles composers, performers and musicians could even be genuinely convicted.

In principle, "disobedient" and disobedient musicians were not accepted for any job. At the same time, in the USSR, the musician could legally earn his work only after graduating from the state music school - he had to have a professional musician diploma and play in a "vocal and instrumental ensemble" with obligatorily pro-government artistic director at the helm. The legislation also had an article stigmatizing inactivity (social parasitism) [3] and as a result the musician could neither feed on art nor work, and potentially threatened with punishment.

With these methods, the power initially artificially captured the expression of the musician, performer, and author and directed it to the desired tracks, made the work of art dependent on the loyal position of the authorities, placing the limits of the norm of a "Soviet