Jazz Diplomacy in Brazil: the Little Rock Crisis and Louis Armstrong's Travel as a Foreign Policy Tool

Abstract

During the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. Department of State sponsored jazz tours around the world. Jazz used to as an important tool of American foreign policy in the Cold War period. This program become know as Jazz Ambassadors. This paper analyzes how jazz diplomacy program operated in Brazil, observing Louis Armstrong’s trip in November 1957. In addition, the paper proposes to think about how American cultural diplomacy influenced the construction of Americanism in Brazil throughout the twentieth century.