In 1956, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie became the first jazz musician to participate in the State Department's Cultural Presentations program, a highly public aspect of U.S. Government's Cold War propaganda efforts abroad. Seeking to capitalize on this historic moment, Gillespie's record company issued two LPs featuring his ambassadorial ensemble: World Statesman (1956) and Dizzy in Greece (1957). To date, scholarship about the tours highlights how Gillespie skillfully navigated the shifting political landscape both on and off the bandstand. The role that commercial record making played in the renegotiation of African Americans’ social position during this era, however, remains undertheorized. This article reveals how, despite the albums’ claims of representation from abroad, the LPs contain only a small portion of Gillespie's tour repertoire. I argue that these LPs were never meant to document the tours with veracity; rather, they were products of a political and technological moment when Gillespie's record label could leverage musical diplomacy to circulate an elevated vision for jazz within the country's cultural hierarchy.

Thomas Hastings and his contemporary, Lowell Mason, have often been criticized for rejecting the music of the eighteenth-century American psalmodists and nineteenth-century folk hymnody in favor of what are sometimes considered to be insipid arrangements or imitations of imported European melodies. Hastings, in particular, made a number of vehement statements castigating pieces in these idioms. It is certainly true that Hastings held a low opinion of many pieces in these genres, but it is also true that he printed a surprising number of them in his tune books. While many of these items were probably included because he needed them to help sell his tune books, it is also evident that his rejection of the earlier American pieces was not quite as complete as it is sometimes made out to be. This study traces his use of these “objectionable” items and of some tunes the origins of which are uncertain.

Considering the aesthetic and social value of music making among Issei, first generation Japanese in California, opens a line of inquiry into how this immigrant population negotiated their cultural and political identities in a nation that racially marginalized them. As an integral aspect of Japanese culture, music was a medium through which Issei leaders chose to claim a cultural space in the United States. Their efforts to establish themselves within the social fabric of mainstream American society reveal the social and political forces that prevented their acceptance and assimilation. Issei responded by showcasing traditional Japanese music to educate white Americans about their revered heritage, singing songs for comfort and familiarity, and encouraging their children to perform Western music as an acculturative strategy. Caught between two nations, Issei emerged with alternative identities that ultimately failed due to the racist ideology governing American citizenship.

This article analyzes the revisions producer Cheryl Crawford and her team made to Porgy and Bess for a revival that opened in Maplewood, New Jersey, in 1941 and moved to Broadway in early 1942. Crawford's revisions addressed criticisms of the opera that had first been issued at its premiere in 1935, especially complaints about its dramatic viability and the appropriateness of African American performers in opera. The revisions distanced Porgy and Bess from the practices of the Metropolitan Opera House, which the press routinely criticized as antiquated and dull. They also reduced the amount of operatic recitative, which Crawford saw as “out of keeping with the black milieu,” strategically reserving the device for specific moments that played into the stereotype of African Americans as naturally musical. In her marketing of the show, Crawford reframed the critical discussion of Porgy and Bess by deflecting attention away from disputes over genre and race and toward the structural and formal qualities of the work. These strategies, which were aimed at attracting a broad audience with divergent values and aesthetic preferences, proved successful. Whereas the 1935 production was a commercial failure, Crawford's Porgy and Bess became a hit, marking a crucial step toward the establishment of the work in the American operatic repertoire.