The University of Denver Jazz Band, a State Department presentation of 1964

Poster No. 351 in the U.S. Information Agency files, catalog date 21 December 1964, advertises the University of Denver Jazz Band over a painted trombonist in blue and white dots. It says plainly that the band is "A PRESENTATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" (NAID 6949276).

The sheet

A trombonist, painted in blue, is set against a pattern of white and blue dots. The lettering gives the band's name and its sponsor, and nothing else: no venue, no date and no program.

THE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER

JAZZ BAND

A PRESENTATION OF

THE DEPARTMENT OF

STATE OF THE UNITED

STATES OF AMERICA

With no place or date printed, the sheet could serve wherever the band appeared. The archive's title lists it for "USIS multiple posts," meaning more than one U.S. Information Service office abroad.

The record

The poster is in the National Archives series of propaganda posters the U.S. Information Agency distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Its catalog date is 21 December 1964 and its number in the series is 351. FRAME codes the audience as a foreign public and the purpose as persuading or winning support.

Unusually for this file, the source category is "Identified": "Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are."

Reading it

FRAME tags transfer. The appeal of jazz, and of an American university, is attached to the government presenting it. That is the whole method, and the sheet hides none of it.

This is cultural diplomacy done in the open, and it holds up well. A listener in any of those posts knew the State Department was presenting the musicians, could take the music on its merits, and could think whatever he liked about the government that presented it. Compare two earlier concert bills on this site. The 1957 Marian Anderson poster for Taipei names the State Department fund that helped present her. The 1959 Louis Armstrong poster for Beirut, as the USIA hub notes, names no sponsor at all.

The sharper contrast is with programs that hid the money. The Congress for Cultural Freedom ran magazines and an arts festival on CIA funds passed through foundations, and most of its contributors were not told. The Denver band's poster names its sponsor in the lines that follow the band's name. More sheets are in the USIA poster gallery.