CIA and the Cultural Cold War

At its peak, the Congress had "offices in thirty-five countries, employed dozens of personnel, published over twenty prestige magazines, held art exhibitions, owned a news and features service, organized high-profile international conferences, and rewarded musicians and artists with prizes and public performances.

"[3] The point of these endeavors was to "showcase" U.S. and European high culture, including not just musical works but paintings, ballets, and other artistic avenues, for the benefit of nonaligned foreign intellectuals.

The CCF took a more conservative approach, as outlined under its General Secretary, Nicolas Nabokov, and concentrated its efforts on presenting older European works that had been banned or condemned by the Communist Party.

[2] Thomas Braden, a senior member of the CIA said: "The Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U.S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have brought with a hundred speeches".

[2] However, because the CCF failed to offer much support for classical music associated with the likes of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, it was deemed an “authoritarian” tool of Soviet communism and wartime German and Italian fascism.

The CCF also distanced itself from experimental musical avant-garde artists such as Milton Babbitt and John Cage, preferring to focus on earlier European works that had been banned or condemned as "formalist" by Soviet authorities.

This included compositions by Benjamin Britten, Erik Satie, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Pierre Boulez, Gustav Mahler, Paul Hindemith, and Claude Debussy.

The performance was so powerful in uniting the public under a common anti-Soviet stance that American journalist Tom Braden remarked that "the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U.S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have brought with a hundred speeches."

This performance was selected to counter European criticisms of the treatment of African Americans living in the U.S. During the Cold War, Louis Armstrong was promoted around the world as a symbol of US culture, racial progress, and foreign policy.

It was during this time that Armstrong continued to criticize the American government for dragging its feet on the Civil Rights issue, highlighting the contradictory nature of the Goodwill Jazz Ambassadors' mission.