Wind Bands in U.S. Cold War Musical Diplomacy

In 1961, the University of Michigan Symphony Band embarked upon the longest U.S. State Department–sponsored tour in history. The 94 musicians traveled throughout the Soviet Union, Middle East, and Eastern Europe, playing 71 concerts in 30 cities from February to June. With this tour as its central case study, this dissertation inserts wind bands of the concert tradition into the discourse of Cold War musical diplomacy. While symphony orchestras, ballet troupes, and jazz ensemble tours are well represented in the scholarly literature on Cold War musical diplomacy, wind bands have mainly been excluded. I argue that wind bands performed a unique diplomatic role due to their ability to reach elite and non-elite audiences alike through their outdoor performances in large venues and their facility with both popular and Western art music repertoire. Wind bands cannot be separated from their association with power in a musical diplomacy setting because of their military and patriotic connotations. With these qualities, the University of Michigan Symphony Band’s tour illuminates how wind bands served the United States through musical diplomacy during the Cold War era.