This thesis investigates the use of jazz music as an American diplomatic tool in Bombay (modern day Mumbai), India, during the late 1950s, a critical phase of the Cold War between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. Specifically, it addresses the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s April 1958 concert series in Bombay, with emphasis on its context, goals, and outcomes. A branch of the State Department known as United States Information Agency (USIA) organized so-called music diplomats. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a proponent of USIA because of his background in the US Army, where he learned the impact of psychological warfare. Combining diplomatic history, urban history, as well as musicology, this thesis argues that studying one music group performing in one city is the most informative method of finding the impact of soft power. This study reveals the multiple perspectives of soft power, the international networks it created, and the way domestic and foreign policy impacted it. It is commonplace in Cold War era history for topics to overlap. People, ideas, and events are woven throughout this paper.
