/history/soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-jazz-and-international-politics-in-leopoldville/ Fact-based, well-reasoned perspectives from around the world Sun, 27 Jul 2025 18:29:45 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /history/soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-jazz-and-international-politics-in-leopoldville/#comment-40638 Sun, 27 Jul 2025 18:29:45 +0000 /?p=156966#comment-40638 Interestingly, the jazz of the time challenged US political culture in multiple ways, but thanks to a complicit media, jazz musicians who were acutely aware of the deeply ingrained injustice at the core of both US foreign and domestic policy had no way of understanding what the State Department and the CIA were up to with their promotion of jazz. The one positive thing is that it gave musicians like Coltrane and Max Roach the opportunity to understand the links between their music and Africa, which subsequently influenced their music. But in the same period (a little later) the CIA, in the context of MK-Ultra was fueling rock musicians in Laurel Canyon with psychedelic drugs as a ploy to undermine the growing rebellion of the youth protest movement. At the same time they effectively trivialized and marginalized real black music after shamelessly exploiting it. Before allowing it to reemerge as gansta rap at the same time as supplying crack cocaine to the black community. White supremacy has always had varied strategies for holding on to power.

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