The Untold Silence of Icelandic Jazz
We at Iceland Music would be remiss to talk about jazz in today’s world without mentioning its deep roots within black American culture, a musical heritage that must be upheld today more than ever. To understand the history of jazz in Iceland, we must therefore remember the systemic silencing of those black roots that undoubtedly shaped Icelandic jazz in the middle of the last century.
Thelonious monk with Dizzy Gillespie and Gerald Wilson in Monterey, 1963. From ‘Jim Marshall: Jazz Festival’
In her 2015 book Music and International History in the Twentieth Century, contemporary historian Jessica Gienow-Hecht writes about the importance of music in diplomatic relations between the United States and Iceland in the 1950s. At the time, jazz music in general and bebop in particular were incredibly popular all over the US, as black musicians such as Dizzy Gillepsie and Thelonious Monk were upheld as major celebrities. As the Cold War raged on, Dwight Eisenhower’s government made use of music as a tool of soft power to ease the mistrust that Icelanders held for America before and during the Second World War, as well as to combat the USSR’s claim on neutral Iceland’s highly strategic location. Through the use of radio stations and tours of prominent American musicians, Eisenhower’s Operations Coordinating Board attempted to sway the Icelandic public and government towards a more favourable political and economic stance. However, Icelandic radio and concert venues were surprisingly devoid of America’s most beloved jazz musicians, even as they were being sent to various other countries to display America’s musical prowess to the world.
This erasure of black excellence in America’s cultural diplomacy in Iceland was based on Iceland’s policy forbidding the deployment of black soldiers at the Keflavik air base during and after the war. According to Icelandic historian Valur Ingimundarson, “The presence of blacks was seen as posing a direct threat to Icelandic women and, by extension, to the Icelandic nation.” (Ingimundarson, 2004) This unmistakably racist decision made by the Icelandic government was accepted by Eisenhower due to Iceland’s strategic importance, although similar requests were denied to other countries as early as 1950, where the deployment of black soldiers was used to counter the Soviet narrative criticising segregation in America. Just as black soldiers were forbidden entry into Iceland, so was black music set aside. In the late 1950s, the only black musicians sent to the island were opera singers, as the aesthetics of bebop were considered likely to clash with Icelanders’ Western—or white—musical tastes, which US diplomats thought could ignite their latent suspicion of cultural imperialism. Iceland’s white nationalist past can and should be understood to be the source of this shameful silence.
Jazz was undoubtedly present in Iceland long before this affair, and many Icelandic jazz musicians of the time have impacted the local music scene well beyond their years. There is no doubt these musicians found their passion for jazz from listening to black American jazz artists. However, the black roots of the genre were obscured here in a way that they were not in other countries where black musicians were allowed to visit, unrestricted by racist policies. This silencing of black voices is yet another example of the cultural oppression black people have been victims of throughout their entire history and until today. As protests and activism have spread from the US to Iceland thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, our country’s exclusion of people of colour must be taken into account as a historical reality with real and current consequences in Icelandic society that must not be ignored.
Sources:
Gienow-Hecht, Jessica “Music and International History in the Twentieth Century” Berghahn Books (2015): 166-184
Ingimundarson, Valur “Immunizing Against The American Other: Racism, Nationalism and Gender in U.S-Icelandic Military Relations During the Cold War” Journal of Cold War Studies 6. No.4 (2004): 65-88