The Bossa Nova Moment: Sonic Panamericanisms in the Era of the Cuban Revolution, 1959–63

When bossa nova burst onto the scene in early 1959, it was quickly recognized by marketing and advertising executives as the "music of youth" and thus came to embody Brazil's modernizing aspirations. A bossa nova concert at Carnegie Hall three years later in the fall of 1962, underwritten in part by the Brazilian government, represented a culminating moment in bossa nova's evolution from a passing fad into a form of "musical cultural diplomacy." Indeed, by then bossa nova had become directly intertwined not only with musical transformations in jazz and youth culture in the United States, but Washington's efforts to fortify Pan-American relations in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. Various jazz musicians (e.g., Charlie Byrd, Paul Winter) traveled to Latin America through State Department sponsorship in the late 1950s and early 1960s as "cultural exchange ambassadors" and became critical interlocutors for the transmission of bossa nova back to the United States. In mid-November 1962, only weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis (and coincident with the Carnegie Hall concert noted above), Paul Winter's sextet performed a set of bossa nova tunes at the White House, at the direct invitation of Jacqueline Kennedy. Thus, if in Brazil bossa nova initially stood for a certain type of youth rebellion against a staid nationalism (embodied by samba), by 1962 it was recognized at the highest levels of both governments as a useful vehicle of cultural diplomacy at a key juncture of the Cold War.