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baghdad duke
duke ellington in iraq
+phillip harvey

Duke Ellington looking cool as ever, stepped off the plane that flew him from Bangkok to Beirut. Two nights hence, his band’s scheduled performance on behalf of the US State Department had been canceled due to inclement couping. The Iraqi government had been dethroned, defrocked and deposed. Instead of the music of the legendary Duke Ellington and his main man Billy Strayhorn, the people of Iraq received the sound of bullets, screams, confusion and explosions. What we would later recognize as the sounds of “regime change” in fact. Hundreds of reporters crammed the runway of the Beirut airport trying to get a sense of what was transpiring in the Iraqi capital. They wanted to get an interpretation of the sights and sounds from the most significant artist 20 th century music produced. Duke Ellington lit a cigarette and ran it down for them.

"Those cats were swinging"

1963 had been a good year for Duke. He was no longer the face of jazz but with legendary status long ago cemented, Duke was still stretching his wings. He could still swing with the best of them but the advancing years found him looking to shore up his composer credentials more and more. So he began stretching his compositions out, turning songs into suites and exploring his classical influences.

Meanwhile the United States of America was burning, figuratively speaking of course. The Government was knee deep in cold war but the mood of the country was too hot to be cool. If “winning the hearts and minds” of the chess pieces- which all other nation-states had become- was integral to the battle strategies of both the United States and the Soviet Union then the US was in trouble. Big trouble.

The Civil Rights Movement was well under way and a seismic change had begun to shift the national consciousness. Images of Bull Conner opening the hoses and letting the dogs out on protestors in the streets of Birmingham; Governor George Wallace blocking the entrance of the University of Alabama and yelling expletives about colored kids (and their JFK mandated state militia chaperones) stepping foot in his public institutions; the prone body of Medgar Evers laid out on the steps of his home in Jackson, Mississippi; and the hundreds of thousands of people that marched on Washington looking for freedom were carried around the globe via television. The world could see the sickness and the Soviets were looking mighty-fine in comparison.

To combat this public relations disaster, the State Department scrambled to find an ambassador to send to one of the most hotly contested areas of the cold war- the Middle East. Desperate, it needed the best America had to offer. The State Department needed someone whose principles of freedom and democracy could be seen, not just in talk, but in deeds and work. It needed someone whose American citizenship validated the country by proving that genius did indeed grow on its soil. It needed a man whose natural charm and grace could disarm the most belligerent of detractors. It needed a black man. America needed Duke Ellington. So on September 6, 1963, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, the band and their music were sent to the Middle East to represent the United States of America. They would soon be joined by yet another image from back home- the charred remains of the 16 th Street Church that was firebombed with 4 young black girls inside. Against this backdrop Duke Ellington toured the nations of the Middle East.

The tour included stops in Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, India, Ceylon, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Greece. Though the work itself was basically routine- Party. Reception. Concert. Lecture Demonstration. Party. Reception. Concert. Etc etc- Duke and the boys acquitted themselves well. When people asked Duke about Jazz, he shifted the subject term to “American Idiom” or “Music of Freedom of Expression” because he had stopped using the word “Jazz” 20 years ago. The band noticed that there were nothing but dignitaries and “rich folk” attending their shows so Duke, being Duke, demanded that all musicians be let into his concerts. The foreign press took note of Duke’s largesse and hailed his “democratic” spirit.

But it wasn’t all work. Duke was greeted by beautiful girls with beautiful flowers dressed in native Ceylon garb, drank Arak alcohol and learned the Depke dance in Jordan, purchased Himalayan textiles on the side of New Delhi roads, watched elephants bathe in Sri Lanka’s Mahaweli Ganga River, and listened to blind men playing soft music on single-bow instruments. He even had the opportunity to debate “the race question” with a belligerent Indian man who tried to intimidate him with “snake eyes.” But all of that was just a set up for the real fun. The real fun would come in Iraq.

In 1958, Iraq became an American focal point of the Cold War when General Abdel Karim Kassem led a coup of the country’s monarchy, an ally of the United States. President Eisenhower’s administration immediately started to cozy up to Iraq’s new and aspiring government in the hopes that keeping the country as an ally would allow for the continued countering of Egypt and its president, Gamal Abdel Nassar- the primary bogeyman of the day.

Instead of embracing Eisenhower however, Kassem became a thorn in the United States’ side. By 1961, Kassem had established himself as hostile to the interests of the US in the region by engaging Israel in an arms race, threatening the US’s dominant position in the Mid East and endangering American access to Iraqi‘s large oil reserve. Eisenhower’s growing frustration with Iraq was exacerbated when the Iraqi Communist Party began to gain a greater foothold within the Kassem government, eventually growing into what some regarded as the largest communist party in the region. The CIA went to work behind the scenes looking to foment change by emboldening the Ba’ath Party- Kassem’s primary opposition. Their efforts helped set the stage for a coup of the Kassem government that was to take place in the fall of 1963.

Into this fray stepped Duke Ellington and the boys. Set to play for a sold out audience, the concert was suddenly canceled and the band was ordered back to the hotel. Overhead, they could hear the sound of airplanes criss-crossing the sky and later learned that a government official’s home had been blown to bits, much like the church on 16 th street in Alabama. Once things had died down, the musicians were flown to Beirut where they continued their tour. The coup would become a story that Duke and the members of his band could tell for years to come. They had escaped unscathed.

Iraq was sent into a period of turbulence and would not stabilize until some years later. The coup that Ellington had witnessed lasted just a few months but the Ba’ath party would return to power again in 1968, with the approval of the US Government, and set up shop. During this period a young, ambitious, and determined socio-path named Sadaam Hussein maneuvered his way to the head of the Ba’ath Party. When his benefactor and mentor President Ahmad Hassan al Baker resigned his post in 1979, it removed the last remaining barrier to Hussein’s ascendancy to the throne. Instead of embracing Carter-Reagan-Bush-Clinton however, Hussein became a thorn in the side of the United States. By 1990, Hussein had established himself as hostile to the interests of the US in the region by becoming a sworn enemy of Israel, threatening US’s dominant position in the Mid East and…endangering American access to Iraq’s large oil reserve. Added to this, he tried to kill George W. Bush’s daddy. And the rest, as they say, is history.

As for Duke, he would later take his experiences from his tour of the Middle East, add memories from his subsequent tour of Japan and pour them into the album The Far East Suite, one of the most ambitious albums of his late career. He would pass in 1974, nearly 30 years before the United States’ current “regime change” campaign under the moniker “Shock and Awe” began. But if Duke were still around, odds are he might look at the situation in Iraq and say

"Those Cats Are Swinging"

And he would be right because those cats are still swinging. They just aren’t hitting anything.

Phillip Harvey is the editor of nat creole. He is excited about 2006. Please hit him up at ph@natcreole.com with any thoughts, suggestions, beliefs and other forms of commentary. Hold the beef please.