1. I have a few thoughts on the CIA, literary modernism, abstract expressionism, Nina Simone, heavy metal music, torture podcasting, and, for old times sake, Jack Kirby.
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10. The preference for popular genres in music (as against literature & painting) was motivated by racial politics. Sponsoring Armstrong & Simone was a way to combat the idea America was racist & make an appeal to decolonized peoples in Africa & Asia.
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11. Music -- primarily African-American music -- was the CIA's gateway into popular culture, opening the door to later adventures like using a front to recruit Jack Kirby for a fake sci-fi movie to be shot in Iran (Argo). Here's some of Kirby's never used set designpic.twitter.com/ypPpyek83r
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12. Some more thoughts on the CIA's cultural policy here (and go listen to the Winds of Change podcast -- it's great).https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/wind-of-change-cia/ …
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if you tried listening to John Cage you’d eschew him too.
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Not quite: the CIA helped fund the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, which was the absolute epicenter of high modernism in classical music. (They did also fund popular music of various kinds, for pretty much the reasons you say. But they didn’t reject high modernism.)
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Also the cia promoted ugly art with painters like pollock and basquiat.
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You said that Nina Simone was " unwittingly " recruited by a CIA organization to perform in Nigeria. But i notice you haven't used the word " unwittingly" to describe most artists who were caught up in the CIA's unholy crap. Nina Simone had great integrity. But weren't there
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many other artists/ writers etc who had no idea whatsover that the CIA was behind publications they ( the writers) contributed to ? Or in the case of other artists had connections to? Surely most of the artists were innocent pawns like Simone, no?
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