Export

In its concentration on exporting its dollars, tools and advice to the postwar world, the U.S. has been slow and a little timid about exporting its culture. But now culture is catching up with the atomic cannon, the dam builders, the agricultural advisors and the diplomats.

In swelling numbers, U.S. artists are fanning out to carry American theater, painting, literature to the rest of the world. Late, but far from least, in the parade are U.S. musicians. A random look at the travel notes last week showed U.S. jazz in London, a fine U.S. symphony in Latin America, a top U.S. violinist in Russia, U.S. "bop" in the Middle East.

P:In Mexico City, nearing the end of a 10,000-mile tour through Latin America, Conductor Alexander Hilsberg and the New Orleans Symphony gave a concert at the unmusical hour of 11:15 a.m., but the big (capacity: 3,700) Teatro Metropolitan was nearly full, and by the final chord of Stravinsky's Fire Bird Suite, the crowd was up and whooping an ovation. The only reason the audience let the orchestra quit after three encores was that it was time for the bullfights. The New Orleans musicians had left their musical mark on 22 cities and towns from Lima to Ciudad Trujillo before turning homeward last week. Verdict of a leading Mexican critic: "You have conquered Mexico."

P: In Istanbul, Top Bop Trumpeter John Birks ("Dizzy") Gillespie and his 16-piece band took crowds of Turks through a rapid history of jazz, then fed them a solid portion in the progressive style that left the audiences yelling with excitement. It was stop No. 9 in the troupe's seven-country tour as the State Department's first official jazz ambassadors, taking in many places that had never heard live American jazz, and some that had not even heard about it.

In the jazz-lorn city of Dacca, Pakistan, Dizzy discovered a ragged boy playing a one-stringed instrument on the street, and found the weird sounds so congenial that he stopped and had a jam session. In Karachi the first show was half-empty, the second nearly full, the third packed. "Man," bragged Dizzy, "give us three shows, and we'll create our own audience." At a garden party in Ankara, Gillespie saw a tattered crowd peering from outside the fence and insisted that they be admitted. "We came to play for the poor people as well as the rich people," he said.

P: In Moscow, top-ranking U.S. Violinist Isaac Stern was turned loose in the hall where Yehudi Menuhin, the last American artist to play in Russia, fiddled a decade ago. More than 2,000, including (as the U.S.S.R.'s Violinist David Oistrakh put it) "all the violinists in Moscow," crammed the hall. A member of the diplomatic corps called it the most elegant gathering seen in Moscow in years.

Stern and his pianist, Manhattan's Alexander Zakin (like Stern, Russian-born), played their way through Bach, Brahms, Aaron Copland, Mozart, Bloch and Wieniawski, and Violinist Stern finally silenced the storm of applause by a little speech in Russian: "We are the first American artists to play here in many years. We hope many more will be here soon."

After several Moscow appearances, he will play in five other Russian cities, wind up with the Moscow Symphony at the end of the month.

P: In London, where he made his first success outside the U.S. 23 years ago, Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, trim, happy and 55, returned with his New Orleans-style trumpet. Louis had not been back since 1932, mostly because England and the U.S. mutually refused to admit foreign bands (TIME, March 26). This time he was welcomed on an exchange agreement. happily took his All-Stars into cavernous (capacity: 8,000) Empress Hall to play two shows a night for ten nights. The band was seated on a slowly revolving stage in the center of the arena, and for a full hour of each show, Satchmo lined out incredibly energetic solos, sang and cracked jokes in his pebbly voice. The crowd went wild. "The cats sound the same and they dig the same," he growled. "It's like that all over the world."

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