Teaching Americans to be International Citizens: World Music and Dance on Television's Omnibus

ANNA E. NEKOLA

doi:10.1017/S175219631900021X

Teaching Americans to be International Citizens: World Music and Dance on Television's Omnibus

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2019

ANNA E. NEKOLA

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Abstract

In the 1950s, Omnibus, a US television variety show sponsored by the Ford Foundation, provided US viewers with their first encounters with classical music and dance from Japan and India and folk traditions from Yugoslavia. Omnibus was an important part of a popularization of world music and dance as part of a greater arts and cultural literacy campaign in the 1950s, aimed at educating and entertaining the average American. As the US government sought to “promote world peace” through the multifaceted economic interventions of endeavors like the Marshall Plan, private organizations such as the Ford Foundation also spent massive sums in the US and abroad. This article contributes to a broader understanding of US postwar cultural diplomacy by examining how international musical guests on Omnibus helped develop an American self-concept that was culturally and politically internationalist.

Type: Research Article
Information: Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 305 - 337

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S175219631900021X [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society for American Music 2019

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