Comment by hedora
3 years ago
The CIA might have promoted jazz, but the precursor to the DEA handcuffed Billie Holliday to a bed and withheld her methadone until she died:
https://face2faceafrica.com/article/how-billie-holiday-was-t...
> When congressmen expressed worry about [Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics]’s tactics, he assured them his crackdown would affect not “the good musicians, but the jazz type.”
Jazz bad, eh? It's funny how they (the CIA?) later had a jazz broadcast at Radio Free Europe, maybe to destabilize communist Eastern Europe? Which eventually, they did. Eveyone in their 20s and their neighbour in EE wanted blue jeans and Coca Cola, the militia (commie police) was going after youths to cut their hair short and used razor blades on their contraband blue jeans. Roughly the same rethoric is now used by Russia against LGBT+ and leaders like Orban and Erdogan are keen to adopt it. Also the far right types.
That's an interesting way to say she drank and doped herself to liver cirrhosis and heart failure.