"International Education Week 2022: American Jazz and the MENA" by Elena D. Corbett

Day 1

We're just a couple weeks away from #givingtuesday, and our plan was to celebrate International Education Week by promoting Project Minah, our scholarship fund for supporting community college participants with study abroad opportunities, such as our CASE Program in Tunisia.

But then we were listening to music while drafting social media content, and Arturo Sandoval came on playing Dizzy Gillespie's A Night in Tunisia. It got us thinking. So this is going to become about music. Great music.

*But first, an #IEW2022 pitch. It's simple. CASE offers participants a week in Tunisia, so please consider donating to Project Minah when #givingtuesday comes around on November 29th (don't worry, we'll keep reminding you).

We'll start decolonizing Education Abroad in the Global South only when we make it possible for the greatest diversity of participants pursuing the greatest diversity of interests and careers to do so in places that traditionally host only small numbers of participants in U.S. higher education from well-resourced institutions, where the Global South is often valued through colonized and other problematic lenses.

And now, some music.

The MENA region and great U.S. American music have so many complicated connections and can't be divorced from either complex decolonization and liberatory actions or counterrevolutionary resistance to them. Ever see that iconic photo of Louis Armstrong at the pyramids, or Duke Ellington and his orchestra at Amman's Roman Theater, or Ella Fitzgerald at Baalbek? They tell so many intersectional stories of the personal and political.

In honor of #IEW2022, please enjoy Dizzy Gillespie and A Night in Tunisia.

Day 2

We started #IEW2022 by looking ahead to #givingtuesday, and the opportunity to support participants from 2-year institutions to study abroad in the MENA region. In a roundabout sort of way, but mostly because it gave us a chance to talk about some of our favorite music, we also highlighted jazz as a lens for thinking about the complexity of connections between the U.S. and the MENA region. It let us highlight Tunisia. Today we turn to Morocco.

While conceptually a spoof of a Hollywood genre and one of a series, the 1942 U.S. American film Road to Morocco is really problematic and frankly hard to watch.

And yet it has bold moments, such as what may have been only the second interracial kiss in a U.S. American film--between characters played by Bob Hope and Dona Drake. And as good students of portrayals of Arabs in film know, Anthony Quinn wouldn't always play a racialized, villainous trope.

Starring Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, the film is, of course, a musical, Moonlight Becomes You its enduring song.

Please enjoy this cover by Ella Fitzgerald. And don't forget to donate to Project Minah on #givingtuesday, November 29th.

Day 3

For our last #IEW2022 mashup of U.S. American jazz and pitches for donations on the upcoming #givingtuesday, we highlight a standard.

A legal framework of segregation built upon a foundation of white supremacy reigned at home. And yet at the behest of the U.S. State Department, Black musicians went abroad as cultural ambassadors during the Cold War, primarily to countries that were newly independent, non-aligned, or otherwise understood to be vulnerable to Soviet influence.

Duke Ellington and his orchestra were among them. While we haven't (yet) found any references to their set lists, it's hard to imagine that the iconic Caravan, composed by Ellington and trombonist Juan Tizol, wasn't among them. No discussion of the complex interplay between the MENA region and jazz would be complete without it, so please enjoy this Duke Ellington recording of Caravan.

And on November 29th, #givingtuesday, please don't forget to donate to Project Minah.