Jazz, Spies, and Regime Change: The Secret History Behind America’s Musical Diplomacy

How Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’État” Exposes the CIA’s Sinister Use of Jazz

Apr 11, 2025

Jazz isn’t just music—it’s a weapon, a seduction, a drug slipped into the bloodstream of history to make the bitter taste of empire go down smooth. And in Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, filmmaker Johan Grimonprez doesn’t just pull back the curtain—he sets fire to the whole goddamn stage. This isn’t some polite PBS documentary, all hushed tones and sanitized history. No, this is a Molotov cocktail of CIA backroom deals, Cold War paranoia, and jazz musicians being played like pawns on a geopolitical chessboard.

It’s the 1960s. Africa is shaking off the shackles of colonialism, and the United States—forever allergic to self-determination when it doesn’t suit its interests—is running the same old playbook. Jazz, that great American art form, is weaponized for “cultural diplomacy,” a friendly, syncopated handshake to African nations. But while Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are smiling for the cameras, somewhere in the shadows, the CIA is oiling up the machinery of regime change.

Grimonprez orchestrates this madness with the precision of a bebop solo—frantic, disorienting, beautiful. He ditches the dry documentary voiceover, instead letting the music tell the story. Archival footage of sweaty jazz clubs collides with grainy black-and-white images of assassinations in the making. Footage of joyous celebrations is smashed against brutal crackdowns. The message is clear: art and atrocity go hand in hand, whether we like it or not.

The U.S. government, ever the slick salesman, figured out that jazz—the music of struggle, of improvisation, of freedom—made for a damn good advertisement. Enter the “Jazz Ambassadors,” an elite squad of America’s best and brightest—Armstrong, Gillespie, Ellington, Nina Simone—sent abroad to sell the world on American greatness. But the joke was on them. Back home, these same musicians couldn’t sit at the same lunch counters as white folks. Yet here they were, playing the role of cultural diplomats, while behind them, the CIA sharpened its knives.

The Congo, in particular, became a playground for these twisted games. Patrice Lumumba, the nation’s first democratically elected prime minister, wanted independence, real independence. But that didn’t sit well with the U.S., Belgium, or any of the usual colonial suspects. So while Armstrong was playing his horn for adoring crowds, U.S. operatives were busy plotting Lumumba’s demise.

And it gets worse. Jazz tours became the perfect cover for espionage, intelligence-gathering, and destabilization efforts. Some musicians, knowingly or not, carried messages, provided intel, or simply served as a convenient distraction while the real business of empire carried on behind the curtain. Grimonprez lays it all out—declassified CIA documents, historian interviews, and footage that makes it hard to breathe.

Not every jazz musician played along. Some saw through the charade and pushed back, using their art as a weapon of resistance.

Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln stormed the United Nations, protesting Lumumba’s assassination alongside Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy. Their album We Insist! Freedom Now became a sonic Molotov cocktail, a defiant cry against both American racism and African exploitation.

Louis Armstrong, the golden boy of jazz diplomacy, wasn’t entirely complacent. He refused to play for segregated audiences and slipped coded messages into his performances, a subtle but sharp middle finger to the hypocrisy of it all.

Grimonprez doesn’t paint these musicians as mere victims. They had agency. They resisted. They saw through the lie and, in some cases, called it out. But the machine was too big, too entrenched. The jazz kept playing, the coups kept happening, and the game went on.

If there’s one thing Soundtrack to a Coup d’État does brilliantly, it’s showing that music, like politics, is never neutral. Jazz wasn’t just an American export—it was a soundtrack to struggle, to revolution, to resistance. In the Congo, Congolese rumba became the anthem of independence, with songs like Indépendance Cha Cha pulsing through the streets, a musical battle cry for a people hungry for freedom.

Grimonprez takes us deep into this world, where music isn’t just entertainment—it’s a front line. He reminds us that the same melodies that inspire joy can be used as background noise for a massacre. That jazz, for all its improvisation and rebellion, was sometimes just another instrument in the hands of powerful men who knew exactly what they were doing.

Grimonprez’s film is a gut punch, a fever dream, a history lesson set to a soundtrack of betrayal and brilliance. It doesn’t just inform—it shakes you, rattles you, makes you hear those old jazz records in a way you never have before. It’s a story of hypocrisy, of power masquerading as art, and of musicians who found themselves caught in a game far bigger than they ever realized.

Because at the end of the day, the truth is as simple as a walking bassline: jazz was used to sell a lie. And while the music soared, people died.

And that, my friends, is the real Soundtrack to a Coup d’État.