The War Effort

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Henry Cowell's role in World War II. In 1943, Henry was hired by the Office of War Information (OWI), a new version of the Foreign Intelligence Service, as associate music editor, working primarily out of its New York branch near Carnegie Hall. The OWI was created in 1941 to combat Nazi propaganda. Renamed when the United States entered the war, it was directed to coordinate the wartime message. Its radio arm, the Voice of America, had only begun work two months before Henry joined the agency. At the time Henry joined, the music staff faced serious issues of quality. He was presumably brought in because his knowledge of world music enabled him to find music that both represented the United States well and attracted listeners. Henry first supervised OWI's library of music for broadcasts to Continental Europe. As the war progressed, he supervised selection of music for other countries. The OWI was abolished by President Harry S. Truman in 1945.