Jazz in dissident Czechoslovakia
Encyclopedia
Czechoslovakia’s jazz roots were established by Jaroslav Ježek
and Rudolf Antonín Dvorský in the 1920s and 1930s. Ježek’s influence in this realm is particularly noted and by the time he immigrated to the United States
in 1939, his compositions blending jazz
and classical music were among the most popular music. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia
by the Nazis
, however, jazz was banned and it was not until 1947 when the Australian jazz pianist Graeme Bell
and his Dixieland
Jazz Band performed at a World Youth Festival in Prague
that the jazz movement was revived.
When this movement began, the Stalinists
were opposed to it, but as Josef Škvorecký
writes in his The Bass Saxophone, “Its name was Dixieland. A type of the cannibal-music with roots so patently folkloristic and often (the blues) so downright proletarian that even the most Orwellian
falsifier of facts would be hard put to deny them” (16). Similar to the situation during World War II
, jazz was a developed by Africans and as such, regarded as trash. As this movement grew, it became increasingly intertwined with the growth of the dissident movement.
Among the underground intellectuals, jazz was the genre that was most identified with. As the cultural scene in Czechoslovakia heated up, the jazz scene expanded along with it. In 1964, the First Prague International Jazz Festival
was held, bringing hip bands of the time. When the Prague Spring
occurred, jazz continued its success as an independent form that attracted the youth in all their rebellion. It was the music that was played at clubs and numerous individual bands formed. As one sees in Josef Škvorecký’s The Cowards, the day revolved around practicing jazz with the group and heroic daydreams. Even though the novel is set at the end of WWII, the books publishing in 1958 is clearly demonstrative of the excitement for jazz that is present at the time Škvorecký writes the novel.
acceptance speech by Jaroslav Seifert
. The first problem or law that it transgressed was the size constraint. By the time the Section was shut down, membership had reached up to 7,000 — 4,000 more than was allowed. Membership was also breached in other ways. The bulletin and book series that the section published spread quickly from hand to hand. Škvorecký writes “If in a high school one student belonged to the Jazz Section, the books and periodicals he was allowed to buy were read by practically the whole student body and usually also by the teaching staff.” As the Section’s popularity grew and their ability to sponsor musical events became more limited, it reached beyond jazz, and even beyond music in general to literature and art. They began to publish volumes of samizdat
, or communist suppressed literature. Publications that were sold only to members in cultural organizations were subject to less censorship and in this way, the Section published numerous manuscripts on “alternative culture” and escaped punishment by the government.
The heads, Karel Srp and Vladimír Kouřil, continued to run the Section even after its disbandment causing them to be jailed in 1986. This action was met with severe criticism from abroad including authors such as Kurt Vonnegut
and John Updike
. Beyond Srp and Kouřil, five other members were arrested and given fairly light sentences. Though the real causes for the light sentences are unknown, Škvorecký speculates “you cannot really hold such things in Czechoslovakia when Gorbachev
is in Moscow
releasing Andrei Sakharov
and other people. So the trial was really a compromise between the hard-liners in the Czechoslovak party leadership who wanted to make it a warning to anyone who dared to do something not fully endorsed by the party, on the one hand, and the opportunists who smell a new wind from Moscow, on the other, who were against the trial. It reflects a split in the ruling party.” These sentiments are similar to the ideas present at the end of WWII when everybody had their own rescued Jew to prove that they were good beings. Not to be undone by these arrests however, the Jazz Section continued while Srp was in prison.
Jaroslav Ježek
Jaroslav Ježek was a Czech composer, pianist and conductor, author of jazz, classical, incidental and film music.- Life :...
and Rudolf Antonín Dvorský in the 1920s and 1930s. Ježek’s influence in this realm is particularly noted and by the time he immigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1939, his compositions blending jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and classical music were among the most popular music. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
by the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, however, jazz was banned and it was not until 1947 when the Australian jazz pianist Graeme Bell
Graeme Bell
Graeme Emerson Bell AO MBE is an Australian Dixieland and classical jazz pianist, composer and band leader...
and his Dixieland
Dixieland
Dixieland music, sometimes referred to as Hot jazz, Early Jazz or New Orleans jazz, is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s.Well-known jazz standard songs from the...
Jazz Band performed at a World Youth Festival in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
that the jazz movement was revived.
When this movement began, the Stalinists
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
were opposed to it, but as Josef Škvorecký
Josef Škvorecký
Josef Škvorecký, CM is a leading contemporary Czech writer and publisher who has spent much of his life in Canada. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country...
writes in his The Bass Saxophone, “Its name was Dixieland. A type of the cannibal-music with roots so patently folkloristic and often (the blues) so downright proletarian that even the most Orwellian
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
falsifier of facts would be hard put to deny them” (16). Similar to the situation during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, jazz was a developed by Africans and as such, regarded as trash. As this movement grew, it became increasingly intertwined with the growth of the dissident movement.
Among the underground intellectuals, jazz was the genre that was most identified with. As the cultural scene in Czechoslovakia heated up, the jazz scene expanded along with it. In 1964, the First Prague International Jazz Festival
Prague International Jazz Festival
Prague International Jazz Festival is a traditional jazz festival held annually in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2005 the festival celebrated its anniversary - 40 years from its establishment in 1964. Prague's festival belongs to the most traditional jazz festivals.-External links:*...
was held, bringing hip bands of the time. When the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
occurred, jazz continued its success as an independent form that attracted the youth in all their rebellion. It was the music that was played at clubs and numerous individual bands formed. As one sees in Josef Škvorecký’s The Cowards, the day revolved around practicing jazz with the group and heroic daydreams. Even though the novel is set at the end of WWII, the books publishing in 1958 is clearly demonstrative of the excitement for jazz that is present at the time Škvorecký writes the novel.
Jazz Section of the Czech Musician's Union
The small victories that jazz won during this time, however, are not comparable to the Jazz Section of the Czech Musician’s Union that was created in 1971. Formed through an “administrative loophole,” a group of jazz musicians saw the opportunity to become part of the union, and despite jazz being seen as “trash music” for the underclasses, was accepted. The Ministry of the Interior issued a number of guidelines, most importantly that the section was limited to a membership of 3,000. For the first couple of years after its conception, the Jazz Section kept within the confines of the laws. It began the Prague Jazz Days festival, which was expected to be a yearly event. It published a bulletin that discussed the ongoing music scene. As the section grew, the heads of the section became bolder and launched a book series that discussed all popular culture at the time — from Czech art, to rock poetry, a dictionary of American rock bands, to the 1984 Nobel PrizeNobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
acceptance speech by Jaroslav Seifert
Jaroslav Seifert
Jaroslav Seifert was a Nobel Prize winning Czech writer, poet and journalist.Born in Žižkov, a suburb of Prague in what was then part of Austria-Hungary, his first collection of poems was published in 1921...
. The first problem or law that it transgressed was the size constraint. By the time the Section was shut down, membership had reached up to 7,000 — 4,000 more than was allowed. Membership was also breached in other ways. The bulletin and book series that the section published spread quickly from hand to hand. Škvorecký writes “If in a high school one student belonged to the Jazz Section, the books and periodicals he was allowed to buy were read by practically the whole student body and usually also by the teaching staff.” As the Section’s popularity grew and their ability to sponsor musical events became more limited, it reached beyond jazz, and even beyond music in general to literature and art. They began to publish volumes of samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
, or communist suppressed literature. Publications that were sold only to members in cultural organizations were subject to less censorship and in this way, the Section published numerous manuscripts on “alternative culture” and escaped punishment by the government.
Tensions between Jazz Section and communist government
The government’s approval of the Jazz Section was in part due to its intense dislike of rock music and the overwhelming popularity of that genre. As the rock movement began to become involved with the jazz scene, tensions erupted. At the fifth Jazz Days festival, the authorities got involved when a “rock operetta” was allowed to be performed. From then on until 1984 when the Section was shut down, the bureaucracy resorted to tactics of harassment. After the Jazz Section applied for membership in the European Jazz Federation, a member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in the early 80’s, the communist government feared bad publicity and could not shut down the section immediately. In 1980, the Jazz Days festival was cancelled under the pretext that 15,000 fans had bought tickets and the event could be listed as a “public disturbance.” In 1983, the bureaucrats sought to pressure the Czech Musician’s Union to dissolve the Jazz section. When this was refused, however, the government dissolved the entire organization.The heads, Karel Srp and Vladimír Kouřil, continued to run the Section even after its disbandment causing them to be jailed in 1986. This action was met with severe criticism from abroad including authors such as Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
and John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
. Beyond Srp and Kouřil, five other members were arrested and given fairly light sentences. Though the real causes for the light sentences are unknown, Škvorecký speculates “you cannot really hold such things in Czechoslovakia when Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
is in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
releasing Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He earned renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the...
and other people. So the trial was really a compromise between the hard-liners in the Czechoslovak party leadership who wanted to make it a warning to anyone who dared to do something not fully endorsed by the party, on the one hand, and the opportunists who smell a new wind from Moscow, on the other, who were against the trial. It reflects a split in the ruling party.” These sentiments are similar to the ideas present at the end of WWII when everybody had their own rescued Jew to prove that they were good beings. Not to be undone by these arrests however, the Jazz Section continued while Srp was in prison.