Brad De Long wrote:
>
> I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll
> and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the
> bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. The point
> is not the "discrediting" of Sweezy, but how it came to be that
> people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human
> freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to...
>
> ...jazz
> ...modern art
> ...rock and roll
>
> That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a
> sense of why it happened.
>
The Soviet bureacracy may have been hostile to these art forms but
they thrived in the USSR and some of E.Europe in quasi-samizdat. The
Soviet label Melodiya recorded many jazz groups. Many of
the jazzers were students and teachers at the various Soviet
conservatories who were often fired from the arch-classicist Soviet
musical system like the great pianist Kuryokin was for musical
non-conformity. There were numerous great
jazz groups in the USSR: the Ganelin Trio, Sergey Kuryokin, Anatoly
Vapirov, Boris Grebenshchikov (an amazing saxophonist who played 3 horns
simultaneously Rolan Kirk style whose acknowledged
hero was Brian Eno) ....In Poland there is the late great
Krystof Komeda a pianist, Tomasz Stanko and many others, there's
Croatian trumpeter Dusko Goykovich... Most of these groups are stunning
and up
there with the finest the West offered at the time: Cecil Taylor, Evan
Parker, von Schlippenbach etc. The Warsaw Jazz festival
was considered among the best in Europe during the years of the regime.
Jazz was surpressed during the Stalin years with slogans like "first a
saxophonist then a knife" and "Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he betrays
his country". This attitude was gone by the time of President Kosygin
who it is said was a great jazz fan and collector of records who would
turn up unannounced at various Soviet jazz festivals. The post-Stalin
policy towards jazz was confused. The commissars couldn't decide whether
jazz was a bourgeois western propaganda or an example of
Marxist-Leninist art. They did miss out on a great propaganda
opportunity in not letting the free musicians tour very often: the USSR
was the avant of the jazz avant garde during the
80's. Free jazz is thriving in the USSR!
I
don't much of rock'n'roll but there was a scene in these countries and
most of it was above ground. I friend told me of going to state-run punk
rock clubs in Poland, the USSR and especially Yugoslavia(whose cultural
policy was fairly laissez faire)during the
80's. Hopefully someday the history of this music will be written if
hasn't been already.
As for classical music, the Soviets were untouched in instrumental and
chamber music from Rachmaninov and Scriabin's time to Pletnev's.
A couple of good books: *Russian Jazz, New Identity* ed. Leo Feigin
(owner of Leo records which smuggled out and distributed most of the
recordings we have of Soviet jazz) Quartet Books 1985. S.Frederick Starr
*Red and Hot. The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union* Oxford U Press 1983
614pgs. The premier Soviet jazz critic was Alexey Batashev who authored
many books and taught thousands of students jazz history.
Sam Pawlett
