Anna Nemzer. Let's write

Educational program
Anna Nemzer

Publication date: February 10, 2004

Jazz in the Soviet country, like many other things, was unfavorable and uncertain. The party's general line regarding jazz was poorly developed and changed every now and then. Jazz sometimes turned out to be “the music of the fat”, sometimes it sounded like the voice of the oppressed sections of American society. Here the critics shed a touching tear in the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Utesov’s thea-jazz suddenly appeared. Collective farmers and cheerful guys during the day, these musicians played in restaurants in the evenings, turning into a Western jazz band, and the children of Arbat listened to them. The music didn't play for long.

It is no secret that a musical movement very often strives to produce mythology, to build a certain image of either the performer himself or a devout music lover. There were few jazz heroes in the Union; it is difficult to imagine something less compatible than the swinging existence of a jazzman and the moral character of the builder of communism. Marine combat officer, polymath, jazz connoisseur and collector Kolbasyev (with the remarkable name Sergei Adamovich) is one of the few people who tried to practice the jazz lifestyle. In 1937 he was arrested, charged under Article 58 and shot. Dandy turned out to be a passion-bearer, and this transformation of the hero was felt, firstly, painfully, and secondly, inorganically. Later, the rock hero from the basements and the boiler room looked with a grin at “what a new farce was announced in the poster”; he was, unlike the jazzman, thoroughly ideological and - in his opposition to power - natural. Suffering at the hands of the authorities was part of the rock program.

And jazz was well preserved in memories. The heroes of the memorable theater play in Moscow in the eighties, “The Adult Daughter of a Young Man,” talked about youth, the hit “Chattanooga” and the “Fire in the Jungle” tie.

This whole well-known story, schematic and with many exceptions, leads to the simple thought that we have never really known jazz. We practically could not really, completely, with a thorough knowledge of the names, fall in love with jazz, nor then be bitterly disappointed in it. We just wanted to be involved in this culture, but few could boast of real jazz erudition.

The situation began to change in the post-perestroika years, when, in the wake of club heyday, special jazz establishments appeared in Moscow. They began to re-recognize jazz, experiencing ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, jazz's non-ideological nature, dispassion, and detached irony appealed to a public tired of rock obsession. On the other hand, it turned out that not everyone is trained to listen to this music. It’s not easy to immediately become imbued with jazz’s “emptiness”; The absence of a harmonic core at first listening seems like a defect that the ear is waiting to eliminate. But despite all these initial misunderstandings, jazz continued to beckon. It still seemed like the sonic expression of someone else's sweet life, only a little less alien and inaccessible than before. Le Club, which celebrated its fifth anniversary this summer, played (and continues to play to this day) a huge role in the development of Moscow jazz tastes. Western jazzmen began to regularly come to Le Club, and on Mondays (in accordance with the oldest New York tradition, for example, Village Vanguard) the big band of Igor Butman, the saxophonist and founder of Le Club, played and plays. Butman doesn’t need any other presentations; he’s not as popular as jazz right now.

And everything would be fine, but something continues to confuse some music lovers. International jazz festivals held in large venues in Moscow every now and then provoke accusations of pop culture. Thus, critics spoke decisively about the concerts of the last Bohème-Jazz festival: of the three headliners, two performers (Brazilian pianist and vocalist Tania Maria and Cabu Verdian, now the most popular diva Cesaria Evora) had a very indirect relationship to jazz. A certain trend was emerging: jazz on large stages, for “everyone’s viewing”, sought to simplify - moving closer to ethnicity, then to fusion, and then suddenly to pop music. The autumn Parliament Jazz Festival deserved the same reproaches.

It is not easy to talk about issues that are fiercely debated by musicians, musicologists, music lovers and critics. The beauty of the plot being discussed lies, in my opinion, in the fact that it is absolutely natural. He is evidence of the strange, but organic development of jazz (if you like, music in general) in our country. Pop-jazz stars will perform on the stage of the Rossiya State Concert Hall, and festival organizers will passionately declare that education should exist in any form, even if adapted. Critics will quite rightly say that such an adaptation distorts the essence of the genre. These hundred flowers, it seems to me, should bloom.