Jazz jamboree

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jazz Jamboree is the name of an international jazz festival in Warsaw , Poland that takes place every October. It is the oldest Polish music festival and has been held annually since 1958.

In September 1958 the Polish Student Union organized this festival for the first time together with the Warsaw Hot Club Hybrydy . The venue was originally the Stodoła student club . Because of the growing popularity, the festival moved to the Warsaw National Philharmonic in 1961 . The festival has been held in the Great Hall of the Warsaw Palace of Culture since 1966 .

During the Cold War in particular, the festival was a demanding event organized by the Polish state and developed into the largest and most popular jazz festival in the socialist countries. The entire Polish jazz scene and numerous visitors from socialist countries gathered here for several days. From the end of the 1950s, American musicians - including celebrities like Miles Davis - were added, whose stay was financed by the US Embassy. In addition, there were newcomers and established bands from other Eastern and Western European countries. Prominent guests were u. a. Charles Mingus , Elvin Jones , Dizzy Gillespie , Duke Ellington , Michael Brecker , Ray Charles , Chucho Valdés , John Scofield , Art Blakey , Gerry Mulligan , Gil Evans , Woody Herman , Günter Sommer , Conny Bauer , Heinz Becker , Albert Mangelsdorff and Wjatscheslaw Ganelin . The festival served "over a long period of time as a hub between eastern and western (western European as well as American) jazz scenes."

Theater expert and jazz organizer Martin Linzer remembers: "While the theater in Warsaw was already extraordinary in the seventies, during the Jazz Jamboree the city was a quasi extraterritorial place of almost intoxicating enjoyment or a land utopia within the socialist camp." GDR over eight hundred jazz fans made the pilgrimage to Warsaw every year.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Bert Noglik Eastern European jazz in the upheaval of conditions In: Wolfram Knauer , Jazz in Europa. Darmstadt Contributions to Jazz Research, Vol. 3. Hofheim 1994, pp. 147–162
  2. ↑ after Rainer Bratfisch, Freie Töne. The jazz scene in the GDR. Berlin 2005, p. 98