[Dixielandjazz] Maxim Gorky on Jazz was Sartre

[Marek Boym]

Tell ME about it!  I grew up in a Communist country, where listening
to jazz was tantamount with hooliganism.  But in the mid-50's jazz
underwent a wondrous metamorphosis and from a rotten product of the
decadent capitalist culture it turned into the "expression of the
Negros' struggle for equality and freedom," and thus obtained a
"strictly kosher" stamp of the authorities.
BTW, it was not the first time.  After the late twenties came the mid-
and late thirties, and every Soviet republic had its state "jazz
orchestra."  Ady Rosner played jazz in the USSR after 1939; he even
played a special concert for Stalin.  After the concert he was told
that "comrade Stalin loved it," and within a very short time - sent to
the Gulag.  Luckily, the camp commander was a fan, so he was allowed
to go on playing, and thus survived, to reemerge after the 50's
metamorphosis of jazz.
Cheers