Jazzgeschichten aus Europa

Stories are not the same as history. History is written, stories are told. Of course, stories can also be written down, but that does not make them history; they remain stories. Ekkehard Jost's jazz stories from Europe are not identical with the history of jazz in Europe. They do not strive for completeness in terms of names and events, but concentrate on telling what seems worth telling. They prefer the special to the general; they are interested in particular phases and stages of a decades-long historical process in which an American music called jazz thoroughly and lastingly threw European music culture off balance. And they focus their interest on events that were extraordinary and therefore sensational: the sudden intrusion of "wild" jazz into the staid musical life of Western European metropolises in the 1920s; the chequered fate of jazz music activities under the totalitarian regimes of Soviet Stalinism and German National Socialism; the bizarre situation of the French jazz scene during the occupation by German troops; the Europe-wide jazz euphoria of the postwar years and its gradual decline under the influence of new musical stimuli in the form of rock 'n' roll and beat music; and, last but not least the much-vaunted "European jazz emancipation," in which European musicians set out to turn their backs on the father figures of American jazz and go their own way. Our jazz stories from Europe tell of all this and much more, with a rich collection of rarely seen photos and, above all, the accompanying CD with a series of insightful music samples providing a welcome addition.

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