Conceptualizing Jazz as a Cultural Practice in Soviet Estonia

This chapter tries to present the web of meaningful categories transmitting the beliefs, practices, and actions underlying the discourse of jazz culture in Soviet Estonia. While interacting with canonical American-derived system of meanings, jazz as a cultural practice in Estonian context, however, established its own web of meaningful categories as a result of interaction between local socio-political conditions and actions of musical actors. This article proposes two dichotomies forming the underlying framework for meaningful discussions of Soviet Estonian jazz. While the public/private divide is crucial for an understanding of how jazz culture functioned in the Soviet socio-cultural space, then the high/low dichotomy explains, in turn, the status of jazz within the classical/popular hierarchy.