Jazz in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s and 1960s

By analyzing the formation of the jazz scene and its surrounding political discourse, this article aims to examine the development of jazz and its relationship to state socialism in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s and 1960s, with a major focus on the period from 1948 to 1968 – the beginning of Sovietization to the Prague Spring. By concentrating on this time span, the article will analyze the particular historical complexity as well as the varied forms of interplay and negotiation between the jazz scene and the young socialist state. It will be shown that jazz in Czechoslovakia – which itself thoroughly changed during this period – cannot only be understood as a complex interplay between the state and the scene but more as a changing and shifting process of mutual incorporation and assimilation. The drastic break of 1968 particularly symbolizes the pervasive political dimension of everyday life in state socialism. The normalization (normalizace) following the Prague Spring led to a new and different phase of oppressive state socialism. At this point new protagonists like the Jazz Section appeared (Motycˇka 2010), and the political discourse required new forms of negotiation and change, but these lie beyond the scope of this article.