Introduction

In the late 1940s, jazz found a new mode of appearance with the emergence of the jazz festival tradition. ‘Festivalisation’ again confirmed the transnational orientation of jazz – the first jazz festivals of international significance were held in nice and Paris respectively in 1948 and 1949 with the programmes presenting artists from both sides of the Atlantic. In Estonia, the main driving forces were jazz festivals rather than the jazz clubs and cafés as in Moscow and Leningrad, and radio broadcasts initiated by Valter Ojakaar at the end of the 1950s. By closely examining how the institution of jazz festivals functioned, the particular case study of Tallinn ’67 demonstrates the distinctive Soviet dynamic relationship between state and event, and decisive role of particular individuals in the dissemination of jazz culture. The transnational dimension of the festival is an instructive opportunity to display the divergent aspects between American and Soviet cultures, explicitly evinced in the dichotomies between commercial and non-commercial music.