Here and there in the overall documentation of jazz history affected the social and societal context around the music. The american view of the musicologist Alan Lomax biography of the pianist Jelly Roll Morton depicts for example, the early jazz in a way that tells as much about the situation of creoles and blacks in New Orleans in the beginning of the century. Milton Mezz Mezzrows ”Really the blues” (in English ”Dance to black pipe”) is all about the music and about the time, mirrored in a jewish kid from Chicago who falls in love with african-american culture during the 1920s and 30s.
But one need not of course come so close to the jazz’s geographical origin in order to see how music both influences and is influenced by its contemporaries. In Musikverkets (formerly Rikskonserters) and the record company Caprice’s extensive record collection ”Swedish composed” is not called for, not the cd box that covers the years 1940-42 ”Beredskapsswing”. And if something in particular lifts the journalist Göran Jonsson’s book ”Freedom blue tones – a story of jazz in Sweden” is the realization that, as the author himself notes, ”no style of music reflects the modern society as well as jazz”.
it starts, naturally, still in New York, where musicians from the orchestras of the Swedish America Liniens passenger ships were inspired by what they saw and heard in the middle of the 20th century. Jonsson devotes a chapter to the clarinetist Åke ”Stan” Hasselgårds somewhat astonishing career in the united states until his death in a car accident in 1948, only 26 years old. Forward 50’s, when the Swedish moralväktare conclusively failed to prevent the jazz from getting into the country, was the battle, rather than internally between those who followed the development from bebopen, and those who embraced the nytraditionella wave with dixieland.
in Addition to racism, moralising and nykterhetsiver collided with the jazz even with the very Swedish phenomenon that was folkrörelseägda the People’s Park and People’s Houses. On the one hand, the relatively large parts of the country access to something so exclusive that Charlie Parker’s legendary tour in 1950. On the other, it meant ridiculously poor working conditions, for example, Frank Sinatra, whose visit in Denmark and Sweden in 1953, moreover, was accompanied by the Swedish daily press pursued him with jantelagssinnade nedgöranden. A tragic-comic study of the past of the bonnighet, Jonsson crowns with a quote from the Stockholm Newspaper after that Frankie Boy reasonable enough caught a cold and canceled the tour: ”Norway does not need to listen Sinatra”.
is not as star-studded but says more about the ways in which jazz actually took root in Sweden. Still, Jonsson plenty able to immerse themselves more in the periods covered in the chapters ”Jazz”, ”Jazz on the european” and the ”Multi kulti”. I am thinking in particular of the american frijazzens effect on european jazz and the continuation in the form of less or not at all bluesbaserad improvisational music, which meant that the development of (mainly northern) Europe won autonomy vis-à-vis jazz in the united states; a relationship across the Atlantic that otherwise runs like a red thread through His history. Names such as Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink and Sven-Åke Johansson is not mentioned in the book, which also ignores the important comeback for the improvisation music a in Sweden in the late 90’s.
My point is not to put your finger on the missed details, but more to remind you that the music egenliga development often takes place on a plane is just under the practical course of events. But Jonsson’s book is worth reading, not least for a larger readership. Through its broad, journalistic eye for the he also, indirectly, presented a theory that I very much endorse – namely, that music is not just all about the music.
