Did Stalin like jazz?

[Kléber]

Did Stalin listen to Jazz or not? that is the question. It is well known that Stalin called Eddi Rozner (a Jewish performer fleeing the Nazis) in 1939 to congratulate him on his jazz performance, probably because all the good jazz artists had been shot or fled the country in the purges! But later he was a sad old fart and send all the sax players to GULAG, Rosner included. And as everyone knows all the jazz that has come since 1956 has been shitty Khrushchevite revisionist jazz.

So did he secretly keep some records around or did he really listen to WWII marches all day or was he privately entertained or what?

Or maybe when he said he liked Rozner's performance he was just behaving as a socialist politician in a capitalist world - like when he said world revolution was a "tragi-comedy" and disbanded Comintern - he only wanted to placate the rootless cosmopolitan counter-revolutionary Jazz ensembles and give them a false sense of security so as to better strike them down later.

Here you all go, a video showing the awesomeness that was, or could have been, Soviet jazz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDkPoN7UYY

[Pirate Utopian]

as everyone knows all the jazz that has come since 1956 has been shitty Khrushchevite revisionist jazz.
Lies.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Only the Jazz about grain yields. What I really want to know is would Stalin be team Jacob or team Edward?

[Kléber]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSCPQVhj8HI
Stalinism was better with accordions and saxophones

Team Edward probably cause he's a Rightist. I can totally see him coming to the theater wearing the fucking shirt. What kind of animal would he turn into? We all know KV turns into a burd.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Bukharin-Voroshilov.jpg

[Chambered Word]

Man, this made me like jazz a lot less.


Only the Jazz about grain yields. What I really want to know is would Stalin be team Jacob or team Edward?

:lol:

[Tyrlop]

Wow nice jazz. The soviet union sure had its great musicians :tt1:

[Dimentio]

It is always both uninteresting and meaningless to delve into the musical taste of historical characters, but from what I understand about Stalin he was not a modernist. Modern art and music had a very vibrant time in the USSR prior to Stalin's tightening of the grip in 1936. Stalin preferred "socialist realism" (which in fact could be called "soviet neoclassicism"). That with the jazz musicians being offered asylum in the USSR was probably some sort of way to gain political goodwill visavi Nazi Germany.

[Tyrlop]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-pNjHFtLM
Wow this could be the new antifascist song :):lol:

[The Ben G]

I know he liked John Wayne.

[Nolan]

Stalin didn't like music like you or I. For entertainment, he would listen to the screams of a helpless victim being boiled alive, preferably a Ukrainian peasant.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Stalin didn't like music like you or I. For entertainment, he would listen to the screams of a helpless victim being boiled alive, preferably a Ukrainian peasant.I have that album - their earlier stuff was better. Ever since they started using auto-tunes to digitally augment the screams of terror, it just hasn't been the same.

[Lyev]

Bit later than Stalin, but this thread made me think of this vid (listen to the drummer, there is a pretty cool solo halfway through):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vewWf8HDKF0
And who said the USSR was no fun after Lenin died?