Tradition and deconstruction
In Poland in the late 1940s, the Stalinist regime, in the course of its paranoia of overthrow, was in a sweat of fear on its forehead, listening to the sinkopaque beats of jazz. The culture ministries banned everything rhythmically subtle into the illegality of the underground, which was only allowed to come to light again after Stalin’s death in 1953. Feliks Falk’s 1982 film »Byl Jazz« follows the musicians of the Lodz jazz cult band Melomani through this period of jazz banishment. The film’s key sentence, »Maybe this jazz is more to them than just music,« understands the government’s fear in simple words.
Jazz has always been considered suspect by the leaders of authoritarian, immoral states. And even after its legalization after Stalin’s death, jazz remained a symbol, »the contagious evaporation of a decaying, bourgeois culture,« as the Polish painter Andrzej Wroblewski once described jazz. Nevertheless or precisely because of this, a flourishing, exciting and successful jazz scene developed behind the iron curtain in Poland. The Polish jazz scene of the 1950s and 1960s under Krzystof Komeda, Jan ‘Ptaszyn’ Wroblewski (both former members of Melomani) and Michał Urbaniak also left its mark internationally. In 1962 Thomas Stanko founded the Jazz Darings, the first, at least publicly known, European Free Jazz Combo. And Komeda has written several soundtracks for Roman Polanski, among them »Rosemary Baby«.
Creativity in isolation
In the isolation behind the Iron Curtain an own, little regulated variety of styles could develop. »The jazz scene had its own fresh ideas,« Igor Pudło summed up in Goon Magazine in 2004. Together with Martin Cichy, he set out to enrich Ninja Tune with modern jazz under the project name Skalpel, which consisted exclusively of samples from the »Polish Jazz« series. The series, published by the Polskie Nagrania Muza label between 1965 and 1989, was a permanent fixture for all jazz musicians in Poland and beyond. For some years now, there have been sporadic releases of jazz albums and parts of the back catalogue, which had been out of print for a long time, have recently been reissued.
Despite of some radio relations to the imperialistic foreign countries, the jazz scene in Poland was mostly isolated. And so they reverted to their own cultural history. In addition to Polish folklore and Chopin’s piano music, these were above all the composition techniques of philharmonic concert music. With Andrzej Trzaskowski and Andrzej Kurylewicz, the so-called 3rd Stream emerged during the 1960s, a mixture of modern jazz and contemporary philharmonic music. It was not until the 1970s, when saxophonist and violinist Michel Urbaniak emigrated to the USA, that fusion jazz began to spill over into the country. In the same years a colourful collective was created with Laboratorium, which moved jazz into the psychedelic corners in which Krautrock, electronic music and Music concréte combined.
Between the spirit of optimism and the need for tradition
Cut into the present. Poland’s jazz scene has probably never been as big as it is today. About 34 jazz festivals take place regularly. The technical level people play even in the smallest clubs is enormous. Piotr Turkiewicz, director of the Jazztopad festival, praised the strength of the Polish jazz scene in the Allaboutjazz magazine in 2017: »Every city has its own community of musicians who improvise, play avant-garde or mainstream«. In recent years there has been a veritable flood of releases. On the Polish Jazz blog three enthusiasts discuss almost daily new albums of Polish bands and soloists. But despite all the wealth of musicians and all the world-class technology, one thing remains obvious: the footsteps of the fathers of Polish jazz are huge – and only a few jazz bands venture out of these deep impressions.
Despite the large number of jazz musicians (there are hardly any women in the Polish jazz scene), the sound spectrum today is relatively homogeneous. There are special Polish phenomena, such as the interpretation of Chopin or the integration of violins. But the musical structures have changed only insignificantly since the 1970s. At the beginning of the 1990s, the young Yass scene, which emerged from the environment of punk and performance art, managed a brief outbreak. Bands like Miłość and Łoskot broke not only linguistically with the ancestors. Like so many subcultures, the scene surrendered to the mainstream at the beginning of the new millennium and seeped away.
Even in contemporary free jazz and experimental music, the dynamics remain well known in many places today. If one travels through various relevant jazz albums in succession, the differences become blurred. Catchiness and recognition dominate. Corners and edges can be found rather apart from the relevant jazz infrastructure. Zimpel / Ziołek and Innercity Ensemble on the indie label Instant Classic blur the boundaries between folk, jazz, postrock and minimal. On the experimental label Plaża Zachodnia Chrystie Panie rotate between Tribal, Jazz and Psychedelic. While solo drummer Hubert Zemler creates an exciting, reserved world of effect devices, drums and xylophones on Bôłt, a label for contemporary classical music.
Whether searching for traces at the beginning or at the pulse of the sheer impenetrable present, Poland is still one of the most exciting European countries for jazz. Whoever enters the thicket, however, has to go deep into the undergrowth to discover unmapped terrain.
You can find Polish Jazz on Vinyl records in our HHV web shop




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Innercity Ensemble – III (2016): We need more noise and indie rock in jazz. Seriously! Recorded during a three-day impromptu meeting, the seven musicians row out so wonderfully far on their third album, partly from quite unjazzigen backgrounds. Actually, only the instrumentation is vaguely reminiscent of jazz. Somehow more postrock, some Montréal, a little Chicago, tribal percussions, Krautrock at its core. Welcome to the event horizon of polish jazz (I got you one step over it already). (Jens Pacholsky)
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You can find Polish Jazz on Vinyl records in our HHV web shop