That Jazz of Praha: [vierzehn Jazz-Porträts in Wort Und Bild]

Among the countries of the former Eastern block two can be singled out as special jazz enclaves: Poland and former Czechoslovakia. In the 1960s, Prague developed a lively, even political jazz scene; members of its “jazz section” in 1968 even became aim of open state repression. At the same time Prague (just like Warsaw) became a Mecca for jazz fans for instance from East Germany as the way the jazz tradition and the country’s own national jazz voice experienced noticeably more freedom than in the German Democratic Republic. The book of the four authors does not just present Prague’s jazz history, though, but also the presence of jazz in the Czech Republic today, especially in its capital. It introduces fourteen jazz musicians in photographical portraits, essays and interviews. They tell about their own life and their musical aesthetics, their influences and current projects, about the life in Prague and the possibilities of working and playing there. The photographs of Christian Gerber show the artists in portrait studies or working, on stage or in the rehearsal room. Some of them are reflective scenes, others concentrated pictures, black and white, some of them spread over two pages. A book inviting its readers to browse, a nice source of information about jazz in our neighboring country, about a scene which became famous for being special.