This book studies the different roles that jazz played in Poland in the course of the 20th century. Igor Pietraszewski, sociologist and jazz musician, depicts how jazz was forbidden under Stalin, accepted and even supported in the Polish People's Republic and then welcomed in the open market of the Third Republic. This book studies the different roles that jazz played in Poland in the course of the 20th century, from its implementation in the 1920s, through World War II to the Third Polish Republic. The author, sociologist and jazz musician, depicts how jazz was forbidden under Stalin, accepted and even supported in the Polish People's Republic and then welcomed in the open market of the Third Republic. The discussion of jazz in this work covers several levels: political, symbolic, cultural, and economic. The main point of the presented analysis are changes within jazz music itself, within the community of jazz musicians and relations between the field of jazz and the field of politics. Contents: Jazz and Politics - Sociology of Art - Sociology of Music - Art and Politics - Jazz in Communist Systems - Art and Communism - Art in post-Communism. Igor Pietraszewski, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Wroclaw (Poland). His main research interest is the sociology of culture, art, music and memory. He is also a saxophonist, a member of the Polish Jazz Association and of the Artistic Board of the Jazz on the Odra Festival. «Igor Pietraszewski [...] has written a concise and valuable history of jazz in Poland from the interwar period to the present.»
(David G. Tompkins, Slavic Review, vol.74, no.4 2015)
«The author presents a balanced picture of an important fragment of Polish history which is free of superficial interpretations and underpinned by his insightful understanding.»
(Karol Modzelewski, Professor Emeritus, University of Warsaw)
«Igor Pietraszewski's book is a valuable study of one of the most important and interesting art forms practiced in 20th-century Poland: jazz.»
(Jan Kubik, Professor and Chair at the Department of Political Science, Rutgers University)
