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3) The Swing Kids: Jazz as Social Resistance
Joseph
Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, called Jazz "the art of the
subhuman." This is typical of Nazi ideology, dividing humanity between
human and subhuman, or between superhuman and human. Paradoxically, it is this
kind of thinking that deprives us and others of our humanity.
It can be said that jazz is the exact opposite of Nazism. Jazz is about giving voice to the voiceless, it is based on individuality, which you find in the solos, but also on participation and togetherness, since the solos are within the framework of a specific song, which the musicians have agreed to play. Here I
would like to mention a book entitled "Swing under the Nazis" by Mike
Zwerin. The subtitle is: "Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom." After
reading this book, we start to suspect that dictatorial regimes have always
banned jazz because they felt it was a threat to their obsession with absolute
authority. We could say that jazz causes the players and the listeners to long
for true freedom. On the last page of the book, we read how Joseph Goebbels's
abominable propaganda machine paradoxically encouraged the development of an
underground love for jazz throughout the occupied territories: "The
'Golden Age of Jazz' coincided with the rise of the Third Reich, was limited to
the territory it occupied and ended with the liberation, and that is certainly
no coincidence." (p. 190) A quote
from Czech writer Joseph Skvorecky reads: "Totalitarian ideologists loathe art, the product of a yearning for life, because they cannot control it. So art becomes protest like it or not. Popular mass art, like jazz, becomes mass protest. That is why the ideological guns and sometimes even the police guns of all dictatorships are aimed at the men with the horns." (p. 52). During
WWII in Belgium, Radio Brussels was broadcasting music by American Jewish and
Black composers, even though Goebbels had banned jazz, foxtrots and the tango
and in spite of the horrendous racism that was at the core of Nazi ideology. We know
already that most of the great jazz musicians were African Americans: Louis
Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis etc. Many
of them were of Jewish background too, like the two clarinetists Benny Goodman
and Artie Shaw, like George Gershwin and others. One of
the greatest hits of Radio Brussels during the Nazi era was a song called "Softly
as in a Morning Sunrise" by a Jewish composer called Sigmund Romberg. We
will be able to listen to that song in a few moments. Let us
imagine that we are here in Hamburg, about 60 years ago, and are meeting to
listen to the following song, like many Swing Kids in Germany, or Zazoos in
France, were doing. We all run the risk of being arrested, thrown in jail,
tortured and killed by the Gestapo in a few moments, especially since it was
written by a Jewish composer. Here is the kind of nonsense we would have to
submit to if we were here in Hamburg about 60 years ago.
We can
surely appreciate the fact that today we can enjoy jazz without losing our
freedom and our lives, and also think about what needs to be done in order to
keep things this way, in Germany and everywhere else... Let's enjoy!
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