Soviet Jazz on American Vinyl: Consuming Diasporic Jazz at Home

The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies. Ed. Bruce Johnson, Ádám Havas, and David Horn. Routledge Press. 162-170. Read.

With origins in African American cultural practices in the Deep South of the US, jazz has long been framed as a uniquely American form of musical expression. In recent years, the study of jazz scenes outside of the US has complicated America-centric narratives, though scholars usually frame the genre as a one-way cultural flow—“America’s inimitable gift to the world”, as Taylor Atkins once put it (2003, xviii). Framed as a far-flung offshoot of American trends, scholars have often assumed that Soviet jazz had no bearing on the global jazz circuit. The consumption of Soviet jazz outside the USSR has received little scholarly attention, in part due to misconceptions about its political status. This chapter provides a brief overview of the circulation of Soviet jazz recordings in America, attending to the contours of political discourse, public perception, and intercultural exchange. I focus on a few critical moments in Soviet jazz history under varied political leadership, underscoring the role of key Soviet Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian musicians. In doing so, I reconsider the role of diplomatic tours and small record labels in the spread of Soviet jazz tunes in the US.