The People's Republic of Jazz by

Posted on: May 13, 2005 11:47 PM

It was in my first ambitions to display to you one that incarnates the total world-class playboy, creative genius and primo intellectualist; then I listened to this last challenge again and my ears chanced upon the tragic revelations that I must not talk of myself. So tonight you will only receive the second best, ok?

Musician, traveller, playboy, activist, Mr Jerzy B was fundamental to the emergence of Polish Jazz in the hostile and, dare I say, total dictatorship of 1950's Stalinist Poland. He was at the centre of the artistical and intellectualistic counter-cultures of the 1960's. He rubbed the shoulders of suchlike Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Komeda, Stan Getz and Fidel Castro. He enjoyed a multifarious array of awesome womanfolks, and he enjoyed them everywhere, from Warsaw and Budapeszt to Harlem, Sao Paolo and New Orleans. He was so extensively attached to freedom that he payed for it with time in a Stalinist interrogation cell. But above all, he was a total boss of Jazz drummers and as such, he recorded scores of LP's with so many kings of Polish Jazz that he cannot remember all of it himself! He is in fact so much like me, that it does not surprise for you also to hear that I am in veracity his illegitimate son.

Tell them about this music scene of 1950's

From 1949 onwards, socialist realism was imposed onto all fields of artistic creativity, from writing to painting to music. Jazz was arbitrarily branded as "decadent" and "anti-socialist". If at an official dance, the orchestra started playing anything with a fox-trot, samba or rhumba beat, they would immediately be ordered to interrupt what they were playing and return to the more traditional waltzes, polonaises and kujawiaks. At the same time, specialist magazines would publish lengthy and idiotic debates where eminent communists would argue whether augmented sixth chords were marxist, thus ideologically correct, or capitalist, thus possibly on the payroll of the CIA! What is perhaps equally shocking is that an accomplished musician, such as Wladyslaw Szpilman, who at that time held a high position in Polish radio, backed these absurd opinions, regardless of the fact that augmented sixths are common in Chopin, whose works Szpilman was a master of! In 1955, Leopold Tyrmand (writer and jazz activist) invited audiences to Jam Session No.1 and this was the first, revolutionary event in Polish Jazz. He was of course widely criticized by the media; I clearly remember one article, written by some communist bootlicker, whose headline ran "Tyrmand USAnkcjonowany", which is a play on words that translates as "Tyrmand Sanctioned" with the "USA" in capitals indicating possible foreign involvement. Personally, I started performing after the thaw of 1956, when Jazz was no longer strictly illegal - although it was still frowned upon. I guess you could say I was lucky.

Is the augmented sixth a capitalist?

No.

So this makes us ponder that the lives must be rough for artists like us, in those eras?


Yes, it definitely wasn't easy. Although I must say that musicians were better off than writers, who were always hit hardest by censorship. The official books were all about factory workers and peasants, love stories where you could read such marvels as "their love for each other augmented with the rising rate of sodium production"! As you know, I was kept in an UB (secret police) interrogation cell for a year, simply for suspected anti-stalinist sympathies. There was another man there, a fireman, who was imprisoned for having saved the entire communist Central Committee from a fire. After collecting his reward, he had the misfortune to utter "I wish this happened to me more often". A cleaning lady overheard him and dutifully reported it to the Party, who concluded that he had staged the whole thing! God knows what happened to him... On the other hand, it was an exciting time for me. There was a palpable dynamism in counter-culture. For example young fashionable men would go to great trouble to wear loud and colourful ties as a sign of protest against the drab, grey uniformity that was the norm back then. The shops stocked nothing but badly-tailored suits in various tones of grey, so if you wanted to express yourself, you had to buy imported clothes from Paris and America, on the black market. These ties were known as "bikini ties" and the people who wore them were named "bikiniarze". It was a common thing for the militia or ZMP (Polish Youth Union) to simply walk up to a bikiniarz and snip off his tie with a pair of scissors! Tyrmand used to wear mis-matched, colourful socks as a sign of protest. There was a lot going on even if it was difficult to do anything.

You prattle much of Tyrmand. Who else was around your circles in those eras?


In the late 1950's I started playing with the Modern Dixielanders and that's when my career as a musician truly begun. Most of my friends were also musicians of course, but the whole artistic milieu was pretty close in those days. For example, I was very close to Janusz Glowacki, who now enjoys a lot of success as a playwright in New York City; my band leader, Dudus Matuszkiewicz, went to Lodz film school, as did Roman Polanski. Polanski would often come to our shows and I remember going out to restaurants on Marszalkowska street with him and Dudek. He would also came to the Jazz Campings that were held in the Tatra mountains, where a lot of the most creative young people around got together. In 1959, I went on tour to France with the Modern Dixielanders. I remember how impressed I was when Polanski commented his school films in French!

You have also deducted some interesting theories into Polanski's group of friends, yes?

Well, I always found it very strange what happened to them. You see, all these brilliant young writers, actors and musicians that were around him then, died shortly afterwards, mostly in strange circumstances. Zbigniew Cybulski, the "rebel" actor of the day, was hit by a train in 1967; Marek Hlasko, one of our greatest contemporary writers, was probably assassinated by secret agents in 1969; Krzysztof Komeda, the composer, had a tragic skiing accident in the same year; Wojtek Frykowski, socialite and playboy, was murdered along with Sharon Tate by the Charles Manson gang, also in 1969. I still sometimes bump into Frykowski's old girlfriend, she was a real beauty in her day..... This interview really takes me back!

But you have also known your share of beauties, yes? (I make winking noise)

Ha! I will not say the contrary!

Tell them about some of these exceptional womanfolk.

You must know that the whole Jazz crowd was very excessive in those days. A lot of sex and alcohol. At one point I was drinking vodka so much that the other band members would cart me out of the car, plod me on my stool, and carry me back off after the show! So you will excuse me if my memory is a little fuzzy... There were always many women around us, actresses, artists, groupies, and the sexual freedom in our milieu was much greater than for the rest of Poland. We met girls on tour. We had sex parties. I remember how crazy these times were, like when Starowieyski (the famous artist) would get undressed before he entered my house! One story which I always found amusing is when I was going out with Elzbieta, a strip-tease artist. I clearly remember the time I went to pick her up after her show during Fidel Castro's state visit. She had just finished, when Castro walked in surrounded by an army of bodyguards. He must have liked what he saw, because he complained that he had missed her act and made her do it all over again for him! Oh, and this reminds me of another amusing story. When I was on tour in Cuba, with Ewa Demarczyk (the famous singer), we visited a jewelry shop in Havana. Now in those days, in Poland, unusually short miniskirts were the height of fashion. Demarczyk and Ewa Wanat (from the Novi band), wearing these fashionable clothes, were looking at some jewelry on a very low shelf, in such a way that they almost had to bend down to the floor, leaving nothing hidden to the imagination. We were standing outside when we heard a repeated shout after which the shop quickly filled up with men and the shopkeeper was soon forced to lock the door. Someone later translated the slogan that was being shouted as: "Campaneros! Comrades! The Polish women are showing off their asses in the shop!"



With such crazy stuff, I must ask if your adventures sometimes create disasters for you?

Hmm... The craziest situation I remember was in Harlem, New York. It must have been in the early 1970's. I had spent the night in a Jazz club there. There were only black people and I felt great. I spoke very poor English at that time and was not aware that white men wouldn't go to such a club. So after a great time of music and women and alcohol, these guys come up to me, point a gun at me and tell me to give them all I got. Of course I did what they said. But I was lost in a foreign city and had no idea how I would get back to my hotel. So I told my aggressors this. Couldn't they leave me just a couple of dollars? They didn't. But they did walk me to the bus stop and waited for the bus with me. When it came, the bus driver also turned out to be black, so they told him something like "We just robbed this white guy and he needs to get back to his hotel. Take him free of charge, will you?" And so I got home safely that night.

Thank you Jurek. You are total awesome BOSS, and dare I say, superstar of the People's Republic of Jazz!

Thank you Lyova. It has also been a great pleasure for me to share this with you.


Jerzy B must now be located playing in Tygmont Jazz club of Warsaw city, or just sipping his favourite Gin and Tonic at bar, along with other pioneers of this crazy Jazz eras.

Previous: The Genius. The Activist. The Celebrity. | Den Home | Ultimate Blogger Home | Next: Meet Jane

Comments:

© 2005 URBN*HNKG | Design by YACHT | Using MT 3.33 | DEN RSS 2.0 W/O COMMENTS: DEN RSS 1.0