V.A. Spiritual Jazz - Volume 18: Behind The Iron Curtain Part 1

One of the most poliƟcally charged terms of the 20th century, the Iron Curtain was a metaphor for poliƟcal and cultural division. In a post-war telegram Winston Churchill referred to the fault line that ran through Europe between East and West as "an Iron Curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind". In this two-part album, as far as jazz is concerned, we will showcase, describe and celebrate exactly what was 'going on behind'. We see that music is the power supreme, with the ability to transcend all barriers, be they physical, poliƟcal or metaphorical. Our liner notes illustrate the complex and contradictory history of Soviet jazz, and the tracks we've chosen cover the key period of the early 1960s to the 1980s. It was during these dark years of the Cold War that the Soviet Union and its satellite states produced a number of outstanding arƟsts playing in a variety of styles. The impact of modernism, from hard bop and LaƟn to modal and cool jazz, had found its way through cracks in the curtain. The deeply-felt ancestral strains of tradiƟonal European folk music were combined with the exciƟng new and progressive sounds of the West, and a radical, intoxicaƟng brew was created that no amount of guns, tanks or polonium tea could overcome. We chronicle the triumph of jazz at a Ɵme of extreme geopoliƟcal conflict. What went on behind the Iron Curtain in these countries was once mysterious and unknown to the West, but the perseverance of their arƟsts provided sound and light amid the secreƟve, dark days of the communist-capitalist standoff. There was no end of life-affirming spiritual jazz behind the Iron Curtain. "Whether it's by improvisaƟon in the African-American jazz tradiƟon, or by a village kobza player standing on top of a damn hill - he feels connected to the stars."