The Return of Jazz: Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change

by Andrew Wright Hurley

Overview

Jazz has had a peculiar and fascinating history in Germany. The influential but controversial German writer, broadcaster, and record producer, Joachim-Ernst Berendt (1922–2000), author of the world’s best-selling jazz book, labored to legitimize jazz in West Germany after its ideological renunciation during the Nazi era. German musicians began, in a highly productive way, to question their all-too-eager adoption of American culture and how they sought to make valid artistic statements reflecting their identity as Europeans. This book explores the significance of some of Berendt’s most important writings and record productions. Particular attention is given to the “Jazz Meets the World” encounters that he engineered with musicians from Japan, Tunisia, Brazil, Indonesia, and India. This proto-“world music” demonstrates how some West Germans went about creating a post-nationalist identity after the Third Reich. Berendt’s powerful role as the West German “Jazz Pope” is explored, as is the groundswell of criticism directed at him in the wake of 1968.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845455668
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	03/01/2009
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Andrew Wright Hurley holds a PhD in German Studies and a Bachelor of Law from the University of Melbourne. He has published articles on jazz in Germany and Australia, as well as articles on German Cinema, cross-cultural film-making, and law. He is a lecturer in German Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Introduction

PART I: JOACHIM-ERNST BERENDT AND THE POSTWAR LEGITIMATION OF JAZZ

Chapter 1. Jazz and the divide between serious and entertainment music
Chapter 2. Dance as escape?
Chapter 3. Jazz greetings to and from the East?
Chapter 4. Jazz, race, and colourblindness

PART II: JAZZ MEETS THE (NEW) OLD WORLD: EUROPEANIZING JAZZ

Chapter 5. The blues of German jazz
Chapter 6. Emancipation and the dilemma of Volk-jazz
Chapter 7. Globe Unity: Free jazz meets European New Music
Chapter 8. Emancipation from the Jazz Pope
Chapter 9. On the uses of European jazz

PART III: JAZZ MEETS THE OTHER WORLD

Chapter 10. The Marco Polo of jazz
Chapter 11. The Goethe Institut’s jazz ambassadors strike up
Chapter 12. Japanesing jazz, or: kimono today, swing tomorrow
Chapter 13. Doing the bossa in Berlin
Chapter 14. The 1967 world-jazz encounters: An East-West jazz-divan?
Chapter 15. Finding the Blut und Boden in African roots

Conclusion: Berendt and the utopia of Weltmusik

Chronology
Discography
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"The producer, writer and critic Berendt (1922-2000) remains a central, albeit for some a problematic, figure in the history of relatively recent German jazz and European jazz in general. Andrew Wright Hurley offers a welcome, closely researched study of a man who a decade after his untimely death continues to divide opinion among musicians, fellow producers and critics." - Jazz Journal

"...an eminently readable and thoughtful inquiry into the life and works of a man whose career in many ways parallels not just the West German jazz scene, but West German culture as a whole between 1950 and 1980. His work is thus both a valuable introduction to Berendt's thought as well as an important intervention into current scholarship about the role of global and American culture in the development and contestation of West German identity." - German Politics & Society

"In The Return of Jazz, Andrew Wright Hurley has admirably demonstrated Berendt's influence upon the emerging jazz scene of the early Federal Republic. Hurley shows how Cold War politics and rejection of the National Socialist past heightened Berendt's sense of mission. For Berendt, jazz was more than an avocation; it was a program for social and cultural reform. It is to Hurley's credit that he raises so many important issues surrounding jazz's development in the second half of the twentieth century." - H-German

"This is a benchmark study, in showing why a subject that has been overlooked in jazz historiography should not have been. Its importance lies not just in recognising the importance of a major mediator and 'enabler' of postwar jazz; it also models the late twentieth century shift of the jazz centre of gravity away from the US and towards international fusions. In its balancing of cultural theory with the most painstaking empirical research this is, quite simply, essential reading not just in jazz scholarship, but in the larger field of cultural history and its methodologies." - Bruce Johnson Cultural History, University of Turku

From the Publisher