From a big band concert to a documentary premiere

International Jazz Day Latvia celebrated for the ninth time in 2022

In 2011 UNESCO designated April 30th as a celebration of jazz music, so since then, every single spring all over the world International Jazz Day gets celebrated. In Latvia, we’ve been festive for nine years in a row — this time, there were seven jazz music events organized in Riga, Rezekne, and Mazmezotnes manor at the end of April, as well as Latvian Radio 3 «Klasika» on-air celebration all day long.

Our press releases begin like this: In 2011, UNESCO officially designated April 30 as International Jazz Day in order to highlight jazz and its diplomatic role of uniting people in all corners of the world. Nowadays Latvian musical environment offers a wide range of possibilities for developing a high-quality product and bringing it to the world market. There are many high-level jazz genre professionals and enthusiasts, and the jazz community is evolving. The aim of International Jazz Day Latvia is to show the rich variety and colors of the genre in the country as well as give the country and musicians an opportunity to become a part of the international jazz movement. The day is widely recognized by musicians and listeners, as well as many other Latvians and foreign guests.

Jazz Day is brought to Latvia by the Wise Music Society — enthusiasts who have education, experience, and knowledge of jazz as well as a wish to achieve goals, making short-term and long-term investments in Latvian jazz music.

This time International Jazz Day Latvia began with the Latvian Radio big band with the program «Then and Now: Reimagined» composed by Krists Saržants and arranged for the big band, with the singer Evilena Protektore participating. The program continued with the big band of the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and Rīga Cathedral Choir School with special guests Jere Laukkanen and Indriķis Veitners. «Digital Art House» hosted a digital jazz festival with local bands «TEN KA», «FunCoolio», Miķelis Dzenuška and «Uzvaras bulvāris», «The Coco’nuts» and the founder of «Jersika Records» Mareks Ameriks as a DJ. The Embassy of Latgale GORS hosted a concert of pianist and composer Pablo Held, while Mazmežotnes manor — a concert of Aija Vītoliņa and Aivars Hermanis. The Jazz Day ended with a jam session night on the second floor of «M/Darbnīca», led by Evilena Protektore.

The Latvian Radio 3 «Klasika» also celebrated International Jazz Day Latvia on April 30th, offering both new Latvian concert recordings and great world premieres. The listeners could hear some compositions from the new double album «Jazz in Latvia 2022», followed by the «VEF Jazz Club | Then and Now: Reimagined» concert recording from VEF Culture House, listened to some earlier Latvian jazz musician recordings, continued by the Orchestra «Riga» big band concert «Šodien uzspīdēs saule» (The sun will shine today). The Jazz Day program continued with the «Meksikas leksika» radio show hosted by the jazz drummer, and the celebration ended with George Gershwin’s opera «Porgy and Bess», recorded at the New York Metropole Opera in 2021.

One of the central events of the festival was a Latvian premiere of a documentary movie «Tallinn 1967» by the Estonian jazz historian Heli Reimann, which took place at the «M/Darbnīca» ground floor gallery. Every night between 11 and 14 May 1967, the Kalev Sports Hall in Tallinn was filled with 3,000 listeners who had gathered to enjoy the Tallinn ‘67 jazz festival. The festival was the culmination of an initiative launched by composer and jazz enthusiast Uno Naissoo in 1949, which had expanded year by year. That year, more than 25 ensembles from both the Soviet Union and abroad joined the jazz celebration. Due to the exceptionally large number of journalists present and an incident with the American saxophonist Charles Lloyd, who had arrived at the festival with his band, the festival reached the pages of numerous foreign newspapers. For more than half a century, the festival has been talked about time and time again, confirming its legendary status and significance that transcends the boundaries of time and place.

The film by a music historian Heli Reimann and Erik Norkroos (Tallinn, Estonia) is based on the clips of the exhibition Jazz Idealism 1967 and focuses on the people who took part in the festival, for whom jazz was a world-view, an ideal, and a lifestyle, as well as the basis of their values and self-realization. The participants’ recollections invite us on an audio-visual journey where, against a historical background, we are called to ask questions about the timeless topics of idealism and reality and the relationship between power and spirit. Inspired by the world views of the festival participants, which radiate deep humanity and awareness of the basic values of life, the film offers a new insight that goes beyond the events of the festival. It encourages us to reflect on what it means to be human in our time when our inner «ecology» – being guided by inner values, awareness, and empathy – should become part of the ecosystem of our entire planet and were operating in a whirlwind of change is testing our ethical decisions.

Unfortunately, the filmmaker herself couldn’t be present in Riga in April, so the introduction to the screening was done by Dr.Art Indriķis Veitners. Meanwhile, we called Heli to ask her a couple of questions about the filmmaking process and the research that led to this result.

Heli, what was the process of working on this research like?

Jazz research, in general, is a field where a proper musicologist is a rarity. It’s a very interdisciplinary field, difficult to define. Joined by researchers from every kind of humanities — cultural studies, historians, sociologists. Many kinds of disciplines, so I’d say professionally-trained musicologists are a minority. I am trained as a musicologist myself, but I’ve never done traditional musicology. Jazz research first occurred in the 1990-s, which we recall as a turning point where those who did jazz research were trained academics. Before that, there was ground for old-fashioned historians, most of them journalists, which I’d call pre-professional jazz research. I think, nowadays, their interdisciplinarity is way more relevant; you cannot make such clear-cut distinctions between the fields anymore. The institutional side requires you to define yourself on who you are, so I think this is contradictory. Then you apply for funding and find the right window to define yourself. Jazz research is a very marginal field. Popular music is, in any case, a way more distinctive field of study than jazz.

The field of musicology is usually connected to classical music though.

All the countries that belong to the former Soviet bloc, such as the Baltics, I think, have a problem with the Soviet-era heritage. Musicology during the Soviet era was a part of conservatories. And those who did music research were members of Composers’ unions, so they had nothing to do with the real academic world and were somehow separated from that. I think this institutional separation, even nowadays, produces that approach that music is not a proper subject for cultural or sociological studies. This particularly exists among the former Soviet and Eastern European countries. Music is still much more separated. In Estonia, we’re struggling with the same problem — to be accepted. At Tallinn university, there are cultural-historical studies, but jazz and popular culture are some secondary types of things we need to investigate. There is still not a positive approach to entertainment and leisure.

Do you think we have some differences between our Baltic countries, speaking of research?

Jazz research has been a very American-centered field. I studied at Rutgers university in 2002, and I remember when I was there, I was just disappointed and sad because they really ignored considering jazz beyond America — they didn’t even recognize it existed. The research was very American-centered. Then there was HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) funding, featuring more countries participating. But Eastern Europe is still hidden behind a so-called «iron curtain». I’ve been to all those Jazz Rhythm Changes conferences and met just a few enthusiasts from Eastern European countries. It’s still a sad situation. But it’s two-sided — on the one hand, I think there’s a high interest in Poland, Checz Republic, and Hungary — they have done more in terms of jazz research. It’s still very marginal. It’s all also defined by power relations in Academia, led by the British — our voice is always much weaker than theirs. It’s about power relations and dominance from some perspectives. Those who are doing cultural studies in our countries have a huge job to do to enlighten others on the real situation. Speaking of the Baltics, we just have one person in every country. And also, because the field is very marginal, do we even need to do jazz research? Nowadays, where all the research activities are project-based, you can’t even have a position as a jazz researcher in the university. If I had some students start tutoring, I wouldn’t encourage them to choose it as their profession. You need to think of what you are going to do with that. Humanities have always been a very underestimated field, and I think they will be even more in the current state of affairs.

That’s quite a pessimistic forecast.

It’s realistic. I mean, a great thing we’re communicating with each other, me and Indriķis and Rūta, we’re networking and exchanging knowledge. I think the way to do jazz research should be rethought. I’m doing research on the Soviet era in jazz, writing a book on Tallinn 67 jazz festival. I’ve been to Latvia and Estonia many times, interviewing musicians. During the Soviet era, musicians weren’t professional and didn’t mainly earn money with that. In the current situation, it can be just a part of some other activities. Jazz has always been done by those who are really interested in it. They are real fanatics who do it. Jazz as music and jazz as research is just fanaticism-based activities. They don’t always expect to make a living with that. I also do popular music research myself, and I also have to do many other things apart from the Academy. Do you still think I’m pessimistic? [laughs]

What do you think about this distinction between classical, contemporary, and jazz in terms of research?

It also has to do with power relations between the fields and those who are funding. Maybe jazz music doesn’t have such an appeal, but popular music has a great industry — they expect that those who are involved in that field must earn money without governmental support. The problem is that jazz is somewhere in between those two — not popular music and not classical. In the 1960-s in America, when jazz tried to access academia, the mode of legalization of jazz was that they tried to claim jazz as classical music — they tried to classicize jazz to reach academia. Then they started jazz education to show jazz can be as important as classical music. In Estonia, there’s also not enough funding for jazz. Although in Estonia, jazz is much more popular if you compare it to Sweden or any other Western European country — it gets popular among listeners and those who are doing music — it’s amazing.

I think it depends on the open-mindedness of people, whether they can accept the multiplicity of it. Jazz has always been a niche type of music. There are always compromises you need to make. Such a minor music field like jazz is always compromised. It would be awesome to put the Baltics on the map of global jazz research, of course, but we also don’t know what happens to the cultural sector now. Maybe I’m again in the cynical state of thinking — but maybe we don’t need that much. Maybe there’s too much, and the economy can’t support it to this extent. Questions we can’t answer.