The Tallinn’67 jazz festival
By Heli Reimann
Dear guests and participants in the festival Tallinn‘67! This is the fourteenth time jazz lovers have gathered in Tallinn. The modest creative meetings of local groups have turned into events attracting not only the attention of Soviet but also foreign jazz lovers. It is great recognition for Soviet jazz music to have the opportunity to perform before such large audiences, and to demonstrate its achievements in this popular genre. It is a great challenge for Soviet jazz to maintain its high standards, and also a duty to continue the creative processes of developing the music. This festival, dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution, is a major event involving participants from more than seventeen nations. May they enjoy the best memories of Tallinn hospitality, and our wish to live in peace and friendship. In fulfilling a mission entrusted to me, allow me to declare the Tallinn‘67 jazz festival open! I wish our honoured listeners the best musical experiences. Welcome!1
This is the short address at the opening of the Tallinn’67 jazz festival given by the Estonian jazz historian and broadcaster Valter Ojakäär. The welcoming speech is in fact a perfect example of Soviet-era public rhetoric, with the specific keywords "achievements", "high standards", "friendship", and a dedication, whereby, for the sake of demonstrating loyalty to the state and the Party, grand public events were often dedicated to Soviet cult personalities or events, on this occasion to the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution. The festival site was the Kalev Sports Hall, a spacious hall for nearly 3,000 listeners, where 28 groups with around 120 musicians performed over the four days of the festival from 11 to 14 May.
The Tallinn’67 jazz festival, the 14th in the series, marked a high point in the 18-year evolution of the jazz festival tradition in Estonia. The tradition was initiated in 1949 by the composer and jazz enthusiast Uno Naissoo, who organised a loominguline kohtumine (creative meeting), an event involving two groups on a stage in a darkened room performing in front of a few people. To call the event a full-size festival is questionable; but it assumed a symbolic meaning in founding a tradition that grew in prestige year by year, and became an important gathering point for the entire Soviet jazz community, with Tallinn being awarded the title of the Soviet "jazz capital". The first event on the scale of a real festival was a three-day gathering in 1958, when 12 local ensembles took to the stage at the Club of the Tallinn Plywood and Furniture Factory. In contrast, the first festival events in Soviet Russia were not held until 1962, organised in Leningrad by the State University Jazz Club, and in Moscow in the Molodyozhnoye cafe.
The significance of Tallinn’67 in the context of Soviet jazz history rests not just in its being the biggest jazz gathering until then; in addition, it marked the pinnacle of the new awakening of Soviet jazz that began with the opening-up of society during the "Khrushchev Thaw".2 Two events that had a great impact on the development of Soviet jazz were the start of the Voice of America Jazz Hour, with the broadcaster Willis Conover, in 1955, and the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957, signifying the breakthrough of Western culture into the Soviet Union with the presence of numerous foreign representatives, on a scale that was unprecedented since the onset of the Cold War. The institutionalisation of jazz in the Soviet cultural framework took place within the network of special interest clubs and cafes, with the first jazz club, D-58, opening in Leningrad in 1958. The main public forums for jazz culture to celebrate music in the jazz community became jazz festivals, the only times when Soviet jazz groups could show their art in public. The high point of jazz in the Soviet Union in the 1960s was the Tallinn’67 festival, which concurrently marked a turning point in the territorial shift whereby enthusiasm for jazz festivals moved from former centres in Moscow, Leningrad and Tallinn to provincial towns. The main impetus for the shift was the appearance of new forms of popular music, attracting the attention of Soviet youth in the biggest cultural centres, which in turn prompted Komsomol, a former supporter of jazz, to follow the taste of youth and to support new musical forms.
Leningrad Pantomime of Grigory Gurevich. Photographer Samuel Rosenfeld (Estonian History Museum)The awakening of Soviet jazz gave birth to a new generation of jazz musicians, sometimes referred to as jazzmen-sixtiers, musically "educated" by the Jazz Hour of Willis Conover. They showed a high level of professional skill, and sought a distinctive musical voice. The "voice" of this generation was stylistically eclectic, as was evident at the Tallinn’67 festival: Leningrad Dixieland played highly professional-level dixieland; the quartet of Anatoly Kroll was an outstanding exemple of Coltrane’s style; Zvyozdochka and the KM Quartet represented mainstream hard-bop sounds. More individual musical discoveries were represented in the "composed" free sounds of Vyačeslav Ganelin, in the musical "in-betweenness" of Herman Lukyanov, and in the electric sounds of the Sokolov trio. The rarity of vocal jazz and the erratic level of rhythm sections were the two main deficiencies of Soviet jazz, as was reflected at Tallinn’67. Unique on the stage was the group Leningrad Pantomime, with six dancers whose body movements were synchronised with the improvisation of a jazz trio. The authority of Tallinn’67 as the representative body of the entire Soviet jazz scene was compromised by the absence of big stars, such as the Gevorgjan brothers, Gennady Goldstein, Konstantin Nosov, Georgy Garanian and Nikolai Gromin.
In addition to the musical encounters between locals, Tallinn‘67 was an important meeting point for the trans-local scene of hundreds of Soviet jazz fans with a deep interest in this musical genre. Travelling from various regions of the Soviet Union, fans converged on the Tallinn festival to connect with like-minded people, to feel their interest-based solidarity, and to collectively revive the spirit of jazz. The emergence of jazz fandom in the Soviet Union had its roots in the appearance of the shestidesyatniki, members of а new generation of the Soviet intelligentsia who, while professionally active in different fields, technological, administrative, health-care, managerial or educational and artistic, chose jazz as the object of their devotion. They were active developers of the whole jazz culture, and were involved in numerous jazz activities, creating infrastructures and preserving its history.
Tallinn'67 was important in expanding the international reach of Soviet jazz festivals. While Tallinn’66 had foreign groups from Finland and Sweden, the 1967 event expanded the range, with musicians from Finland, Sweden, Poland and the United States. A visit by Americans, the Charles Lloyd Group, is central to the most scandalous episodes in the festival. For Estonian audiences, it was unprecedented to listen to a live concert by a world-class musician. For Lloyd, the year 1967 marked the peak of his early career in the 1960s, when a poll by the leading American jazz magazine DownBeat voted him saxophonist of the year. The basis for a scandal of international concern was the attempt by the group’s manager George Avakian to arrange the tour outside official cultural exchange mechanisms, which in the Cold War climate at that time was unprecedented. Avakian’s hunger for sensationalism led him to make much noise in the media about the visit, which in turn was a "red flag" for Soviet officials, because of the violation of the protocols of cultural exchanges and the extensive coverage of the tour in the American media. The Soviets attempted to prevent the performance by the quartet at the festival, but they had to surrender and finally allow Lloyd on to stage in the face of Avakian’s countertactics of accusing the Soviets of racial discrimination. American newspapers, for example, reported the incident with sensational headlines, such as "Reds Bar our Jazz Unit", "American Quartet Barred from Soviet Jazz Festival" and "US Jazz Group Gets a Rebuff".3 The visit by the Charles Lloyd Group became the source of numerous stories, which in time attained a mythical status. The myths included the question of how Lloyd got to Tallinn, assumptions about the obstacles to the group’s performance, and the different accounts of the duration of the applause after Lloyd’s performance. On the Soviet side, blame for the incident was directed at the Estonian organising committee. The strongest attack against the committee accused it of an unacceptable violation of state discipline and Soviet cultural life by inviting foreigners and bypassing the state organisations involved in cultural exchanges. The "scapegoat" for the incident was the main official organiser of the festival and the head of the Cultural Department of Tallinn City, Heinrich Schultz, who sent a semi-official letter of confirmation to the Americans about the possibility of giving a concert. It led in effect to him being fired; although in the Soviet system, the Communist Party never "fired" any of its members, but their "soldiers" were "transferred to another position", according to the correct process. Schultz’s fate has been a source of myths, according to which he was said either to have been sent to Siberia, or jailed for his courage.
Charles Lloyd group on stage. Keith Jarrett, Charles Lloyd, Ron McClure, Jack DeJohnette. Personal collection of Oleg Kitchigin.
The American guest who enjoyed unprecedented fame among Soviet jazz lovers was the Voice of America Jazz Hour cult broadcaster Willis Conover, for whom this was the first time he met his fans in the Soviet Union. The ovation for his first appearance in front of the audience was said to have exceeded even the rapturous reception given to Lloyd. The Estonian guitarist Tiit Paulus recalled this occasion in a colourful way: "When you have been listening to the gurgling of short wave [radio] in the evenings and then the person is suddenly in front of you … it was unbelievable. This type of thing can happen to religious people … it is like an apparition. I cannot compare it with anything else. But during this time we lived in extremely closed conditions, and such incidents were like wonders of the world to us.’4 Indeed, Conover was a unique jazz celebrity in the whole Eastern Bloc, a mythical figure, received with an almost religious devotion. He was a celebrity from the ether whose voice, manner of speech, and subject became objects of worship.
Willis Conover talking at the restaurant Kevad in closing baquet. From the left Willis Conover and Vladimir Gurfinkel (Estonian History Museum)
Just as all Soviet jazz culture functioned within the framework of amateur leisure activities in the 1960s, so did jazz festivals: the gatherings were officially considered as forms of state-sanctioned amateur activities in the mode of competition, where the best collectives were ranked by a jury, and highlighted with the title of laureates. Compared to other Soviet jazz festivals, Tallinn’67 was, nevertheless, less a competition than a celebration, where the awards had a more nominal role. In the list of prizewinners, the best groups were Leningrad Dixieland, the Aleksandr Kroll quartet from Tula, Henrich Zarkh’s vocal instrumental ensemble from Leningrad; and Gyuli Chokheli, the saxophonist Aleksandr Pishikov, George Riedel and Arne Domnerus were the most outstanding soloists. In addition to the honour of being a laureate of the festival, participants were awarded numerous special prizes. The Lithuanian pianist Oleg Molokoyedov, for example, recalled receiving the award for the best original piece with his "Legend".5 The "Certificate of Honour" awarded to the Viačeslav Ganelin trio from Lithuania and signed by the head of the cultural department Heinrich Schultz was simply given to mark their participation in the Tallinn‘67 jazz festival.
‘Certificate of honour’ of Viacheslav Ganelin Trio. Collection of Viacheslav Ganelin
The festival programme was wide-ranging, including revue-format concerts, with an average of 20 minutes for every group, as well as numerous other events.6 Jazz specialists, for example, had the chance to participate in the first-ever Jazz Forum in the Soviet Union, which aimed to provide a platform for those with intellectual credentials to unravel the essence of jazz, or to improve their jazz skills in the educational programme at the festival, including two sessions of master-classes for different instruments. Representatives of jazz youth clubs from various cities could attend a "creative meeting of representatives of jazz clubs", arranged for the purpose of establishing an institutionalised information centre coordinating the activities of jazz clubs in the Soviet Union. Among the traditional jazz festival events were jam sessions and a jazz parade. The artistic agenda of the festival was broadened with an art exhibition at the Youth Cultural Palace, and exhibitions of photographs and album covers at the Kalev Sports Hall. There was appreciative commentary regarding the organisational aspects of the festival from the Polish jazz journalist Józef Balcerak, who placed the event on a par with the Warsaw festival and other festivals. The stage was decorated with flags of the countries represented, metal badges were provided to participants, printed programmes were available, newsletters and television cameras appeared, a press office was installed, and finally the festival’s signature tune, the song "When the Saints Go Marching in", was played by a great band, the Leningrad Dixieland.7
Tallinn’67 attracted much international media attention, largely owing to George Avakian’s friendly relationship with the media, both American and European, and the successful promotion of the festival, based on the personal contacts between journalists and members of the organising committee. The actual number of journalists is not known, but speculation by commentators ranged from 100 to 200. Whatever the real number, even the participation of a few dozen journalists would have been sensational in the Soviet context for a cultural event of relatively low state priority. The abundance of journalists is illustrated by an anecdotal episode told by Valter Ojakäär:
During the Tallinn‘67 festival, the Shah of Iran visited the Soviet Union. Brezhnev was preparing to receive the guest with his entourage at Sheremetyevo Airport. He could not see any journalists at the airport, and asked his assistant: "Where are all the journalists?" "All the journalists are in Tallinn at the jazz festival," the assistant replied.8
However, Tallinn’67 marked the end of an entire series of jazz festivals in Estonia, only being reestablished two decades later when Pärnu Jazz (1986) and Jazzkaar (1990) appeared. Although post-Tallinn’67 signalled the decreasing significance of the jazz movement in its previous centres in Moscow and Leningrad and Tallin, at the same time it witnessed the expansion of jazz festivals in other Soviet centres. Both Latvian and Lithuanian jazz activists, for example, were said to have been inspired by the Tallinn festival to initiate jazz festivals in their countries. The Tbilisi jazz festival in 1978 is frequently considered the successor of Tallinn’67 festival in terms of its size.
During the more than half a century since Tallinn’67, it has become the source of many myths. The festival has produced numerous, sometimes contradictory, narratives, which have gained a legendary and mythical status, either because of their sensationalist distortions, the impact of the political confrontations, the tensions between idealism and the reality, or the fallibility of human memory. But mythologies are durable, since they tend to resonate with us today by serving an important cultural function, giving form to codes and conventions by which we live our lives.9 In Estonia, the myth of Tallinn‘67 is constantly celebrated in the form of commemorative practices, confirming its significance in Estonian jazz history. Participants in the festival described the event as "a crazy party" or "a totally different kind of world", and recalled seeing Americans, their "demi-gods", coming from a "phantasmagorical world", for the first time live on stage, something that moved them to tears. This is an indicator of the mythical-affective traces the festival left in their memories: traces which the event has also left on jazz history, both local and global.
Heli Reimann gained her PhD in 2015 from the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki. Her thesis, entitled "Jazz in Soviet Estonia from 1944 to 1953: Meanings, Spaces and Paradoxes", was an interdisciplinary study providing new perspectives on jazz in Soviet society. Reimann’s research interests lie in the interstices between jazz studies, cultural studies, Soviet studies, Estonian cultural history, and popular music studies. Her monograph "Tallinn'67: Myths and Memories of Soviet Jazz" was completed as a part of her post-doctoral project at the University of the Arts, Helsinki.
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1 Leningrad Television documentary "Tri intervyu vzyatoye v Talline". Copy in the author’s personal ownership.
2 In the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s in the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet society witnessed an irreversible transformation arising from the reforms initiated by the new Party leader.
3 New York Public Library. George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian collection, 81.41.
4 Interview with Tiit Paulus, 20 September 2018.
5 Author’s skype interview with Oleg Molokoyedov, 4 October 2018.
6 A detailed programme of the festival with all the events and an exact timeline is included in the "Festival Memorandum for Participants", supposedly delivered to all participants. It is preserved in the Estonian National Library, in the Vadim Yurchenkov collection.
7 Balcerak, Józef. "Tallin jazz festival po raz czternastp — dla nas po raz pierwszy". Jazz, 1967(7).
8 ERRA. MT. Meenutusi 1966. ja 1967. a džässifestivalidelt.11 September 1990. ERR archive. http://arhiiv.err.ee/vaata/muusikaline-tund-muusikaline-tund-meenutusi-1966-ja-1967-a-dzassifestivalidelt.
9 Whyton, Tony. Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition, 2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 135.
