Zayra Badillo Castro1; 1 School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK
Discussion
The arrival of jazz and its development in the Caucasus and Central Asia provided a space of experimentation to musicians where they combined the form of American music with local genres. Whereas top-down, Communist Party led approaches characterised earlier nation building projects in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the case study of jazz reveals how artists crafted new national identity narratives outside the Communist paradigm during the period of late socialism. The many musical interpretations of jazz in Baku, Fergana, Tbilisi and Ashgabat underpinned a new musical identity that gained tremendous popularity in the late Soviet period. This paper traces this movement and musical styles, through the musicians and their collaborations across the main urban centres in the Soviet south and participation in jazz festivals. They shaped an underground scene and a cultural project away from Moscow, negotiating their art with the legacy of national traditions and the ideological program of the party. The spaces of dissent created by their music transformed the musical landscape of their cities and offered a bottom-up approach to the development of a new musical heritage for the nation.
