12 September 2024 press release

The German National Library in Leipzig is organising a jazz festival to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution this autumn and to celebrate the donation of the Jazzwerkstatt archive to the German Museum of Books and Writing. The festival remembers the importance of music as a medium of resistance in the GDR. The three-day festival will take place from 20 to 22 September 2024 under the patronage of Minister of State and Federal Government Commissioner for East Germany Carsten Schneider. It will be accompanied by two debates featuring prominent panellists such as Thomas Krüger, President of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Christoph Dieckmann, Die ZEIT, Minister of State Carsten Schneider, actor Anica Happich, historian and publicist Ilko Sascha Kowalczuk, rapper and activist Jessy James LaFleur, and Ulli Blobel, initiator of the jazz festival Jazzwerkstatt Peitz; they will discuss questions relating to the past and present of democracy.

The festival was instigated by Jazzwerkstatt Peitz, whose founder brought international free jazz to East Germany with youthful fearlessness beginning in 1972. The SED regime banned Jazzwerkstatt Peitz in 1982. This was due not least to its great success, also on the international stage – the "Woodstock on the Karpfenteich" gained a reputation as one of the GDR's jazz hotspots in the space of just one decade.

Jazz in the GDR developed in an area of conflict between state control and cultural freedom. After the end of World War II, this musical genre, which originally came from the United States, experienced a revival in the GDR after having been suppressed under Nazi rule. During the 1950s and 1960s, jazz was initially dismissed as the "music of American imperialism", but cultural bureaucrats soon realised that jazz could also be instrumentalised as an attractive part of socialist musical culture. However, the state imposed draconian restrictions, and surveillance was omnipresent: musicians required government permits, and their performances were strictly regulated. During the 1970s, jazz increasingly became recognised as part of the official culture; this led to a creative upswing, especially in the genre of free jazz, which was noted for its innovative, experimental approaches.

In the GDR, jazz was perceived not only as a musical form but also as an expression of individuality and resistance to state control. The jazz scene became an important cultural arena in which musicians and fans experienced a feeling of community and freedom despite the restrictions.

Jazzwerkstatt Peitz restarted in the Lausitz region in 2011.

By taking over the Jazzwerkstatt archive, containing not only posters, printed matter and audio resources but also archival materials on the subject of cultural practices in autocratic systems, the German Museum of Books and Writing has committed itself to saving and raising awareness of this unique cultural asset, thus emphasising its role as a place of democracy. The collection, which is an important testimony to the history of democracy, is being analysed as part of a cooperative research project involving musicologists, contemporary historians and the German Music Archive; the goal of this project is to identify canonising tendencies and study aspects of contemporary history reflected in jazz in the GDR. Research activities will also focus on the revolutionary potential of music, which has received much less attention than the protest media of words and texts.

Cooperation partners of the jazz festival are the Foundation for Sites of German Democratic History, Federal Agency for Civic Education, Ulli Blobel – Gesellschaft zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur gemeinnützige UG.

Disruptive elements: Jazz, protest and revolution
Jazz festival at the German National Library in Leipzig
20 - 22 September 2024

Tickets for the three-day festival are available at info@jazzwerkstatt.eu or at eventim.de
https://www.dnb.de/jazzfestival

Background

The German Museum of Books and Writing and the German Music Archive both testify to the German National Library's focus on the history of both music and media:

The German Museum of Books and Writing conducts research into how books and writing have shaped our culture and civilisation. For centuries now, our knowledge of humanity and the world has been stored in books. The task of the German National Library's German Museum of Books and Writing is to collect, exhibit and carry out scientific work on testimonies to the history of books and media. Founded in Leipzig in 1884 as the Deutsches Buchgewerbemuseum (German Book Trade Museum), it is the world’s oldest museum of book culture, while its scope and collections also make it one of the most important

The German Music Archive of the German National Library collects and archives music in order to preserve it for posterity and make it available to the public. It is therefore Germany’s main music bibliography information centre. The collection is based on the sheet music and sound recordings which all German music publishers and labels are obliged to deposit by law. Its holdings currently consist of more than two million sound recordings and one million items of sheet music. These also include historic sound carriers such as shellac records, phonograph cylinders and piano rolls for self-playing reproducing pianos. Visitors can enjoy more than 500,000 hours of music in the music reading room and the listening booth in the German Music Archive of the German National Library in Leipzig.

Contact

Images for editorial use

Press image material is only available in German.