Jazz beyond the Iron Curtain: Warsaw Jazz Jamboree 1980 with Don Cherry

About one year ago I opened this my blog with 2 posts dedicated to the historic Polish Festival Jazz Jamboree (here) and (here).

Today I present an album of the 1980 edition, just 30 years ago, in which we can listen to some interesting artist.

First of all the great Don Cherry with the quartet of the polish saxophonist Janusz Muniak

Another interesting performance is of the well known swedish group Saxes Galore leaded by the pianist Nils Lindberg

On the side B we can find a bulgarian Jazz Singer Camelia Todorova with the Sofia orchestra

At last the performance of the texan saxophonist Billy Harper with his sextet

credits
Jazz Jamboree '80
Muza SX 1983

recorded live at the Congress Hall Warsaw
october 1980


Side A
1. Blues for Bill (N. Lindberg) 16'32
Saxes Galore

2. Race Face (D. Cherry) 7'35
Don Cherry - pocket trumpet, melodica, percussion, vocals
Janusz Muniak - soprano & tenor saxophones
Pierre Pausgen - piano, electric piano
Andrzej Cudzich - bass
Jerzy Bezucha - drums


Side B
1. God Bless the Child (Holiday, Herzog) 2'20
2. Teach me Tonight (De Paul Cahn) 3'05
3. My Man (Yvain, Pollack) 3'05
Camelia Todorova & Sofia orchestra

4. Inside, Inside (B. Harper) 13'45
The Billy Harper sextet

FLAC
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Here a video of the concert of Don Cherry in that occasion

Miles Davis at Warsaw Jazz Jamboree 1983

Following with the Warsaw Jamboree Jazz Festival

during the Cold War, the most important event in those years for polish jazz lovers was the exhibition of Miles Davis Group, at Sala Kongresowa the 15th of April 1983 with:

John Scofield: guitar
Bill Evans: sax
Darryl Jones: bass
Al Foster: drums
Mino Cinelu: percussion
Robert Irving III: synthesizer

Here you can see the beginning of the concert.

This exhibition was also a very exciting experience for Miles who spoke of it in his Autobiography:

«I remember one date in particular in Warsaw, Poland. We didn't even have to go through customs; they just waved us on through. Everybody was wearing "We Want Miles" buttons. The leader of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, sent his personal limousine (or one just like it) to take me everywhere I wanted to go while I was in Warsaw. They told me that he loved my music and thought that I was one of the greatest musi­cians of all time. They also told me that he had wanted to come to my concert, but that he was too sick. He sent his personal regards, wishing that I have a great concert and saying that he was sorry that he couldn't be there. They put me up at the very best hotel in War­saw and treated me like a king.
When I got through playing my concert, people stood and cheered, and chanted that they hoped that I live a hundred years. Man, that was something! » (Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, The Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1990, p. 357)

If you want to see the whole concert you can download free the DVD at this link

WARSAW JAZZ JAMBOREE First breach in Iron Curtain

In Eastern Bloc countries, during the Cold War, Jazz represented a form of harmless “dissent” standed by regime and had a particular diffusion in Poland, also for the less oppression due to the arrival to the power of Edward Gierek in 1970.

Polish Jazz community was very alive. In 1966 began her publications magazine Jazz Forum (also in English and German) very appreciated and widspread abroad, and still today active.

In those years rised also Jamboree International Jazz Festival, which opened the doors to many important western musicians and fans coming from other Eastern countries and also from near Scandinavia.

Every Year Warsaw turned into a perky international community of young people, a real music melting pot.

Many concerts were published on LP by MUZA Polish editions.

In 1977 italian pianist Guido Manusardi with his quartet was there and his performance was published in one LP

with those of two other pianists: the hungarian Gusztav Csik and the japanese Yosuke Yamashita.

SIDE A

Planetarium

Guido Manusardi quartet

Pier Francesco Guidi - ts, ss

Guido Manusardi - p

Lorenzo Terzano - b

Gianni Cazzola - dr

SIDE B

1. Sweet Georgia Brown

Fogarasi -Csik trio

Gusztav Csik - p

Janos Fogarasi - org

Imre Koeszegi - dr

2. Umbrella - Dance

Yosuke Yamashita trio

Akira Sakata - as

Yosuke Yamashita - p

Shota Koyama - dr

In next posts I'll put new albums of other editions