(Cooper Square Press 2000)

Sadly, Mike Zwerin passed away last year, but this rambling, thought-provoking book by the Paris-based writer and musician who wrote for the Village Voice and International Herald Tribune for decades, stands as a fascinating piece of work with a unique take on jazz’s place in society, under the worst of times. Zwerin gets right to one of the key aspects of jazz--freedom. Researched and more or less written in the 1980s, Zwerin went around Europe playing in festivals, he was also a musician, or reporting. As he did, he met up with former Nazis and musicians who played during World War II, interviewed them, or just talked, and recorded what he found.

The result is a series of stunning anecdotes. He tells them in a jazz style that sounds like band chat between sets in the backroom of a jazz club. That’s a good thing! His stories and conversations feel real and true, and do not mince words, but get right to it. The Nazis brutally suppressed jazz, just as they committee their atrocious crimes against humanity. Zwerin suggests why that was necessary—jazz is about freedom, emotion and equality (as long as you play well), while Nazism about is about power, death and hierarchy. The startling oppositions that emerge in this book show just why those two could not exist together.

Zwerin’s research is all about conversation, and that’s a good thing. He gets to the core issues of jazz by setting up the Nazis as the deathly force they were and jazz as the liberating pleasure it is. That dual focus places jazz into a larger sphere than simply one more choice of genre. The improvisatory aspects of jazz, its rhythmic complexity and ‘message’ were threatening to the kind of order the Nazis wanted to impose.

Labeling jazz ‘entartete’ or degenerate, they officially banned it. That was easier said than done, since jazz was the soundtrack to the nightlife of Berlin, Paris and every major city of Europe at the time. Jazz went underground, except where the patronage of certain officers allowed it to continue. In that context, jazz can be seen as the subversive, rebellious, non-conforming and freedom-inspiring music that it has always been.

Put to the ultimate test, jazz survived, and in places even thrived, during the brutal reign of the Nazis. Even as musicians were sent to concentration camps, others survived, let go by jazz-loving Nazis who knew how to bend the rules. Many a Jewish musician made it out alive by swapping their precious jazz records for documents. Many a club catered to the Nazis by playing the hottest jazz they could, even though officially the music was outlawed.

It takes a special kind of writer to bring out those elements and ensconce the words and voices of the people he talked with into meaningful contexts. One wishes for more of Zwerin’s thoughts on these issues, though. This important work brings out jazz’s larger cultural significance and shows how music makes meanings that are often subversively opposed to dictatorial social forces.