Banishing Jazz from the Slovenian Music Scene After World War II

Abstract

As the Communist Party took over the power in 1945, in Yugoslavia/Slovenia the attitude to the cultural influences of the West became tenser. On the music scene, jazz became synonymous of unwanted Western influences. In the period of total imitation of the Soviet cultural model, the authorities prevented the performance of jazz in various ways, but after the Cominform dispute between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, jazz returned to the programme of Radio Ljubljana. The controversy whether jazz was acceptable for the Slovenian cultural scene started in 1951, when the authorities indicated they would not forcefully banish jazz from the programmes of cultural institutions. The attitude towards jazz in the 1950s was the subject of several discussions within various political bodies and debates in the media. At the turn of the 1950s, the Slovenian political leadership finally realised that there was actually nothing wrong with jazz in Slovenia.