Jazz and the Soviet Union
Sir,—My quarrel with A. K. Grant’s review of Professor Starr’s book is contained in its last two paragraphs where he quotes Professor Starr’s comparison of the popular cultures of the United States and the Soviet Union to the latter’s detriment, and the Russian monolith’s facade “becoming pitted and eroded by the strains of jazz
...” The United States is also a monolith — of plutocracy — but I doubt that Professor Starr would dare to suggest that its facade is becoming pitted and eroded by the strains of jazz. Jazz has become a sacred cow, as the sensitiveness of its admirers to criticism shows. Jazz is not the only “music of the people” and if Leonard Wilcox (April 23) would argue that jazz has an egalitarian and Utopian content, is he unaware that Utopianism is anathema to Marxism? Killjoy or not, ridiculously pretentious claims made on behalf of jazz need to be derided. — Yours, etc., M. CREEL. April 24, 1984. [This correspondence is now closed.—Editor.]
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Press, 26 April 1984, Page 20
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167Jazz and the Soviet Union Press, 26 April 1984, Page 20
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