By: AUBREE PELHAM

PRAGUE, Czech Republic – This year, Bohemia Jazz Festival commenced on a rainy day in Prague with many locals, including two friends Peter O, 66, and Peter T, 69, hiding under the trees of the castle gardens. This duo is amongst many that have been attending the jazz festival since its beginning in 2005, returning every year to reminisce on the jazz scene and Prague of the past, and to enjoy some good music. 

“This is special when it started… it started in Old Town Square then it [moved] here, but it was always nice because it was free and good music” said Peter O.

Bohemia Jazz Festival has served the Czech Republic for 21 years as one of the many jazz spaces for people of all generations to gather and share a passion. Jazz has flourished in Prague for years, but older fans are seeing trends of technology and big venues replacing a tight knit music community. 

“We were kind of critiquing [the younger] generation because we were just saying that… they don’t care for music that much. Everybody’s just on the phone or going to see the celebrities, you know, the pop music” said Peter T. 

Music has become so easily accessible that genuine connection has decreased in value, and is no longer the main purpose for live music. Jazz dating back to communist Czechoslovakia is fundamentally built on communication between artist and audience, improvising and adapting on the spot. 

“Being in an event where music is being created with and for them is more rare,” said jazz guitarist and NYU music professor Tony Ackerman. “When I was a teenager music was a real shared space”.

Czech jazz guitarist and Bohemia Jazz festival director Rudy Linka emphasizes the importance of communication within jazz.

“Pay attention to the guy playing next to you” said Linka, “The word jazz means you are open [to] listen to other people”. 

Linka expressed a conscious effort to include young band members and gather a younger audience at Bohemia Jazz Festival to help flourish these relationships. 

“For me that’s culture… kids who are seeing a concert for the first time, young musicians [meeting] others”, said Linka. 

The existence of these jazz spaces is important to the culture, and the threat of lost interest in building new relationships in these spaces threatens jazz, and therefore Czech history, as a whole. Under one of the most extreme regimes, jazz was the only music that thrived in Czechoslovakia. 

During the Nazi rule, “nobody’s allowed to play syncopated music or make people want to move the middle part of the body” said Ackerman, “So jazz under the nazis was forbidden and same under the early communists”.

A well-known example of music censorship in this era is the arrest of The Plastic People of the Universe. In 1976 the state security raided many underground venues, resulting in this band being charged with organized disturbance of peace.

“They wanted to get rid of him but they couldn’t get him for defense reasons” said Peter O. In a joking quotation he continues, “‘We didn’t do anything!’ ‘But you said sh*t on stage!’”. 

This censorship was only inspiring to the jazz community.

“You could not see it, you could not hear it on the radio” said Linka. “Maybe that’s the reason I’m [a] jazz musician… just because it was against the regime”.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the purpose of jazz became construed. While underground and punk rock music was still banned, the communist regime weakened their control around jazz, allowing it to be played on the streets once again. 

“Jazz really was the one music that in the 70s was ok to play”, said Ackerman, “It was even used by the communists as a way to show that the culture was here, [it] was not censored”. 

Jazz was the voice of the Czech people pushing through the regime. The music is raw, real, and a direct reflection of the changing audience in front of them.