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This article, written by Czech musicologist Jan Blüml, was originally published in July 2019, as part of the book "Jazz from Socialist Realism to Postmodernism". 

== The Jazz Section and its influence on the development of culture in the regions of  Czechoslovakia before 1989: the case of the music scene in Olomouc ==  
One of the most important cultural institutions in Czechoslovakia during the 70s and 80s of the 20th century, in the era of the communist state’s return to totalitarian practices known as normalization, was the Jazz Section. The cited institution was established in Prague in 1971 as an affiliate organisation to the Association of Musicians of the Czech Socialist Republic. Its initial goal was promotion of jazz, later its musical interest to a larger extent focused on the  area of rock and alternative music. In subsequent years of its activities, the Jazz Section by far exceeded the musical framework and the organisation became a rich source of a broad  spectrum of information as well as art and cultural forms in Czechoslovakia.<sup>1</sup>

The promotion of independent and unofficial culture gradually led to the politicisation of the activities of the Jazz Section by the Communist regime, which resulted in the official abolishing of the organisation in 1984 and criminalisation of its leading members.<sup>2</sup> 

Although the Jazz Section was institutionally associated mainly with Prague, where its major activities including the Prague Jazz Days festival took place, through its broad nation wide member base that numbers a total of more than eight thousand people<sup>3</sup> it directly or indirectly influenced the cultural events in all-Czechoslovakia. The Jazz Section had a major impact also on central Moravia and its metropolis Olomouc; a city whose music scene in the late 60s and 70s was described by jazz historian, journalist and former committee member of the Jazz Section Vladimír Kouřil as “one of the main bastions of domestic jazz affairs”.<sup>4</sup> At the time of normalization, many progressive artistic events in Olomouc were associated with the Jazz Section members. These were not by a long way activities only in the field of jazz – as in Prague, in Olomouc the meaning of the Jazz Section membership card also gradually  changed, and rather than referring to the status of “jazzophile”, it referred to a rather more  general idea of alternative and free art under the sign of cultural dialogue; in a certain sense, in the cultural and political perspective of the time, it represented a nonconformist oppositional mentality. Thanks to the initiative of the Olomouc members of the Jazz Section, unofficial music and cultural educational institutions were founded, bands were put together, festivals and concerts of various musical genres were organised as well as lectures and  exhibitions. Just as in the case of the Prague organization, the independent artistic and  organizational activities of its Olomouc members were repressed by the authorities right from  the start.<sup>5</sup>

The scope, variety and importance of the work of the Olomouc members of the Jazz Section will be the subject of the following discussion.  

The community of Olomouc members of the Jazz Section began to take shape  immediately after the establishment of the Prague institution in 1971. As was the case in the capital of Czechoslovakia, also in Olomouc, the jazzophiles and musicians born in the inter war period, growing up in the era of swing, modern jazz and “struggle” for the recognition of  jazz especially in the crisis of the fifties marked by Stalinist cultural policy were at the beginning; these were, for example, [[Ladislav Pospíšil]] and [[Ilja Klement]].<sup>6</sup> Soon, however, the younger generation got more significantly involved in the cultural life of Olomouc. Born after World War II, this generation of music enthusiasts, who saw room for adequate artistic as well as political expression in the new aesthetics of rock music, fully identified with the  redirection of the Jazz Section to alternative art and fusion as promoted from the mid-1970s by the organizers of the Prague Jazz Days festival and the Jazz Section's bulletin Jazz.<sup>7</sup> Among this generation were also the members of the WSS band (Water-Supply Spectres),  whose activities on the Olomouc cultural scene offer many analogies to the activities of their  Prague counterparts, whether in their artistic preferences or in their organization of unofficial  cultural events and educational activities, including the distribution of prohibited information,  which ultimately led to the administrative ban.  

Figure 1: Petr Večeřa’s Jazz Section Membership Card
 
The group was established in December 1970 in spite of the unfavourable normalization conditions. One of its founders was latter country-wide known guitarist and  collaborator of Prague singer-songwriters, Emil Pospíšil, other members were, among others,  drummer Petr Večeřa and bass guitarist Tomáš Tichák. In the next eight years, WSS had about thirty public performances in the Olomouc region with rock, and later exclusively jazz rock repertoire including the compositions of John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Jean Luc  Ponty, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea or Frank Zappa.<sup>8</sup>

The often frequently visited  performances were held mostly illegally, since the band for the larger part of its existence did  not fulfil the necessary administrative conditions during the normalization period in the form  of registration with the local cultural institutions, qualification examination, etc.<sup>9</sup>
 
The intensive contact of WSS with the Prague independent scene, and not only with a circle of personalities associated with the Jazz Section, but also for instance with the singer songwriters association Šafrán, gradually transformed the Olomouc jazz-rock group and its  fans into an unofficial society with many cultural interests – phenomenon of the integration of relatively variegated societies, art forms or spiritual movements under the guise of the already  politically neutral category of “jazz” in the seventies was one of the characteristic features of  the Jazz Section itself. The mentioned community found their refuge in the rehearsal studio created in the cellar of the Pospíšils’ house in number 25 Hálkova Street, Hodolany. From the mid-1970 on, together with local jazzmen like Emil Viklický, Petr Junk and the Free Jazz  Trio, guests from other fields of music began to appear here. On 18 March 1976, the first concert of the singer-songwriter, Jaroslav Hutka, was held here. Before he emigrated in 1978, Hutka returned to this venue four times. The atmosphere and the alternative functions of this  space were greatly reminiscent of the irregularly run illegal underground clubs. On 25 November 1976, Vladimír Merta’s concert took place in this cellar studio with the capacity of  about 30 people.<sup>10</sup>

Other important figures of the domestic music scene were guests in the cellar: In the spring of 1977, it was the members of the prominent jazz-rock group from  Prague, Bohemia – Jan Kubík, Vladimír Kulhánek and Michal Pavlíček. In November of the  same year, a debate with the music critic Jiří Černý took place here.<sup>11</sup>
 
The agility of the personalities from the circle of the WSS also led to the invitation of  guests from the literary and dramatic spheres. On 20 August 1977, philosopher Julius Tomin  appeared in the cellar and read an extract from the manuscript of his translation of  Aristophanes Acharnians. A month later, on 24 September, the visitors to the cellar had an opportunity to hear him read the play The Knights by Aristophanes. The literary evening of  writer Ivan Klíma was not held in the cellar rehearsal studio, but took place directly in the flat  of the Pospíšil family.<sup>12</sup> On 11 November 1978, Klíma recited extracts from the manuscript of  the story cycle Má veselá jitra [My happy mornings] and as a treat from the dramatic text  Hromobití [Thunderstorm].<sup>13</sup> One year after the Prague première on 28 April 1978, the WSS  witnessed the reprisal of one of the most famous productions of the Home Theatre of Vlasta  Chramostová – scenic reading of Všecky krásy světa [All beauties of the world].<sup>14</sup> Chramostová recalls the Olomouc performance in the preface to her autobiography: “In the mid-twenties of normalization these were the young men [Tomáš Tichák and Václav Burian]  who, like others of their friends via the coal chute went into the cellar, equipped like a music studio, to participate in one of my Moravian performances. In the given basement, the studio  of excellent but unfortunately already deceased guitarist Emil Pospíšil, I read an extract from  the memories of Jaroslav Seifert. Even after so many years, I would not recognize the visitors  from Olomouc, but to my delight they proved their identities by means of the memorial book  kept by the host. It also included a record of the Seifert evening in the basement of the  suburban family house. With date and may signature.“<sup>15</sup> According to the cited memorial  book, several tens of guests from Olomouc, Blatec, Kožušany, Zábřeh, Ostrava, Opava,  Prostějov, Šternberk, Gottwaldov (Zlín), but also from Brno, Prague, Košice Slovakia or  Lublin Poland visited the basement studio.<sup>16</sup>
 
Figure 2: WSS in the cellar rehearsal room in 1974 (from left Tomáš Tichák, Petr Večeřa,  Emil Pospíšil) 

WSS were also associated with theatre through the unofficial dramatic group  Bernardýn.<sup>17</sup> The association established in 1976 by the band members Jiří Lamač and Tomáš Tichák together with Ladislav Šenkyřík (from about December 1971, the moderator, manager and helper of WSS in organisational matters) and on whose musical component Pospíšil and  Večeřa also co-operated to a different degrees, functioned up to 1980 without the facilities of  an organizer institution outside the system of official competitions and shows.<sup>18</sup> Although the theatre did not directly declare its anti-regime activities, its unclassified and unofficial  character was perceived by the viewers in the political sense; this fact was also accentuated by  the entertainment events of happening character, which openly focused on parody of reality.<sup>19</sup> 

The independent activities of WSS, which also included contacts with Charter 77 (the  declaration of Charter 77 got to the people in the circle of those associated with the cellar  studio via Šenkyřík in spring 1977), in 1979 resulted in the intervention of State Security  within the Municipality Organisation of the Socialist Youth Movement ZO SSM 27, which at the time was patron to the group. Subsequent loss of organiser not only ended the existence of  the band, but also its unofficial activities related to the basement rehearsal room.<sup>20</sup> Direct impact of the Jazz Section on the Olomouc music scene is mainly discernible in  the cited band Free Jazz Trio, which was associated with the WSS and alternative culture of  the cellar studio, among other things, through their common drummer Petr Večeřa. The band was established in 1971 and existed under the leadership of saxophone player Milan Opravil up to the end of the eighties; it is still functioning to date with a transformed personnel base.  In terms of its repertoire focus, which was originally based on the works of Ornette Coleman  and John Surman, the Free Jazz Trio prior to 1989 was a unique phenomenon not only in  Olomouc and in Moravia, but also in the all-country, mainly traditionalist and mainstream  jazz context. Music of the Free Jazz Trio brought to Czechoslovak environment a specific  form of free jazz, otherwise almost unknown, that artistically exalted, but was also  provocative, induced laughter, drove people into a frenzy, and forced them to think about the  issues of aesthetics in music and modern art in general. In this direction, it excellently fitted  into the alternative art concept of the Jazz Section, which for many years became its guide and  promoter.<sup>21</sup>
 
In 1975, the group was together with another six “young and talented” ensembles  shortly presented on the pages of the nation-wide section bulletin Jazz.22 The increasing  awareness of the Free Jazz Trio in the same year resulted in an invitation to the Prague Jazz  Days festival – one of the most significant art and social events on the Czechoslovak popular  music scene of the seventies. Thousands of people from the whole country, and also the  leading personalities on the domestic jazz scene as well as popular music critics, had an  opportunity to experience the relatively non-traditional and for many fairly eccentric art  production of the band here. For instance, Lydie Tarantová commented as follows on the  concert: “A gathering of modern artists is then in the spirit of a sharp cut, which after the  traditional bands and swing comfort invades evening Lucerna concert hall with a true free  jazz merit of the Trio, which ignores the clear deviation of many jazzmen from 'free jazz’ and  engage in it with a sympathetic zest. Encounters with modern jazz have many exciting  moments.”<sup>23</sup> 

Figure 3: Free Jazz Trio in front of the crowded Prague concert hall Lucerna within the third  year of the Prague Jazz Days festival in 1975.  

Thanks to the successful Prague performances, the members of the Free Jazz Trio,  particularly Milan Opravil, were repeatedly nominated by listeners to the top ranks in the All  Stars Band column of the bulletin Jazz. The unexpected interest of the listeners in the Free  Jazz Trio was undoubtedly supported also by the actual “non-conventional” style basis of the  band, which was in strong contrast to the conditions of harnessed normalized culture;  conditions in which the status of “free-thinking music in an unfree period” took on the  semblance of almost aesthetic fact. In this sense, the Free Jazz Trio substantially won the  preferences of the rock public, which was dominant within the scope of the activities of the  Jazz Section from the mid-seventies. Proof of this is a reminiscence by associate of the Jazz  Club in the Moravian town of Tišnov and Jazz Section member Václav Seyfert: “At some  time in course of 1981, I and other music fans from Tišnov visited a jazz event in Brno, which  was known as the Jazz Fórum. The main star was supposed to be renowned Orchestra of Gustav Brom [one of the most significant jazz orchestras in Czechoslovak jazz history], but we were completely overwhelmed by a totally different band, the Olomouc Free Jazz Trio. If I speak for myself, I have always been rather a rock fan – my generation at the time perceived  expression of art freedom mainly in ‘big beat’, as we called it, and jazz was just already more  academic. It is perhaps for this reason that the Free Jazz Trio at the time caught my  attention.”<sup>24</sup> 

On the other hand, the band alienated itself from the taste and understanding of the Czech conservative and elite jazz public just as the Jazz Section institution itself.<sup>25</sup>

This is evidenced by a rather humorous incident, which happened during the Free Jazz Trio’s  qualification performance in 1985. The commission consisting of professional musicians raised on swing and modern mainstream jazz started to encourage the band to begin their performance while they were already playing. The band’s former drummer, Petr Večeřa, remembers the qualifying performance: “Zdeněk Mahdal was already our bandleader at the  time of the last qualifying performance in 1985. The Free Jazz Trio started with something  like a prelude – various sounds on the saxophone, rustling cymbals, small percussion, and so  on. The rhythm section came later, after about one minute. Mahdal was not a part of that ‘messing around’; he always waited until we started to play ‘properly’. During such a prelude, right at the beginning, the commission called him to sort out something in their papers. That  took quite a while, while we continued to play without the bass. We were improvising for  several minutes. Mahdal did not join in straight after he came back, and so someone from the  commission asked if we could start playing at last. Milan Opravil answered: “But we are.”<sup>26</sup>
 
Besides opportunities for concerts and promotion in the Jazz bulletin, the connection of Free Jazz Trio with the Jazz Section brought many other advantages: As members of the  Section, the musicians had access to otherwise unavailable recordings, printed materials about  music, jazz concerts at home and abroad, musical and organizational contacts, etc. In a way,  the support of the Jazz Section lasted even after its dissolution. The former committee  member and journalist, Vladimír Kouřil, has been a tireless promoter of the band in the  national media to this day.<sup>27</sup> 

Figure 4: Karel Srp’s letter addressed to Milan Opravil, regarding the planned performance of  the Free Jazz Trio in the tenth year of the Prague Jazz Days festival.  

The numerous community of active Olomouc members of the Jazz Section, apart from the WSS or Free Jazz Trio also included other personalities. Besides music photographer Jiří Regentík, these were for instance organisers Libor Grónský or Vítězslav Novák. Thanks to them, the Free Jazz Trio prior to 1989 could regularly meet with listeners from the Olomouc  region also within the framework of larger music events. Such an event was especially the  Vlnobytí festival, which was organised by Libor Grónský. This festival, which toward the late  1980s far exceeded the Olomouc region<sup>28</sup> and whose dramaturgy was inspired by the alternative Prague Jazz Days, was originally created in the 1970s as a folk music festival. In Jiskra cinema in the Řepčín district of Olomouc, the singer-songwriters Jaroslav Hutka, Vlastimil Třešňák, Vladimír Veit, Vladimír Merta, Dagmar Voňková, Pepa Nos, Luboš Pospíšil, Václav Koubek and others performed together. These events were later followed by a two-day festival Folk Days, which gradually transformed into the festival of alternative  music. Alongside folk singers such as Jaromír Nohavica, the Olomouc audiences could see  rock bands like Amalgam, Zikkurat, Hudba Praha, Precedens and MCH Band. The festival  also featured the Olomouc bands the Free Jazz Trio and Elektrická svině. Jazz was  represented at the festival also by the guitarist Rudolf Dašek.<sup>29</sup> 

Because of its rock and alternative focus, the Vlnobytí festival was a frequent target of  repression from the local cultural and political institutions. The concerts under the influence  of administrative bans took place at various places in Olomouc, for instance, in the cultural house Družba at Nové Sady, in the Dělnický dům in Černovír, in the U Kapličky pub in  Řepčín or in Sigma cultural house. At the end of the eighties, the festival got established in the summer cinema. Free Jazz Trio drummer Petr Večeřa recalls the massive surveillance of  the State Security: “For instance in the former Družba cinema at Nové Sady, State Security  occupied the entire first floor and carefully monitored the events on the podium. Audiovisual  recordings of the performances were made.”<sup>30</sup> 

In terms of promotion of jazz and also of the independent unofficial culture in the Olomouc region, the Jazz Club of the ROH organization (Revolutionary Trade Union  Movement) at the Moravia factory in Mariánské Údolí near Olomouc founded in 1982 by  Vítězslav Novák, played a key role. Thanks to him and his colleagues at the club, many jazz,  rock, folk and other concerts, audio-visual programmes and interesting meetings took place in  the 1980s.31 In the words of Novák: “The Jazz Club became a cultural space that provided a little leeway in the Olomouc region. This space was fragile, experimental, quirky, sometimes  even risky and who knows what else. […] It is almost unbelievable that in this period of  cultural crisis, our music shows and concerts became a special treat, a festival for an exclusive circle of underground and alternative audiences.”<sup>32</sup> Among the special occasions were also the two concerts of the Free Jazz Trio. With hindsight and in the spirit of the legacy of the Jazz  Section's progressive ideas, Novák described the band’s work as follows: “The Free Jazz Trio  has been standing against the pseudo-values of polished forms for three decades now, and in  this sense it has become a legend in the Czech lands. In my view, this legend is underrated,  inviting the constant and inexplicable dislike of the organizers of jazz festivals, who reject this  unique band bearing the hallmark of European quality.”<sup>33</sup> Excerpts from recordings of  concerts organized by the Jazz Club between 1983 and 1987, including the Free Jazz Trio  performances, were self-published by Vítězslav Novák in 2002 as a series of three CDs called  Muzika z jídelen závodního stravování [Music from factory canteens]. 

As Vladimír Kouřil describes in the opening chapters of his book Jazzová sekce v čase  a nečase 1971–1987: “The number of the Jazz Section members were rising sharply in the  1970s. […] Whole groups entered the Section […].”34 The circle of Olomouc musicians, fine  artists, dramatic artists, journalists and organizers around the WSS and Free Jazz Trio bands  was also such a “group”. Under the influence of the artistic concept of the Prague Jazz Days  and other events organized by the Jazz Section as well as of the Section’s magazine Jazz and  other publications, the Olomouc community created a space for alternative art forms in their own region, too. Their activities provided uncommon artistic experiences to a sizeable group  of recipients, who in turn further inspired and incited their own artistic and cultural educational activities. In effect, these activities greatly enlivened the relatively conservative  “normalization” cultural world in the city with one hundred thousand inhabitants, in which  one of the largest Soviet garrisons in Czechoslovakia was placed at the time.

== Notes ==
# See Kouřil, Vladimír: Jazzová sekce v čase a nečase 1971–1987, Prague: Torst, 1999. 
# See Srp, Karel: Výjimečné stavy: povolání Jazzová sekce, Prague: Pragma, 1994. 
# Kouřil, Vladimír: Jazzová sekce v čase a nečase 1971–1987, Prague: Torst, 1999, p. 20. 
# Kouřil, Vladimír: Evergreen stylového undergroundu – Free Jazz Trio (Olomouc), UNI, 2006, No. 6, pp. 12– 14.  
# For more on the history of jazz and pop music in central Moravia and Olomouc see Blüml, Jan: Dějiny moderní populární hudby v Olomouci se zaměřením na období 1945–1989, Olomouc: Palacký University, 2014,  dissertation.  
# Ibid, pp. 47–65. 
# See Kouřil, Vladimír: Jazzová sekce v čase a nečase 1971–1987, Prague: Torst, 1999. 
# The solid playing standard of the WSS is confirmed by a review of the samizdat magazine Následky horka available in the library of samizdat and exile literature Libri Prohibiti in Prague. See Pionýr [nickname]: Není  WSS jako VSS, Následky horka, No. 16, non-paged.  
# Interview with Petr Večeřa of 30 September 2014, archive of J. Blüml.  
# Ibid. 
# Written documentation by Tomáš Tichák, archive of J. Blüml.
# Electronic letter from Petr Večeřa of 6 February 2013, archive of J. Blüml. 
# Lazorčáková, Tatjana: Divadelní disent: k historii neoficiálních divadelních aktivit v sedmdesátých letech 20.  století, in: Michal Sýkora (ed.), Kontexty III. Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis. Philosophica – Aesthetica 25, Olomouc: Palacký University, 2002, p. 52. 
# Ibid.  
# Chramostová, Vlasta: Vlasta Chramostová, Brno: Doplněk; Olomouc: Burian a Tichák, 2003, p. 5.  
# A copy of the memorial book is kept in the archive of J. Blüml. 
# A written note by Tomáš Tichák from 29 October 2012, archive of J. Blüml. 
# Lazorčáková, Tatjana – Roubal, Jan: K netradičnímu divadlu na Moravě a ve Slezsku 60.-80. let dvacátého  století, Prague: Pražská scéna, 2003, pp. 92–96; Tichák, Tomáš: My ze sklepa, in: Jan Lukeš and Ivana  Lukešová (eds.), S firmou MICHR Licht ist sicher! Vlasta Chramostová (* 17. 11. 1926), Stanislav Milota (* 9.  3. 1933), Plzeň: Dominik centrum, 2011, pp. 35–57. 
# Entry word Bernardýn (Křelovský literární orchestr), in: Database of Czech amateur theatre [online],  available from http://www.amaterskedivadlo.cz/main.php?data=soubor&id=202 [cit. 4 February 2013].
# Interview with Petr Večeřa of 30 September 2014, archive of J. Blüml.  
# For details on the history of the Free Jazz Trio see Blüml, Jan – Košulič, Jan: Free Jazz Trio: kapitola z dějin  českého jazzu, Olomouc: Palacký University, 2014. 
# Free Jazz Trio Olomouc, Jazz, 1975, No. 14, non-paged. 
# Tarantová, Lydie: Když jde Prahou jazz, Svobodné slovo, 25 October 1975.
# Seyfert, Václav: Personal memories of the Free Jazz Trio [manuscript, 8 pages], written in spring 2013,  archive of J. Blüml.  
# See for instance outline of the history of the Jazz Section by Karel Srp on the Radio Hortus website. Available on www.radiohortus.cz. 
# Electronic letter from Petr Večeřa of 11 February 2013, archive of J. Blüml. 
# Blüml, Jan – Košulič, Jan: Free Jazz Trio: kapitola z dějin českého jazzu, Olomouc: Palacký University, 2014,  pp. 45–60. 
# [Author unknown]: Trhliny v betonu Melodie, Mašurkovské podzemné, February 1990, No. 8, non-paged. Samizdat edition available in the Libri Prohibiti library in Prague.
# Eg [abbreviationa]: Vlnobytí, Hanácké noviny, 20 April 1992. 
# Written notes by Petr Večeřa, archive of J. Blüml. 
# Novák, Vítězslav: Je to docela dávno, Exkurs do minulosti, 2002. Publication containing a detailed history of  the club stored in the archive of J. Blüml.  
# Ibid.  
# Ibid. 
# Kouřil, Vladimír: Jazzová sekce v čase a nečase 1971–1987, Prague: Torst, 1999, p. 19.

[[Category: Czechoslovakian Content]] [[Category: Essays]]