Joska Skalník; Jiří Kučera, photographer; with [Mögel, Etron Fou Leloublan, This Heat, Art Zoyd, Jiří Stivín, Emil Viklicky]

[Repressed] Pražské Jazzové Dny ‘80 [10th Prague Jazz Days Festival 1980]

Prague: np, 1980. Offset. 30 1/2 x 25 3/8 in. Edge wear to bottom right, else very good. Item #5410

Poster advertising the repressed 10th Jazz Days Festival in Prague, scheduled to take place in 1980. Mögel, Etron Fou Leloublan, This Heat, Art Zoyd, Jiří Stivín, Emil Viklicky, Lindsay Cooper’s feminist improv trio the Marx Brothers, and several other Czech and international avant-garde and jazz artists were scheduled to perform. Instead the Jazz Days Festival was canceled by the Soviet-aligned authorities claiming that too many people were planning to attend and that the festival would be a public disturbance. This was one of the final conflicts between the Czechoslovakian government and the Jazz Section of the Czech Musician’s Union. The Jazz Section had formed in 1971 and grown into a prominent sponsor of revolutionary cultural output, publishing books, periodicals, and samizdat dedicated to alternative culture. Three years after this canceled festival, in 1983, the entire Czech Musician’s Union would be disbanded by the government after refusing to ban the Jazz Section.

A document of dissident alternative culture from Czechoslovakia, and a record of an event that never had the chance to happen.

Price: $250.00