|
New cultural policy
Changes in Swedish cultural policy eventually eased the situation for
jazz. Following a parliamentary resolution in 1974, jazz was one of
several new genres to receive governmental support in the form of annual
grants to music groups and eventually also to concert arrangers. The
Swedish Jazz Federation (SJR), formed in 1948, had more or less
become an organisation for record-collectors by the 1960s. Now
it re-emerged as a network of jazz societies, which have gradually
increased in number. At the present time there are about hundred
jazz societies throughout the country, most of which arrange public
concerts on a regular basis, some more frequently than others. Some also
hold annual festivals, the oldest and best-established being the
Umeå
International Jazz Festival (founded in 1968) in October.
The 1970s also saw the evolution of municipal music schools that offered every child, starting from third grade, the chance to
learn to play a musical instrument. These schools have stimulated and broadened
musical life in Sweden. They offered tuition in a large variety of genres, including big band music, rock and jazz. Parallel
with this development the Swedish Concert Institute regularly arranged
concerts at schools all over the country, thus introducing jazz and other
music to young people. By the l1980s jazz had also become a
recognised subject at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and other
higher education institutions. After many years of waning interest all
this meant a welcome regeneration of both jazz musicians and listeners.
The common interests of jazz musicians were manifested in several more or
less short-lived organisations that were formed from the mid-1960s
onwards, primarily in Stockholm and Gothenburg. After many years of
arranging concerts at different venues, the Stockholm-based Federation of
Swedish Jazz Musicians (FSJ) eventually received municipal and
governmental support in 1977 to take over the club
Fasching at Kungsgatan
63 in the centre of the Swedish capital. Since then this former
discothèque has been a centre for jazz, presenting both Swedish and
international attractions. At about the same time the club
Nefertiti
was
established in Gothenburg and in the 1990s came the club
Jeriko in
Malmö. Although there are equivalents in several other
cities, only Fasching, Nefertiti and Jeriko operate on a full-time, professional
basis, with a programme policy that reaches beyond the sphere of jazz
(also embracing rock, blues, World Music and different forms of dance
music), whereas other local jazz concert organisations around Sweden
depend on voluntary work by jazz idealists.
After the early 1960s very few gramophone recordings of Swedish jazz were
produced. However, early in the 1970s the Swedish Concert Institute
started to present jazz on its subsidised record label Caprice, producing
one or two jazz albums a year. In the early 1980s the government began to
support independent record companies that focused on jazz and other
non-commercial types of music, and this support has drastically changed
the situation. Since 1954, the jazz magazine Orkester Journalen
has given an annual Golden Disc award to the best Swedish jazz record of
the year, selected by its readers and a jury of critics. In 1968 the
poll had to be cancelled, since hardly any Swedish jazz records were
issued that year. By the late 1980s about fifty Swedish jazz albums were
being released each year, a figure that has since been doubled. This increase in jazz recordings is not only the result
of financial support but is also due to the fact that the number of jazz
musicians and groups on a professional level has been doubled and
re-doubled several times during the past twenty-five years. Moreover,
technical development has provided wider access to professional recording
equipment. The advent of the Compact Disc in the 1980s made the overall
production process easier to handle. Most Swedish jazz albums are released
by small companies, several of which are owned by musicians. |
