Lars Westin: Jazz in Sweden - an overview

New cultural policy

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.

New cultural policy

Lars Westin: Jazz in Sweden - an overview
Contents, Jazz in Sweden

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