Swing a jeho posluchači v době protektorátu
Swing music and its fans during the Protectorate

Summary/Abstract: KOURA, Petr: Swingaři a potápky v protektorátní noci: Česká swingová mládež a její hořkej svět. (Šťastné zítřky, sv. 23.) Praha, Academia 2016, 922 strany, ISBN 978-80-200-2634-7. The reviewer presents the monograph Swing fans and zoot suiters in the Protectoratenight: Czech swing kids and their bitter world as the outcome of long-term,comprehensive, and almost exhaustive research of sources, impressive in both itscontent and its scope. The author concentrates on the Czech youth subculture associatedwith jazz (swing) music at the time of the Protectorate of Bohemia andMoravia (1939–1945), their lifestyle, habits, fashion, speech, and attitude to theoccupation regime, as well as the attitude of Nazi and Protectorate authoritiesto them and the music they professed. He sets the topic into a broad historical,social, political, and cultural context, for example when describing in an eruditeand gripping manner the evolution and propagation of jazz dances, formation andexistence of similar youth subcultures in Western Europe and United States, or thesurvival of jazz and its fans in the Nazi Third Reich. The author covers in depththe criticism aimed at jazz and its fans in the Protectorate and repressions againstthem, analyzes the relationship between jazz music and freedom in an inspiringmanner, and his interpretations and explanations abound with facts. The reviewerwould personally welcome only a better arrangement of some parts and more attentionpaid to jazz music as such.

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