Customer Reviews

Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany

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A distinguished, prolific historian and accomplished jazz musician, Michael H. Kater teaches history at York University in Toronto. He has written several well-received books; prior to Different Drummers, I knew him primarily from his excellent, 1975 study of the role of right-wing student fraternities at German universities during the rise of Nazism, Studentschaft und Rechtsradikalismus in Deutschland 1918-1933 (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe).

Different Drummers chronicles the futile but vicious attempts of the Nazis to stamp out an art form identified with Negroes and Jews, the exquisite form of political resistance jazz represented, and its vague anticipation of the oppositional youth and student culture of 1960s West Germany.

Johnny One Note Kater keeps on going with new books on his single theme. I suggest checking [...] or the various CDs Tanzdielen und Vergnuegungspalaeste...seems the Germans enjoyed swing and jazz unrestricted throughout the war, big bands and small played swing and jazz in every big city, including Paris during German occupation and including to/for the German military, and that form of pop music was routinely broadcast (and new recordings made) especially for the troops almost throughout the war. Swing dancing was eventually abandoned as a gesture of respect to the dead and wounded on the Ostfront, and nightclubs and their bands kept having to move or shut down due to the bombings. Also, it seems that the 'Verboten
by the evilNazis' line was just a post-war invention of a British record company, with a good stock of German pre-war and wartime jazz and swing records, as a marketing gimmick--oooh, forbidden underground jazz, buy it now.