Early this year a group of U.S. longhair composers, including Ulysses Kaye, a nephew of King Oliver, visited Russia as part of a cultural exchange deal.
This, fall, a group of five Russian composers, headed by Dmitri Shostakovich and including Dmitri Kabalevsky, Tikhon Khrennikov, Konstantin Dankevich and Firket Amirov, visited the United States.
They were flown around the country, and included in their itinerary a three-day visit to the San Francisco area.
At their San Francisco press conference, the Russians were asked what they thought of jazz. It was obvious from their answers that they knew nothing of it (despite the fact that Kaye and his companions reported they were constantly asked about jazz by Soviet composers when they were in Russia). Jazz, to the visiting Russians, seemed to mean nothing more than hotel dance music.
They said they had that themselves and it wasn’t important. So it was proposed that they take the opportunity, provided by the presence in San Francisco of some excellent jazz groups, to find out firsthand what this mysterious Amerikanski music was all about.
That’s how Dmitri Shostakovich came to hear Cannonball Adderley.
The U. S. State Department aide who was along to guide the Russians was approached by this writer. I suggested that the Russian composers visit the Jazz Workshop, where Adderley’s group was playing (the band is worth walking 50 miles to hear), and later go over to the Black Hawk to hear Thelonious S. Monk.
There was, apparently, considerable discussion of the proposal by the Russians, but they never made a definite commitment—only a vague agreement.
We waited that night at the Jazz Workshop and eventually the Russians showed up. An hour late. Cannonball was just ending a set but volunteered to stay on and play for them. The Russians had to sit several tables from the band, because the mixed group of Negro and white patrons in the front seats refused to move, Russians or no Russians—an appropriate demonstration of democratic individualism.
The Adderley band, except for Cannonball and Bobby Timmons, was at first unaware of the visitors’ identities (“Shostakovich? He’s got it,” Timmons said), but they wailed up a storm and had the house jumping and carrying on to This Here; High Fly, and similar essays in native American folk music.
The Russian group included, besides the composers, a couple of interpreters and a chick one of them had brought along. They asked one question: ‘What kind of music do you call this?” And they listened attentively, even, on occasion, determinedly. But at no time did any of them indicate by expression or movement that they were reached by the music.
Shostakovich himself was all ears. He smoked incessantly. The rest of the party sipped cokes or gin and tonics. During Louis Hayes’ drum solo, Shostakovich and Dankevich leaned forward and watched the rim shots and rolls with concentration, like a couple of visiting American businessmen. Cannonball’s own quotes from numerous classical composers (in the course of his solos) didn’t draw a smile.
Afterwards, the Russians refused to answer any questions whatsoever. ( They had earlier refused to allow photographs after a lensman snapped a few quick shots. An interpreter said there might be some comment later, adding that he, personally, did not “experience” the music, and thought that it was not “hot.”
The whole affair had a strange, almost frightened quality to it. This was attributed by several observers (it contrasted strangely to the eagerness with which the proposal was greeted initially) to the Russians’ realization of the political implications of their adventure.
Had they indicated approval of the music, I was set to ask why we had been prevented from sending jazz groups to Russia. They did, however, formally thank Cannonball and the group for playing and expressed their formal pleasure.
At the conclusion of the set, they applauded and then got up as one man and marched out. An early date with a jet for the east was their excuse for not following the original plan and visiting Monk at the Black Hawk.
It was an interesting experience. One wonders what effect, if any, it will have in the future. – Ralph J. Gleason, Downbeat, December 24, 1959
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