Conference Agenda

This paper examines the emergence and development of jazz in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia (then a constituent republic of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) between 1944 and 1970, a period marked by substantial cultural transformation and ideological negotiation. Combining musicological analysis with extensive documentary research, the study reconstructs the structures through which jazz entered and circulated within musical life: radio institutions, amateur cultural societies, visiting international ensembles, concert activities, and the early media sphere.

Drawing on a wide range of primary sources preserved in the National and University Library “St. Clement of Ohrid” in Skopje — including newspapers (Nova Makedonija), cultural magazines (Razgledi, Kulturen Život, Makedonka), concert programmes, radio schedules, institutional chronicles, and oral interviews — the paper demonstrates how jazz was mediated, debated and framed within public discourse. These materials reveal a complex interplay between official cultural policy, which alternated between suspicion, regulation and selective support, and the creative agency of musicians who adapted jazz idioms to local artistic, educational and social contexts.

Key figures such as Dragan Gjakonovski–Špato and the ensembles of Radio Skopje illustrate how jazz developed despite ideological constraints, gradually becoming a marker of cultural modernity. By integrating documentary evidence with contextual musicological interpretation, the study offers a new understanding of jazz in Southeastern Europe and highlights its role in shaping cultural identity during the socialist period.

The significance of a library focusing on jazz, rock, and pop music was doubted during the socialist period, just as the value of this music was questioned. Private collectors took over the role of state institutions. Paradoxically, socialist culture planned for the existence of a triple model—library, cinema, and cultural hall—in every town and village. Jazz, rock, and pop music, in the form of SP and LP records, began to be collected in state libraries at the turn of the 1980s, particularly in public-popularizing libraries (such as the Municipal Library of Bratislava), unlike the academically focused libraries. Although music departments in libraries concentrated on classical music, enlightened employees occasionally ordered jazz, rock, and pop music records as well. After the creation of the independent Slovak Republic (1993), the national wealth in this area was also highlighted. Based on existing private collector's archives, the project 10 CD Anthology of Slovak Popular Music (Pavol Zelenay, editor, SF00572331, 2008) was created, documenting archives from the years 1934–1963. Before 1989, the legislative obligation to submit 1–2 copies of editions applied to print publications, but was less explicit for records. After 1989, publishers are obliged to submit LP and CD records to libraries. The unavailability of modern popular music CDs in libraries and distribution issues became key for organizing the Aurel – Academy of Modern Popular Music (2001–2007) under the auspices of the Slovak National Group of IFPI. The activity was terminated in 2007 because the Academy members could not access the CDs to vote seriously.

This presentation is based on a PhD thesis completed in 2025, which examines the historical and conceptual construction of conjuntos regionais, a consolidated instrumental ensemble recurrently employed in the accompaniment of popular music in Brazil during the heyday of radio, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s. Hemerographic research, conducted through newspapers and magazines, primarily using the online collection of the National Library of Brazil’s Hemeroteca, played a central methodological role in the development of the study. An exhaustive survey of the press proved crucial to defining the central research problem: the conceptions surrounding the term regional and their reverberations in the trajectories of these ensembles. In this regard, the study seeks to account for the consolidation of such groups by tracing their origins to regionally oriented formations recognised since the second half of the 1910s. It is argued that the term regional evolved from a value-laden quality, associated with ideas of Brazilianness and authenticity, into a specific nomenclature designating these ensembles, synthesised in the expression regional de rádio, as proposed in this research. The presentation aims to demonstrate how hemerographic research contributed to the development of the PhD thesis, enabling the recovery of meanings of the term regional that have faded over time, yet remain fundamental to understanding the trajectory, as well as the consolidation and dissemination, of this musical language throughout Brazil, especially in the musical genres choro and samba.