Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

That is very amusing. But without citing any sources I would take it with a huge grain of salt. Most of the stereotype of Nazis being that "uptight" is a postwar media construct. There is an excellent documentary available called TELEVISION UNDER THE SWASTIKA - the Nazis had home TV about 10 years before us and much of the programming was sexually provocative in a way that would not be seen in the USA until the 60s o 70s - usually under the aegis of "strength through joy". Somewhere I have a book about the Nazi propaganda use of Jazz, Swing, and Pop music (came with a CD), I'll try to dig it up and see if the document you posted is mentioned or corroborated in any way.

The problem is that people can get away with saying nearly anything about Hitler or the Nazis without being corrected because no one wants to appear as if they are defending them. Some of the stuff is really stupid and absurd, but that is not an automatic disqualification, at some point somewhere people and governments have all done and said things as absurd as anything that can be fabricated.

the Nazis had home TV about 10 years before us

Yeah they were ahead of their time.  This article shows that Goebbels had a swing band decades before Pat Boone found it necessary to sing Motown.

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/artunderfascism/music___film

Last edited by lowonthetotem (2009-07-01 10:32:33)

lowonthetotem wrote:

Didn't the "Jazz Age" kind of begin in Europe and then spread to the US during the 20's?

I don't know for sure because I wasn't there, but if you google "history of jazz" you'll find a lot of websites saying that the origins were American.

I know that several artists traveled to Europe to record.

I don't think that practice became popular until the prohibition era. What I read somewhere was that when the night clubs were all owned by the mob it was easy to get black balled and not allowed to work anywhere... except Europe.

However, even from that perspective a document like this fits in, being sure to prohibit things that had become very popular.

If the document is for real (if it is it's obviously a translation), it's kind of interesting that they were smart enough to realize that it would be futile to prohibit the music entirely, so they just gave restrictions on how it can be played.

It reminds me of the movie "Swing Kids". I'm not sure the movie was historically accurate, but being a fairly recent movie ('90's) it was probably grounded in reality to a decent extent.

Perhaps I was hasty in posting this. I certainly wasn't offering it up as scholarly material. It just something that musicians had circulated around as a "rough gig scenario" for laughs. It would be interesting to see if it is indeed an actual document or not. I didn't mean to step on anyone's sensitive issues.
                         Bombingly yours
                                  Jim

I'm stuck on how to verify . The guys I get this stuff from are hardly the scholarly type. If it is proven to be authentic I think the amusement factor goes up.

From: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse. … r=&pw=

From: Simon Weil <Wagnerbuch@aol.com>
List Editor: Richard S Levy <rslevy@uic.edu>
Editor's Subject: Regulations on Swing Music [Weil]
Author's Subject: Regulations on Swing Music [Weil]
Date Written: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:21:12 -0700
Date Posted: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 09:21:12 -0700 


Listmembers may remember the thread called "Regulations against swing music
in the Nazi era". Dan Leeson posted this set of 10 rules signed by a Baldur
von Blodheim, Reichsmusicfuhrer und Oberscharfuhrer SS, saying that he
thought the whole thing was dubious. These rules are quite well known in the
Jazz community - the list Dan posted is more or less a word for word
transcription of a list that appears in Joseph Skvorecky's _Red Music_ - with
the addition of this Baldur von Blodheim. Skvorecky says he first saw them
written down in a Czech journal in the middle of WWII. Though he would have
been relatively young at the time, he was angered by this attack (seemingly)
on a music he loved. I hadn't heard it mentioned that they are a fake,
despite taking part in discussions about them. But that they *are* fake was
made clear by a message by Michael Kater (the authority in the field). It
said:

<<  The whole thing is a hoax.  There was no such ruling and a
Reichsmusicfuehrer
   [sic: wrong spelling] did not exist.  Baldur is a play on the
   Reichsjugendfuehrer Baldur von Schirach (till 1940) who did exist.  The
   connection with the SS is contrived.

   I am sorry I cannot be of further help, but you better not post such obvious
   Halloween nonsense.

   Michael H. Kater
    >>
This bemused me somewhat and I wrote to Professor Kater privately. He told me
in reply that he had not specifically disproven the list of Skvorecky's
instructions - because there simply were too many lists to set them all
straight. But that *if I read his three books carefully* it would be clear
why he thought they were a hoax. I just wanted to make that clear to people -
That while Dan correctly intuited the falsity of the list and Professor
Kater, because of his command of the material, understands that Skvorecky's
instructions are fake - To *see* that they are fake the non-specialist must
read Professor Kater's books closely. As I say the falsity of the list is not
known in the Jazz world (at least not the part I belong to), though the list
itself is.

I just wanted to set the record straight.

Simon Weil                      wagnerbuch@aol.com

lowonthetotem wrote:

Didn't the "Jazz Age" kind of begin in Europe and then spread to the US during the 20's?

Just what planet are you FROM, anyway...?

And Jim,

You should know by now that it's impossible to swing a dead cat in this forum without hitting someone's 'sensitive issue'...

Last edited by edosan (2009-07-01 17:24:00)

edosan wrote:

And Jim,

You should know by now that it's impossible to swing a dead cat in this forum without hitting someone's 'sensitive issue'...

Thanks for the tip, Ed.
       One time on the bandstand I made some meaningless joke using the term Zydeco Nazis in reference to staunch Zydeco traditionalists and three actual Nazi hunters came up to the bandstand and wanted to know what my story was.  I guess the Nazi stuff still ain't funny. These are the chances a wise ass takes. I'll try to be more circumspect in the future.

This thread cries out for Horst Xenmeister.