Table Of ContentThe Genesis and Structure of the
Hungarian Jazz Diaspora
In Hungary, jazz was at the forefront of heated debates sparked by the racialised
tensions between national music traditions and newly emerging forms of
popular culture that challenged the prevailing status quo within the cultural
hierarchies of different historical eras. Drawing on an extensive, four-year
field research project, including ethnographic observations and 29 in-depth
interviews, this book is the first to explore the hidden diasporic narrative(s) of
Hungarian jazz through the system of historically formed distinctions linked to
the social practices of assimilated Jews and Romani musicians. The chapters
illustrate how different concepts of authenticity and conflicting definitions of
jazz as the ‘sound of Western modernity’ have resulted in a unique hierarchical
setting. The book’s account of the fundamental opposition between US-centric
mainstream jazz (bebop) and Bartók-inspired free jazz camps not only reveals
the extent to which traditionalism and modernism were linked to class- and
race-based cultural distinctions, but offers critical insights about the social
logic of Hungary’s geocultural positioning in the ‘twilight zone’ between East
and West to use the words of Maria Todorova. Following a historical overview
that incorporates comparisons with other Central European jazz cultures, the
book offers a rigorous analysis of how the transition from playing ‘café house
music’ to bebop became a significant element in the status claims of Hungary’s
‘significant others’, i.e. Romani musicians. By combining the innovative
application of Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural sociology with popular music studies
and postcolonial scholarship, this work offers a forceful demonstration of
the manifold connections of this particular jazz scene to global networks of
cultural production, which also continue to shape it.
Ádám Havas is a Sociologist and jazz researcher based in Budapest, Hungary.
Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series
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The Genesis and Structure of the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora
Ádám Havas
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The Genesis and Structure of
the Hungarian Jazz Diaspora
Ádám Havas
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First published 2022
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© 2022 Ádám Havas
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003132790
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 On the crossroads of cultural sociology and jazz studies 20
2 The ‘othering effect’ of jazz: cultural and ‘racial
hierarchies’ in Hungary’s jazz age 54
3 Polarisation, acceptance and in-betweenness: jazz in
state socialist Hungary 86
4 Struggles that matter: the social constructions of bebop
and free jazz 118
5 Othering whiteness: permanence and change in Romani
musicians’ jazz habitus 141
Conclusion: counter-discourses, jazz diasporas and the
reconfiguration of the canon 168
Index 183
Acknowledgements
In a certain sense, this book is the product of the ‘lock-down’ caused by the
global COVID pandemic, because most chapters were written under curfew.
Therefore, the support and encouragement from the following people were
essential to this project.
I am indebted to my musician friends, especially Mátyás Tóth, Márk Mis-
kolczi, Péter Ajtai, Krisztián Oláh, András Párniczky, János Egri Jr., Dávid
Lamm, Márton Fenyvesi and András Dés for the critical insights, the inspiring
discussions about jazz in Hungary, and for connecting me with musicians of
the Hungarian jazz scene. Our conversations were essential to this book, and
I am grateful for their openness and continuing support. I wish I could list the
names of my interviewees whom I consider co-authors of the last two chapters
on the contemporary scene, nevertheless their names cannot be revealed for
obvious, ethical reasons. I would like to highlight the importance of the help
of Elemér ‘Elcsi’ Balogh whose comments on the Hungarian jazz culture were
essential to my work. His death in 2016 was one of the few events when the
jazz scene was unified in the sorrow caused by his loss.
I owe a great debt to a number of scholars whose insights were formative to
my thinking on transatlantic jazz histories and the cultural sociology of impro-
vised music. In particular, informal discussions with Nicholas Gebhardt, Alan
Stanbridge, Jan Herbst, Lynn Hooker, Mary Taylor, John Whiteoak, Nicolas
Pillai, Anna Szemere, Petter Frost Fadnes, José Dias, Anna Wessely, Judit
Csobod, Miklós Vörös, Sára Wagner, Gergely Pulay, Tamás Hajnáczky, Gergő
Havadi, Attila Melegh, Kornél Zipernovszky, Ágoston Fáber, Zoltán Ginelli,
Sára Wagner, Márton Szegedi, Philipp Schmick, George Schuller, Anikó
Gregor and André Doehring were influential on the book’s evolution from
various aspects. I am particularly grateful for Sarah Raine for the encourage-
ment she gave me to embark on this journey and convert my doctoral research
into a book. I am thankful to Cambridge University Press, in particular Martin
Cloonan for granting me permission to use segments from my article published
in Popular Music.
I must express my gratitude to Martin Breternitz who read and commented
on various chapters of this book, and thus served as one of the first read-
ers of this work. I am grateful for József Böröcz for helping me acquire a
Acknowledgements vii
postcolonial perspective on East-Central Europe. In fact, my growing empha-
sis on the relationship between ‘racial’ hierarchies and geopolitical differences
is largely thanks to our conversations. I am also grateful for Victor Karády, the
eminent scholar of Jewish social history, for dedicating his time and energy to
comment on my ideas regarding the role of Hungarian Jews in the promotion
of jazz between the two wars.
It gives me pleasure to acknowledge the help I received from outside aca-
demia: My conversations with the former jazz club organiser György Brüll
were highly relevant for my understanding of the ambiguities of the state
socialist jazz art world. In addition, I wish to make special mention of my
proofreader, Christoph Gottstein, whose wonderfully informed suggestions
were essential to my work. Without our long-time collaboration, I wouldn’t be
where I am today.
Writing this book went in parallel with working on a major editing pro-
ject, namely the Routledge Companion for Diasporic Jazz Studies I am truly
lucky to co-edit with Bruce Johnson and David Horn. It gives me particular
pleasure to acknowledge how much working with them improved my thinking
on global jazz cultures in addition to acquiring the skills necessary to edit a
volume consisting of more than 50 entries. To me, working with them was the
‘true academy’ of popular music and jazz studies.
I cannot emphasise enough how grateful I am for Bruce Johnson, who as a
mentor, colleague and friend provided essential intellectual and emotional sup-
port in addition to introducing me to diasporic jazz studies. A couple of years
ago he sent me his book The Inaudible Music with a brief message between
the pages saying that ‘I hope it provides some interest’. Now, I look forward to
sending him my book to Australia with a similar note in reference to our first
encounter. In a sense, my book’s title reflects my respect towards his pioneer-
ing oeuvre in (new) jazz studies.
It is no exaggeration to say that I chose to start my doctoral studies because
of my respect for my former tutor, Miklós Hadas. I struggle with putting into
words how indebted I am for his persistent personal and intellectual support; it is
largely because of him that I was able to write this book, and more importantly,
to become a sociologist. Perhaps, it is needless to emphasise how privileged I feel
for the lengthy conversations about each chapter I sent him: As a former student
of Pierre Bourdieu and a jazz musician he was an ideal referee of my work.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Milestone Institute, for provid-
ing the flexibility and material background that made this work possible. In
particular, I am grateful for György Greskovits and János Hódsági for their
unreserved support.
I enjoyed the collaboration with the editorial team of Routledge. I am par-
ticularly grateful for the encouragement of the series editors, Justin Williams
and Lori Burns, the support received from the Senior Editor, Heidi Bishop and
the Editorial Assistant, Sharma Kaushikee.
Last but not least, I must acknowledge the crucial intellectual and emo-
tional support I received from my partner, Eszter, who was holding my hand
viii Acknowledgements
throughout the entire process and whose empathy and love was essential to
keep me going despite all the hardships caused by the pandemic and the loss of
my grandmother. I wish my father could be here with me to witness how sig-
nificant his support was for me. As a sign of how indebted I feel for my family,
this book is dedicated to his memory.
Introduction
Perched at the intersection of cultural sociology, popular music studies and
jazz studies, this book is the first work to critically interrogate the social,
cultural and political genealogy of the contemporary Hungarian jazz scene.
It is also the first study to systematically combine the complexity of Pierre
Bourdieu’s historical analysis (Bourdieu 1996; Bennett 2005) with cultural
histories of jazz, forming a bridge between (new) jazz studies and Bourdieu-
inspired cultural sociology. Synthesising these lines of inquiry holds the
promise of grasping the relation between the homogenising effects of musical
globalisation and the ‘glocalisation process’ behind the emergence of multiple
jazz dialects outside the US and across the globe. Due to the peculiarity of
Hungary’s semi-peripheral context – in which playing jazz is closely associ-
ated with the articulation of geopolitically rooted differences and the diverse
assimilation strategies of multi-ethnic social groups, especially Hungarian
Gypsies and Jews – this work endeavours to serve as a model for other Cen-
tral European cultural contexts that witnessed similar socio-political processes
in the century since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Although the
main purpose of the book is to bring cultural sociology and jazz studies onto
common ground, I aim to achieve this by providing sociological insights into
the racialised logic of cultural distinctions of the contemporary jazz field, in
addition to revealing the historicity behind the categories used by musicians
to express different forms of authenticity and belonging. This book is there-
fore based on the premise that to understand jazz, one must understand not
only bebop, as forcefully emphasised by DeVeaux (1997: 3), but its diasporic
reinventions and (semi-)peripheral counter-discourses. To that end, instead of
following a strictly chronological approach, the chapters are arranged so as to
identify decisive periods in the evolution of the music’s cultural meanings and
social functions in Hungary.
Far from being self-evident, placing a relatively peripheral jazz scene such
as Hungary’s at the centre of a book-length investigation requires a clarifica-
tion of the disciplinary contexts in which it could constitute a legitimate topic.
One of these is closely linked to the thematic and epistemological diversity
of jazz research since the late 20th century and falls under the rubric of new
jazz studies. The main reason why this academic field provides a hospitable
DOI: 10.4324/9781003132790-1
