Jazz Jamboree

Jazz Jamboree is the name of an international jazz festivals in Warsaw, Poland, which takes place every year in October. It is the oldest Polish music festival and takes place every year since 1958.

In September 1958, the Polish Students Association organized jointly with the Warsaw Hot Club Hybrydy first time this festival. Venue was originally the student club Stodola. Due to its growing popularity, the festival in 1961 moved to the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 1966 the Festival in the Great Hall of the Warsaw Palace of Culture is performed.

The festival was a particularly demanding, then conducted by the Polish State Banquet at the time of the Cold War and became the largest and most popular jazz festival in the socialist countries. Here gathered on several days the whole jazz scene in Poland and numerous visitors from the socialist countries. Since the late 1950s American musicians came - to celebrities such as Miles Davis - added, their stay was funded by the U.S. Embassy. There were newcomers and established bands from other East, but also from Western European countries. Celebrity guests were, inter alia, Charles Mingus, Elvin Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Michael Brecker, Ray Charles, Chucho Valdés, John Scofield, Art Blakey, Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans, Woody Herman, Günter Sommer, Conny Bauer, Heinz Becker, Albert Mangelsdorff and Vyacheslav Ganelin. The festival served " over a long period of time as a hub between east and west ( the Western European as well as American ) jazz scenes. "

Theater expert and jazz organizer Martin Linzer recalls: " Was in Warsaw can be the theater in the seventies exceptional, so the city was during the Jazz Jamboree, a quasi extraterritorial place almost ecstatic enjoyment, or land Utopia within the socialist camp. " Only from the DDR pilgrimage every year over eight hundred jazz fans to Warsaw.