Paweł Brodowski: Hello there! My name is Paweł Brodowski and you’re listening to The Unruly Spirits - a podcast about a group of artists, dreamers and freethinkers from behind the Iron Curtain, who sought freedom in the art of improvisation.
Throughout this series I’ll tell you a beautiful tale of 5 incredible musicians who came of age in 1950 in Poland. You’ll hear a story about the spirit of freedom that blossomed in a country where personal or political freedom was severely limited. Our interviewees will tell you about the times of difficult decisions, compromises and longing for a better world. They’ll tell you about learning to play jazz from worn vinyls and distorted radios, about their complicated paths to stardom and incredibly original music they created along the way. You’ll get a chance to listen to some of the finest jazz records from beyond the Iron Curtain and take a deep dive into the incredibly interesting circumstances of their creation.
Today we’re meeting Zbigniew Namysłowski - a true legend of the alto saxophone, a composer credited with being the first one to blend Polish folklore with jazz and a free spirit with an unquenchable appetite for new directions in music. He’s been doing his thing for over 60 years now and he’s still touring all over the world and recording new music! Coming up on the Unruly Spirits Podcast!
It's hard to imagine a world where music could be censored. That was the case of Poland and the entire Eastern block. After the war jazz became a symbol of capitalist imperialism and it was forbidden to play it publicly. Stalin's death in 1953 loosened the tough grip of censorship.
Zbigniew Namysłowski: In the late fifties and early sixties jazz wasn’t banned any longer.
The authorities weren’t really that interested but when pressure to legalize jazz grew, Party ideologues realized that jazz was the music of the oppressed American Blacks, working hard in the cotton fields where the music originated: this was good enough to sanction jazz, as an anti-imperialist music.
PB: In the late 1950 Jazz music exploded with a bang and immediately jazz clubs and jazz festivals started opening.
ZN: This all took off after the first two international song festivals in Sopot. They were a huge success, the entire country was riveted. Jazz was, at that time, the great discovery in Communist Poland. I’d say, it heralded the coveted western lifestyle.
PB: Sopot Festivals were a huge thing for the polish audience desiring any form of contact with the world outside. Suddenly, they could listen to bands from the entire Europe. They could take part in jazz parades across the town, they could listen to music which was bringing a smell of a distant, better world. But let me read you a little excerpt from the daily newspaper from the time of the festival’s edition in 1957.
There were a number of Polish bands too. Hot Club Melomani, Komeda Sextet as well as Modern Combo, featuring a 17-year old trombone player Zbigniew Namysłowski who played cello.
Yes, you heard it right… Hear why.
ZN: Alto saxophone wasn’t my first choice. At school I studied cello, and piano before that, so I was relatively proficient in those two instruments when I started to take interest in non-classical music.
P.B: Then, during one summer holiday, Zbigniew found a trombone in a brass band depot. He started playing it and only a few months later got invited to play in a dixieland band back in Warsaw.
ZN: I only played trad jazz on the trombone. Even so, the band I led at the time was called The Modern Dixielanders and I tried to modernize this trad jazz, so much so that we even played a Coltrane piece once. This was the hottest avant-garde at the time.
Once I became involved in modern jazz, I realized that I couldn’t continue on the trombone. I figured that I had so many trad jazz habits, the glisses and other Dixieland tricks, that it would stop me from learning the modern jazz idiom on this instrument. Quite by chance, I got hold of an alto saxophone and… I think I can actually remember how it happened: I was on the train, we were on tour together with the band Hot Club Melomani. And it so happened that in my compartment there sat Krzysztof Komeda.
PB: You've heard about Komeda in our previous episode and you’ll hear some more later. He’s the most celebrated pianist and composer of the early days of the history Polish jazz.
ZN: Back then it was popular among musicians, especially modern-jazz pianists, to also play other instruments, and so Komeda carried this alto with him and played it a little. I asked him to let me try it for a bit and I did, in the next compartment, which was completely empty (...) I started practising, and so it went.
PB: What do you normally need to learn how to play jazz? You need a tutor, you need books, notes, tons of recordings. The problem was, Namysowski’s generation had none of it. They had one thing only - a radio show on the waves of an outlawed radio:
ZN: Well, I was a keen listener of Willis Conover’s Jazz Hour on Voice of America. Everyone who had any interest in jazz listened to that. Well… it was a daily ritual.
Did I know English? A bit, I attended the Methodists’ classes for a while but I’m not sure I learned much back then. At any rate, what Conover said in his program was perfectly clear - Charlie Parker, for example...
PB: Voice of America the radio station broadcasting western news and music, that we spoke about in the previous episode. Just like in case of Urszula Dudziak, the protagonist of episode one, that’s where Zbigniew Namysłowski discovered jazz - Willis Conover’s Jazz Hour...
Voice of America was one of the very few places where people in Poland could listen to news and music from outside of the Eastern Bloc. Funded by the US State Department it was supposed to bring through radio waves censorship-free news and culture to the states locked up behind the Iron Curtain. Comunist regimes devoted lots of energy to jamming and blocking Voice of America’s signal but very often they failed and people could tune in. Willis Conover who ran the Jazz Hour show was presenting jazz records and introducing them in a very clear, overly-enunciated way, making sure people with little or no knowledge of English could understand what was going on.
ZN: In fact, there were no source materials available. Just Willis Conover’s program. But this served to show us what music was on the market and who was worth listening to. And if there was ever an opportunity to get hold of a record - usually on foreign tours - we did not hesitate and bought what we could, what interested us, then we swapped and that’s how our knowledge of what’s happening in contemporary jazz grew. But those were only audio recordings. We had no sheet music, just music to listen to.
You had to learn phrase by phrase, what these great musicians did, and learn from them. Then you could experiment and make the piece, or style, your own. That’s exactly what we all did, only I had proper classical education and so I knew what to do, which sounds form which chords… the theory part was no mystery to me and I also knew how to practise, to play long notes, I knew my staccatos and legatos, I knew what it meant to play in different idioms, with different dynamics. So this was a major leg-up for me, I was one of very few among the early jazz musicians who had musical education. Before me, they were mainly amateurs. My generation brought a lot to jazz because we were classically educated. But we still learned the jazz trade on our own. There was no other way.
PB: With time Willis Conover started developing strong ties with the nascent Polish jazz community. He would come to Poland and listen to the youngsters who often got into jazz thanks to him. And he liked what he heard! He wanted to push his project even further.
ZN: At that time, Willis Conover visited Poland several times, and he had this idea to ask the United States Department of State to invite a Polish jazz band to the US. He loved Polish jazz and believed that was the right thing to do. And it happened, in 1962. It was an incredible adventure because they sponsored a tour all over the States, everywhere. We visited practically everywhere although obviously this was chiefly about places connected with jazz.
PB: The group that Conover selected was called the Wreckers. They were brought to New Orleans, Los Angeles, Washington and New York. They were invited to concerts of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane. They got booked to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival, an absolute Mecca of the jazz world of that time. It’s really hard to imagine how big of a leap it was, to be painstakingly self-learning jazz phrases from worn vinyls and suddenly, only a few years later, perform at Newport and later jam with some of the biggest jazz legends.
This was in 1962 and for Namysłowski it marked the eve of his international career. Two years later he’d release ‘Lola’, a critically acclaimed album recorded for Decca, one of the most prestigious record labels of the time.
ZN: My quartet’s performance was very well received at Jazz Jamboree. The festival had this tradition of starting with Polish bands, then came the European musicians and finally there was always some star from the States. So we had visits from managers from all over Europe and even elsewhere in the world, they were very interested in the fact that such events were taking place behind the Iron Curtain. Some of these were quite influential people. And so, one such individual from Britain invited us, after our performance, to play in Britain. He would organize the tour. And we did do this tour, and it was clearly a big success because apparently there were listeners who followed us from city to city, to listen to our music time and again, they liked it so much. And when, at the end of the tour, the record label Decca invited us to record for them, we naturally agreed. No problem at all, we weren’t going to be difficult. And as it turned out, that was the first album by a Polish band recorded abroad.
PB: I’m really emotional about this album because I was there, at the very first Jazz Jamboree and I heard this group play. I was only 16 at that time but it was obvious for everybody there that there’s something special going on. We heard the very first glimpses of what will make Namysłowski’s voice instantaneously recognizable in the years to come. Not only his utterly uncommon coltrane-ish alto virtuosity but also melodies, inspired by Polish folk songs and dances swiftly blended into jazz tunes. Just listen to this part:
Music playing - Composition: Piątawka, Artist: Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet, Album: Lola
Listen to this piece of traditional music from Podhale, a mountain region in Southern Poland
Music playing: Górale playing a similar tune
For people familiar with music from this region there are a few elements that stand out immediately. The pulsing bass ostinato…
Music playing: Górale playing a similar tune
… the scale on which the melody is based, the jumping, jolty melody - these were ingredients new to modern jazz of that time and they made Namysłowsk’s music have that factor X, this little thing that made him different.
Music playing - Composition: Piątawka, Artist: Zbigniew Namysłowski Quartet, Album: Lola
Very rarely, Namysłowski would introduce an entire folk melody into his songs but more than often he’d sneak some elements here and there, playing on the character of a certain song or dance.
ZN: Siódmawka, Mazurka Uborka or Bomberek are all strictly my compositions, inspired by folk music.
As the title, Mazurka Uborka suggests, it’s inspired by a mazurka, but I couldn’t tell you which particular mazurka because I didn’t use the melody of a genuine folk dance melody, I just used the character of this dance to create my own composition.
PB: Lola went on to become a sought after jazz relic. Not only because of its brilliance but also, because the original tapes disappeared without a trace. Thus, to get hold of one of the very few copies left you have to be very lucky and brace yourself for a big expense.
Soon, Namysłowski will be invited to record an album which will become a staple of polish jazz forever. Krzysztof Komeda, who Zbigniew mentioned before, asked him to take part in the recording session for Astigmatic. This album means to Polish and European jazz what Kind of Blue or Love Supreme mean to jazz overall. You should definitely listen to it! And yes, we made this record a theme for our series…
ZN: We recorded that album practically without rehearsals. From what I remember, Krzysztof led the sessions practically without saying anything… he liked to stay quiet. In rehearsals he just showed us how he played it and you had to imagine what his thinking was. And mostly, everyone somehow found the right way to interpret his melodies. He had this undeniable power to communicate with fellow musicians without words. We met socially outside rehearsals, with him and other musicians, but I was young and shy in trying to hang out with them. We often met at the SPATIF club in Aleje Ujazdowskie in Warsaw and, of course, talked – I mainly listened – but there was also some vodka drinking. And with that, Krzysztof would become more outgoing and even chatty, expansive. A stark contrast to the withdrawn musician I knew from rehearsals.
PB: You see… few of the best jazz players have their own styles. Something fleeting, elusive, but special enough that it’ll make you recognize their records even after hearing a few bars of their solo. Just like in painting or boxing or architecture, those best artists have their immediately recognizable ways of shaping their respective matters. Namysłowski is a good example of it and he came up with it in an interesting way.
ZN: That’s true. That’s what I said once and that’s what I thought. I was mainly inspired by tenor saxophonists like John Coltrane and then Sonny Rollins or Joe Henderson. When I first became interested in playing alto, Art Pepper was my favorite, now a lesser known musician. Quite by chance I got his single, a 45, and I listened to it until it was all scratched. Another record I came by was Charlie Parker’s. And that was actually the end of my interest in altoists, after that I listened mainly to tenors and indeed tried to play what tenors played, not sure if to the best effect. That’s how it went.
Tenors phrased differently. I’d never heard an altoist who played like Coltrane or Rollins but that’s what fascinated me and so I dropped my early alto favorites.
PB: In the 1970s all those elements of Namysłowski’s voice in music were fully developed and would fall into one place. He’d go on to record two of his absolutely iconic albums; Winobranie (Polish for Wine Feast) and Kujawiak Goes Funky (kujawiak being one of Polish folk dances).
Music playing: Composition: Winobranie / Jak nie masz szmalu to nie łaź, Artist: Zbigniew Namysłowski, Album: Winobranie
Everything we talked about until this point is there: bodacious reworks of traditional melodies, Namysłowski playing on alto saxophone, piano and amplified cello and accompanied by some of the best polish jazz musicians of this time. It’s fresh, surprising, energetic! There’s a lot of composed music on these albums and for the musicians playing it, it’s very hard, requiring incredible awareness and virtuosity. There are rhythmic and harmonic riddles everywhere, the metres are changing, solos are very open, to the point of bringing connotations of free jazz improvisation... But for the listener it’s pure joy! It was an absolutely revolutionary fusion of hard bop, rock and Polish folk melodies. I remember seeing the band in Portugal in 1974. People went nuts! Even though the next artist in the line-up was late Gato Barbieri, they wouldn’t let Namysłowski’s band go backstage without an encore! These albums without a doubt contributed to the coining of the term Polish Jazz.
PB: Already being one of the hottest names in the European jazz, Namysłowski decided to give his own shot at making it big in NY. However, it didn’t exactly go as planned
ZN: To tell the truth, I did at one point decide to emigrate. I spent two years in the States, in New York, but then things went badly in my marriage with my then-wife, and also I received an offer to compose a film score in Poland. So I returned to compose the score and when Pagart - that was the state arts agency, a monopolist for any international touring - realized that I was back, I had my passport confiscated and that was it.
PB: Pagart was an almighty artistic agency that had a monopoly for representing Polish artists abroad. You couldn’t perform outside of Poland without their say-so and they could hold your passport if you didn’t collaborate with them closely enough.
ZN: Because they decided that I broke the agency rules by staying and playing in the States for so long. That was unlawful because I should have been paying Pagart commission for all that playing - even though all my gigs barely covered my bills and they expected a cut of that… At any rate, I had a ban on international touring for a year. I remember several invitations from festivals in Europe and how Pagart would respond that they didn’t represent me. Huh! That’s how it was. But then Pagart was finished and you could represent yourself and travel as much as you pleased, without a communist go-between.
PB: In 1989, when the Iron Curtain fell and suddenly anyone could travel freely whenever they wanted, Namysłowski toured all over the world bringing people his folk infused emanation of Polish Jazz. He continued and continues to release incredible music, such as his latest record Polish Jazz Yes!
Just to give you a sense of what he means to the jazz listeners in Poland: At Jazz Forum, the acknowledged European jazz magazine I’ve run for the last 50 years we have a jazz top all-time list where best critics vote and decide which records are historically important. Namysłowski’s Kujawiak Goes Funky and Winobranie are respectively numbers 2 and 3, with Komeda’s Astigmatic, featuring Namysłowski, being number 1. This goes a long way to show what sort of institution of a man Zbigniew Namysłowski is.
And for our habitual sign off, here are a few of Zbigniew Namysłowski’s jazz talents from Poland for you to check out. He said naming people from outside of his band would be inappropriate but his current band is composed of some of the most incredible young guns from Poland. We'll drop a link in our show notes so that you could listen to their music.
ZN: I only play with young musicians because they are good. I play with my son Jacek, an excellent trombonist. Sławek Jaskułke is my permanent pianist and Andrzej Święs plays the double bass. The wonderful Grzegorz Grzyb played the drums with me for years but unfortunately he was killed in a crash. Patryk Dobosz is my drummer now, also excellent.
Post scriptum.
PB: Remember how I told you that Namysłowski's two albums Winobranie and Kujawiak Goes Funky were responsible for the actual crystallization of the phenomenon such as Polish jazz? Funny thing, Namysłowski doesn’t really believe such a thing ever existed.
ZN: If someone has found Polish elements in my music or decided that it’s a kind of music played by Polish musicians and somehow different from American jazz, that’s their opinion. I believe that Polish musicians have always tried to play American jazz, not Polish jazz. I certainly try to play in the American idiom. I accept that certain Polish elements are present in the themes, but I certainly don’t improvise in some specifically Polish fashion, I wouldn’t even know what to call that.
END
Listen to the audio of this episode of Rebel Spirits here