''Američan - a musí emigrovat do Československa!'' : Škvoreckého jazzman Herbert Ward optikou zpráv FBI

• Authors: Petr Vidomus

Title variants

EN

''An American - and must emigrate to Czechoslovakia!'' : Škvorecký´s jazzman Herbert Ward through the prism of FBI reports

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

CS

a2_V líčení jejich autora života v Praze poutá umělecké působení obou manželů, zejména Wardova revuální pásma přibližující pražskému publiku historii jazzu, a později v šedesátých letech jejich narůstající deziluze z pobytu v Československu, která je přivedla k návratu do USA. Stať je mimo jiné příspěvkem do nedávno započaté diskuse o anglicky mluvící levicové komunitě v Československu po začátku studené války a zároveň ilustruje práci FBI v době amerického mccarthismu.

EN

a1_One of the key characters of Josef Škvorecký´s short story Prague´s Little Mara Hara (1955) is an American musician named Robert Bulwer. ''Music-hungry fans of Prague'' skillfully use his political refugee´s status to smuggle a jazz revue onto stages of Prague at the time the music style is still viewed as something suspicious. The fictitious character of Bulwer was based on a realistic archetype, American double-bass jazz player Herbert Ward (1921-1994), who together with his wife, dancer and choreographer Jacqueline Ward (1919-2014) and two sons asked for political asylum in socialist Czechoslovakia in 1954 and then lived in Prague until 1964. Using declassified files of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but also information from Czech and other archival sources and period press, the author depicts the life story of the Wards, in particular their presence in Europe, circumstances under which the asylum was granted, and their life in Czechoslovakia. He sets the story into the context of persecution of so-called un-American activities (McCarthyism) in the United States after the outbreak of the Cold War; in addition to other left-wing artists, the campaign also affected many jazz musicians, and Petr Vidomus sees motives for the 1950 departure of the Wards from the USA to Denmark in it. He pays a lot of attention to the issue of the Wards´ membership in the Communist Party of the USA and related left-wing organizations and reasons of the FBI´s interest in their activities. Insofar as their life in Prague is concerned, the author is interested primarily in their artistic activities, in particular Herbert Ward´s revues describing the history of jazz to Prague´s audience, and later, in the 1960s, their disillusionment with the life in Czechoslovakia, which made them return to the United States.

EN

a2_The article is, inter alia, a contribution to a recently started discussion about the English-speaking left-wing community in Czechoslovakia after the beginning of the Cold War, and also illustrates the work of the FBI during the era of McCarthyism in the United States.

Keywords

CS

historiografie; imigranti; jazzoví hudebníci

EN

historiography; immigrants; jazz musicians

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 164-206
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Petr Vidomus

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic