Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany

Rating:
Summary: spielt auf nun zum Tanz
Review: A distinguished, prolific historian and accomplished jazz musician, Michael H. Kater teaches history at York University in Toronto. He has written several well-received books; prior to Different Drummers, I knew him primarily from his excellent, 1975 study of the role of right-wing student fraternities at German universities during the rise of Nazism, Studentschaft und Rechtsradikalismus in Deutschland 1918-1933 (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe).

Different Drummers chronicles the futile but vicious attempts of the Nazis to stamp out an art form identified with Negroes and Jews, the exquisite form of political resistance jazz represented, and its vague anticipation of the oppositional youth and student culture of 1960s West Germany.