Full episode
131: The Kids Are Alright
Act Two

When Czechs Bounce

If part of the impulse behind the Tiananmen Square uprising was the pure desire to feel like life had possibility, that the future had potential...that impulse was behind another movement. This one among young people in Eastern Europe back before the Berlin Wall fell. The movement had to do with music: jazz. We hear an excerpt from Josef Skvorecky's essay "Red Music" (collected in his book Talkin' Moscow Blues), about how jazz in Czechoslovakia during the 1940s and 1950s seemed to pose a threat, first to the Nazi occupation, then to the Communist authorities. The story is read by Broadway actor Ed Dixon. (17 minutes)