THE UKRAINE SWINGS
Das fand ich gestern auf YT, weil ich nach Platten mit dem Bassisten Paul West gesucht habe. Musikalisch liegt es irgendwo zwischen altem Big Band Jazz, ein bißchen Dixieland, Xavie Cugat und Miles auf BN. „Ukraine Swings“ ist auch die Stimmung bei den einzelnen Stücken und sicherlich kein Gimmick – wohl Musik für die Community in New York City. Aufgenommen übrigens im Stuyvesant Casino in der Bowery, ein Ort mit relativ viel Geschichte.
Stuyvesant Casino also contained the Ukrainian National Home, a community center that opened in 1958, an effect of the change in neighborhood demographics. Offering cultural and social services to the East Village’s Ukrainian population, an area now known as Ukrainian Village, the “Ukie Nat” hosted a diverse array of artists in the 1980s including Elvis Costello, New Order, and the Misfits, as well as balalaika music filling the Ukrainian Home Restaurant.
New Order would perform their first American show at Ukrainian National Home, testing out new material that built off Joy Division’s sound. During the 80s post-punk era, synth-based freestyle and electro could be heard at downtown clubs – a melding of white, Latino and Black artists who were mixing in the same area where punk rock inspired New Order’s early sounds.
Looking back on Stuyvesant Casino’s heyday, jazz music from beyond New York would find a home in this region of the city that so many others had sought refuge in for centuries prior. Home to Germans, Jews, African-Americans, Ukrainians and many more, the area at 140-142 Second Avenue has been a bustling center of cultural diffusion and artistic growth for nearly two centuries, and continues to be so today. The original Stuyvesant Casino building burned down in 1985. Quelle
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