I'm very much a jazz lover, in spite of the fact that it was only a sort of tolerated art form by the state (you can't really have the freedom of jazz and have obedient little drones of communism), though I never could go to such bars, and my fear of crowds pretty much prevents me from going to concerts.

As an art form, jazz literally opened the world for African Americans to escape Jim Crow, and they left their mark in various places, most commonly known outside the US in London and Paris, but my main interest is Shanghai and Kyoto. This is because Western music by its evolution is plenty similar everywhere, while in Asia, the elements of Western African music fusing with East Asian elements was a battle of independence in its own right.

In the case of the Chinese, getting gigs in the clubs of the International Settlement literally meant putting food on the table and avoidance of affairs of Republican China and the Japanese Empire. Now, shortly after the civil war, Shanghai was made to be an example to weed out everything the regime, and then much of society felt was wrong with China. The Western music culture got banned, and by 1992, with the partial reopening to the West, almost everything had to be built from the ground up. I'm especially interested in the life stories of African American musicians, whose lives got influenced by military conflicts of their host countries, and how unfortunate relations of the time influenced their fates by way of prioritizing evacuations.

The Japanese case has similar elements both prewar, and postwar. A few weeks ago a jazz musician died in Japan, who went to prison for his art in the '30s (Tojo and his like-minded ilk felt Western music is anti-Japanese) and who protested in the '50s for the state decision to practically defund non-Japanese music. Even after the war, many in Japan's music business felt that only traditional Japanese music and folk songs (enka, aka the Japanese country music) have a place in their society, and stonewalled attempts to have different music recorded and published. Take note however, that it was true within traditional music as well. In the early '70s, during the Vietnam War, pro-Empire sentiments flared up again (the usual "if the Americans had not joined the war, there wouldn't be communist uprisings under Japan's glorious guidance) and artists, who either protested war itself or just protested imperial sentiments could face banishment and/or death threats.

I used to have a friend in Hong Kong who sent me a copy of Sapporo Snowy, a very beautiful pop-ish folk song (if you recall the Beatles being booed in Japan, you might remember that pop music was loathed as well) by a singer, who with a few other Japanese found a career in Taiwan as at the time no Japanese producer dared touching and supporting works of artists who protested the government.