‘We Are From Jazz’ or — If a Bonzo Dog Song Was an Entire Movie?

Russia in the 1920s. Kostya is a pianist on trial at his music school. His crime? Playing jazz, a decadent and bourgeois product. Kostya is expelled. Kostya vows to never give up jazz.

Stepan and Zhura play banjo and drums. Both are unemployed. One day they see Kostya’s advert looking for a banjo player and drummer to be part of his jazz band. After Kostya plays them a jazz recording Stepan and Zhura are captivated by this new art form and so they join Kostya’s band, a band that will push the boundaries of jazz and music into new, uncharted territories!

Yet this radically new, experimental music is not to everyone’s taste so even when they’re joined by Ivan, who used to be saxophonist for the Tsar (although Ivan is unable to improvise feeling improvisation is a German invention), they still struggle to have their music accepted by Russian society.

Undaunted they persevere and are soon playing gigs for wealthy jazz snobs who are crazy about jazz (but might just also be simply crazy) although a trip to Moscow and a visit to the city’s finest jazz club jolts them into realising just how far they still have to go to be a genuinely great jazz band and, more importantly, just how limitless the boundaries of jazz are. All they now need to do to succeed is discover their own sound.

Will they succeed? Watch ‘We Are From Jazz’ and find out!

‘We Are From Jazz’ (1983) starts with a declaration but one that’s played almost like a warning or a threat — “Music from the 1920’s is used in this film”. This is because ‘We Are From Jazz’ is both a touching celebration of the art form plus a piss-taking critique of jazz, and a sharp and funny one at that.

So the music Kostya is kicked out of music school for is less jazz and more 1920s ragtime, stride piano that’s more than a little repetitive and grating. Likewise, Stepan and Zhura are almost unlistenable musicians, strumming and banging away with oblivious abandon.

This means the music in ‘We Are From Jazz’ could’ve come straight out of a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band album, specifically when they were parodying jazz and 20’s novelty songs. This results in some extraordinarily funny scenes, most revolving around the jazzmen discussing their technical aspects of their music as though they were composing A Love Supreme rather than Dixieland ditties (there is NOTHING new or radical in what they are doing whatsoever!).

Likewise, when Russia’s greatest jazz band perform at The Hermitage Garden, playing their cotton-wool, safe, unchallenging music, the entire crowd ecstatically explodes as though they’d just seen The Beatles in concert. This contrast between rampant silliness and rapt adoration had me in tears of laughter almost constantly throughout the movie, and even though it’s often taking the piss and sending up jazz it’s never once with an ounce of mean-spiritedness.

Not that ‘We Are From Jazz’ doesn’t make a few sharp digs, both regarding Russia and jazz itself. Jazz elitists are held in contempt whilst a performance in front of the City Gardens panel highlights the issues and problems of jazz appropriating black music and culture, repackaging it for a white, middle class audience as well as pointing out hypocrisy in jazz academia (these ivory-tower academics are worried that even midgets and housewives will soon start up jazz bands).

‘We Are From Jazz’ is a wonderfully delightful, furiously silly and musically infectious 90 minutes of pure joy. It’s musically astute, containing a serious understanding of the genre allowing the film to get away with some fantastically observed jokes at the expense of all aspects of jazz, jazz music and jazz institutions.

Most of all, though, the film has a huge heart. It loves both the characters and the music and even though all are played for laughs it’s the love here that really hits. This is most apparent at the end which, without spoiling anything, is so touching, so sweet and so musically uplifting I was almost tearing up. We hear where their jazz has finally progressed to and all humour, sly winks and novelty are gone, replaced by an almost Kenny Wheeler lushness to their sound. It’s a beautiful way to end a movie and a gorgeous love letter to jazz music.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band once said jazz is delicious hot, disgusting cold. ‘We Are From Jazz’ simmers away at exactly the perfect temperature. I adored this film.