A type of the cannibal-music with roots so patently folkloristic and often (the blues) so downright proletarian that even the most Orwellian falsifier of facts would be hard put to deny them”.
When the Prague Spring occurred, jazz continued its success as an independent form that attracted the youth in all their rebellion.
Even though the novel is set at the end of WWII, the books publishing in 1958 is clearly demonstrative of the excitement for jazz that is present at the time Škvorecký writes the novel.
Škvorecký writes “If in a high school one student belonged to the Jazz Section, the books and periodicals he was allowed to buy were read by practically the whole student body and usually also by the teaching staff.” As the Section's popularity grew and their ability to sponsor musical events became more limited, it reached beyond jazz, and even beyond music in general to literature and art.
The government's approval of the Jazz Section was in part due to its intense dislike of rock music and the overwhelming popularity of that genre.
The heads, Karel Srp and Vladimír Kouřil, continued to run the Section even after its disbandment causing them to be jailed in 1986.
Though the real causes for the light sentences are unknown, Škvorecký speculates “you cannot really hold such things in Czechoslovakia when Gorbachev is in Moscow releasing Andrei Sakharov and other people.
It reflects a split in the ruling party.” These sentiments are similar to the ideas present at the end of WWII when everybody had their own rescued Jew to prove that they were good beings.