DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2026-6(1)-71-85

A city within the city: a jazz portrait of Yerevan underground, frontline and elite

Rima Tigranyan

Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia
[email protected]

ORCID: 0009-0004-2882-9731

ABSTRACT

The formation and development of jazz in Yerevan were directly shaped by Soviet cultural policy and its ideological constraints, generating a set of adaptive mechanisms that governed the evolution of urban jazz culture. These mechanisms, continuously reconfigured under shifting political conditions, constituted a flexible cultural toolkit for negotiating restrictions and prohibitions. One of the central strategies for circumventing official control was the emergence of diverse jazz environments embedded within the urban fabric of the city, operating across a spectrum of institutional, semi-institutional, and informal spaces – statesupported concert venues, public entertainment sites such as parks and cinema foyers, and marginalized underground settings including private apartments, workshops, and university basements. The article conceptualizes Yerevan as a multilayered urban organism in which jazz functions simultaneously as a cultural practice, a symbolic system, and a spatial organizing principle. It argues that jazz environments contributed to the formation of a “three-storied” urban structure consisting of official (frontal), underground, and – following independence – elite dimensions, each corresponding to specific socio-political and cultural configurations. Within this framework, jazz is interpreted not merely as a musical genre but as a mechanism of spatial production and social differentiation. Drawing on theories of social mapping, urban semiotics, and the interaction between sound and space, the study examines how musical practices shaped, and were shaped by, the ideological and spatial organization of the city across the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Methodologically, the research combines historical analysis, cultural interpretation, and spatial theory, drawing on primary sources, including archival materials and firsthand testimonies from jazz musicians and participants, as well as secondary literature. The findings demonstrate that jazz in Yerevan functioned as a mediating force between ideology, space, and identity, producing alternative cultural geographies that extended well beyond the Soviet period and continued to influence post-independence urban transformations and cultural hierarchies within the city.

KEYWORDS: Soviet jazz, urban jazz culture, Yerevan, jazz and urban space, underground jazz, ideology and music, Soviet cultural policy, jazz environment, place identity, sound and space, cultural mechanism, elite jazz.

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Information about the author
Rima Tigranian
MA (Musicology and Cultural Studies), PhD student
Yerevan State University
1, Alex Manoogian St., Yerevan, 0025, Armenia
Web of Science ResearcherID: QIV-3413-2026
ORCID: 0009-0004-2882-9731
e-mail: [email protected]

For citation:
Tigranyan, R. (2026). A city within the city: a jazz portrait of Yerevan underground, frontline and elite. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 6(1), 71–85. https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2026-6(1)-71-85