Puti amerikanskoi muziki [The ways of American music].

First edition, first impression, print-run of 5000. Detailed overview of American jazz. Soviet musicologist Valentina Konen (1909-1991) was one of the leading authorities on jazz culture in USSR. Born in Baku she left Russia after the October Revolution and spent 10 years in USA, studying at Juilliard (1924-9) specialising in piano. During her time in America she was part of the circle that gathered around Charles Seeger, who was lecturing at both Julliard and the New School for Social Research. Konen returned in USSR in 1931 to study at the history and theory department of the Moscow Conservatory, graduating in 1938 with a doctoral thesis on the musical culture in USA. She lectured in the history of foreign music at the Conservatory between 1938 and 1949 also teaching at the Gnesin Music Teachers College from 1944. In 1949 she was accused of being a "cosmopolite" and fired, being exiled to the Urals, where she was a professor at the Urals Conservatory, 194951. In 1960, rehabilitated, Konen became a senior research worker at the Institute of the History of the Arts, under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR. The somewhat neutral title of this work can be accounted for by Konen's troubled career path, which shadows the vexed history of jazz in the Soviet Union. An attractive piece of 60s Russian book production with stylish line-drawn illustrations by L. Witte.