GERMANY: Calling the Tune

In Dresden last week a youthful hot combo was interrupted in mid-rehearsal and threatened with dire consequences if caught playing Western jazz a second time. In Cottbus, Communist police confiscated a stack of Western dance records and sent their owners to jail for two days. But the East German who was called upon to pay the piper most heavily for not calling the Communist tune was Egon Sander of Pirna. Last week Egon was dragged off the floor of a Pirna restaurant, sentenced to two years in prison for dancing the samba. The dance, said his Communist judges, was “endangering to the life of the state.”