In 1936, Jaroslav Ježek composed the music for a jazz revue entitled Nebe na zemi (Heaven on Earth) that was the smash hit of the Prague season. The title was an ironic statement on the political situation in the ailing First Republic as well as in the rest of Europe, particularly next door in the Third Reich. The political leanings of the revue's text were demonstrably socialist, although with a Western, prodemocratic focus and a growing sense of Czech nationalism. Ježek's score consisted of lively tangos, foxtrots, and other popular dances imported from America, as well as satirical, antifascist marches, all to the accompaniment of a jazz band based on that of Duke Ellington. The entire show, both musically and dramatically, was hailed as a significant contribution to Prague's avant-garde movement. That such a strange and wonderful amalgam of theatrical, musical, political, and social impulses should find place in a single work is indicative not only of the state of the Prague musical community in the 1930s, but also of the fundamental cosmopolitanism and awareness of its individual members as democracy was coming to a close.

The decade of the 1930s saw tremendous social, political, and economic changes throughout Europe, occasioned by the start of the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler in Germany and of offshoot fascisms in other states, the popularity of the socialist movement, and finally the total collapse of democracy and the start of the Second World War.