Synopses & Reviews
Between the world wars, Paris welcomed not only a number of glamorous American expatriates, including Josephine Baker and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also a dynamic musical style emerging in the United States: jazz. Roaring through cabarets, music halls, and dance clubs, the upbeat, syncopated rhythms of jazz soon added to the allure of Paris as a center of international nightlife and cutting-edge modern culture. In
Making Jazz French, Jeffrey H. Jackson examines not only how and why jazz became so widely performed in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s but also why it was so controversial.
Drawing on memoirs, press accounts, and cultural criticism, Jackson uses the history of jazz in Paris to illuminate the challenges confounding French national identity during the interwar years. As he explains, many French people initially regarded jazz as alien because of its associations with America and Africa. Some reveled in its explosive energy and the exoticism of its racial connotations, while others saw it as a dangerous reversal of Franceandrsquo;s most cherished notions of andquot;civilization.andquot; At the same time, many French musicians, though not threatened by jazz as a musical style, feared their jobs would vanish with the arrival of American performers. By the 1930s, however, a core group of French fans, critics, and musicians had incorporated jazz into the French entertainment tradition. Today it is an integral part of Parisian musical performance. In showing how jazz became French, Jackson reveals some of the ways a musical form created in the United States became an international phenomenon and acquired new meanings unique to the places where it was heard and performed.
Review
andldquo;Jeffrey H. Jacksonandrsquo;s work is unique in providing a more detailed history of jazz in interwar France than anything yet in print (certainly in English). Jackson offers a new, rather unusual perspective, concentrating on the ways jazz was integrated into national practices and traditions, rather than portraying it as simply a foreign intrusion into national life. This is a very rich approach to cultural history, offering a far more complex and nuanced understanding of the process of trans-Atlantic cultural interchange than top-down perspectives.andrdquo;andmdash;Tyler Stovall, coeditor of The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France
Review
andldquo;A history that reads like a good story, this new book by Jeffrey H. Jackson illumines the multiple reactions to jazz in France, ranging from enthusiasm and fascination to fear and disgust. It also vividly recaptures the broad cultural context and above all succeeds in demonstrating the importance of jazz for the ongoing debate about French
national identity and modernity.andrdquo;andmdash;Charles Rearick, author of The French in Love and War: Popular Culture in the Era of the World Wars
Review
andldquo;This lively and innovative book views jazz through the prism of contemporary ideas about 'blackness' and the Americanization of Europe's economy and culture to explore the relationship between culture, race, and national identity in twentieth-century France. Jeffrey H. Jackson reveals a complex interplay of cultural and social forces that stretches from across the Atlantic to the trenches of World War I to the colonies of la plus grande France.andquot;andmdash;Alice Conklin, author of A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930
Review
"What a pleasure to encounter this astute rethinking of the first forty years of jazz in France.and#160; Fryand#8217;s perceptive reading of the complex discourse network shaping the reception and practice of a broadly construed Parisian jazz is informed by an equally impressive command of a wide and deep historiography.and#160; The authorand#8217;s engagingly written portrait not only upends some of the familiar narrations of Parisian jazz and its place in a wider jazz history; it also urges us to be a little smarter about how we talk and write about the place of jazz in the world today."and#160;
Review
and#8220;Fry has combined meticulous research with careful and creative use of sources from the worlds of music, film, history and popular culture more generally to produce an account that might, finally, bury the perennial (and perennially misguided) idea that Europeans and especially the French understood and appreciated jazz before Americans did. The story is false not only because African American and other U.S.-based supporters of jazz seem not to be and#8216;Americansand#8217; in that version of history, but also because, as Fry eloquently argues, the French at times tried to claim jazz as their own creation, because ethnocentrism and paternalism were rarely absent from what they wrote, because the music and the musicians were often proxies in debates over national culture, and because musicians had reasons for living in France that previous scholars have failed to describe completely.and#8221;and#160;
Review
and#8220;Paris Blues is a rich, thoughtful, and diligently argued account of the African American muse's great adventures in France during the twentieth century. and#160;Fry's illuminating case studies--including from Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, Sidney Bechet, and more--revisit many of our preciously held views about modernism, black music, and French culture and teases out the complexities and pleasures that have made this intercontinental dance such a delight to revisit again and again.and#8221;
Review
"Andy Fryand#8217;s ardently interdisciplinary set of historical analyses of the ongoing importance of African American music in the cultural life of France introduces innovative perspectives on Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and other major musical figures.and#160; This book incontrovertibly confirms the power of the new critical improvisation studies by affirming the centered place of music in any understanding of the human condition."
Review
"Intelligently illustrated by carefully chosen photos, contemporary cartoons and playbills, and the odd musical example, Paris Blues throws valuable new light on a still contested area of jazz (and social) history, and and#8211; as one reviewer states and#8211; it and#8216;urges us to be a little smarter about how we talk and write about the place of jazz in the world today.and#8217;"
Review
and#8220;I find his writing and research to be exemplary. . . . He has shown that there is much work still to be done in clarifying the stories about the Parisian jazz scene of the past century.and#8221;
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-260) and index.
Synopsis
A history of jazz in interwar France, concentrating on the ways this originally American music was integrated into French culture.
Synopsis
The Jazz Age. The phrase conjures images of Louis Armstrong holding court at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Duke Ellington dazzling crowds at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and star singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the Jazz Age was every bit as much of a Paris phenomenon as it was a Chicago and New York scene.
Inand#160;Paris Blues, Andy Fry provides an alternative history of African American music and musicians in France, one that looks beyond familiar personalities and well-rehearsed stories. He pinpoints key issues of race and nation in Franceand#8217;s complicated jazz history from the 1920s through the 1950s. While he deals with many of the traditional iconsand#151;such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, among othersand#151;what he asks is how they came to be so iconic, and what their stories hide as well as what they preserve. Fry focuses throughout on early jazz and swing but includes its re-creationand#151;reinventionand#151;in the 1950s. Along the way, he pays tribute to forgotten traditions such as black musical theater, white show bands, and French wartime swing.and#160;Paris Bluesand#160;provides a nuanced account of the French reception of African Americans and their music and contributes greatly to a growing literature on jazz, race, and nation in France.
About the Author
“A history that reads like a good story, this new book by Jeffrey H. Jackson illumines the multiple reactions to jazz in France, ranging from enthusiasm and fascination to fear and disgust. It also vividly recaptures the broad cultural context and above all succeeds in demonstrating the importance of jazz for the ongoing debate about French
national identity and modernity.”—Charles Rearick, author of The French in Love and War: Popular Culture in the Era of the World Wars“Jeffrey H. Jackson’s work is unique in providing a more detailed history of jazz in interwar France than anything yet in print (certainly in English). Jackson offers a new, rather unusual perspective, concentrating on the ways jazz was integrated into national practices and traditions, rather than portraying it as simply a foreign intrusion into national life. This is a very rich approach to cultural history, offering a far more complex and nuanced understanding of the process of trans-Atlantic cultural interchange than top-down perspectives.”—Tyler Stovall, coeditor of The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France“This lively and innovative book views jazz through the prism of contemporary ideas about 'blackness' and the Americanization of Europe's economy and culture to explore the relationship between culture, race, and national identity in twentieth-century France. Jeffrey H. Jackson reveals a complex interplay of cultural and social forces that stretches from across the Atlantic to the trenches of World War I to the colonies of la plus grande France."—Alice Conklin, author of A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION
1 RETHINKING THE REVUE Nand#200;GRE
Black Musical Theatre after Josephine Baker
2 JACK and#192; Land#8217;OPand#201;RA
Jazz Bands in Black and White
3 and#147;DU JAZZ HOT and#192; LA CRand#201;OLEand#8221;
Josephine Baker Sings Offenbach
4 and#147;THAT GYPSY IN FRANCEand#8221;
Django Reinhardtand#8217;s Occupation Blouze
5 REMEMBRANCE OF JAZZ PAST
Sidney Bechet in France
EPILOGUE
Index