‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’: Afro-Danish jazz band Harlem Kiddies and discourses of race and resistance in 1940s Denmark

Abstract

In 1940, three young Afro-Danes came together to form what was to become one of the most popular swing bands in Scandinavia, the Harlem Kiddies. This essay seeks to investigate the performance and reception history of the orchestra, especially during the years of the German occupation. This essay argues that the Harlem Kiddies became double signifiers of resistance, and their performance strategies complicate and contradict essentialist notions of race, nation, and cultural identity.