Nazism and the Call of the Jitterbug

Abstract

In 1931 Duke Ellington published an article — his first — in the pages of a British dance-band magazine called Rhythm. He emphasised that the culture of jazz is infused with experience of dislocation and oppression, but he also stressed the timeless non-lineal nature of jazz dance. He commended his British readers for their appreciation of his music but ended his first excursion in print with a caution: ‘Remember that your most important asset is your rhythm’ (Ellington, 1931, p. 22). By the 1930s and 1940s European dance-halls were no longer the exclusive province of the waltz and the foxtrot. A generation of young Europeans had assimilated the sounds, movements and sensibilities of swing. Jazz — a music born out of what Ellington called the ‘white heat of our sorrows’ (idid., p. 21) — provided a resource for self-expression and dissent amongst young Europeans both inside Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Europe. It was the age of jazz, the jitterbug and generic fascism.