Paris Blues: African American Music and French Popular Culture, 1920–1960

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In Paris Blues Andy Fry aims to puncture what he sees as the myth of “Harlem in Montmartre”: the idea that African American musicians from Josephine Baker to the saxophonist Sidney Bechet found in Paris from the 1920s to the 1950s a welcoming haven from American racism. Fry focuses on the Gallic reception of African American music, covering topics as diverse as black-themed musical theater revues, French jazz criticism, Baker's light opera performances, and the career of the guitarist Django Reinhardt in occupied France. Fry demolishes heroic French accounts of their reception of black music and reveals how narratives of musical ownership (black, American, or French) embody “the complex interplay of race, writing, and power” (p. 27). According to Fry, two discourses dominated the French reception of African American music. The first saw it as “primitive,” sometimes understood as an invigorating cure for modern artificiality and commercialism and at other times as a threat to civilization. The second feared American influence and sought to make jazz safe for French society.