Between the world wars, Paris welcomed not only a number of glamorous American expatriates, including Josephine Baker and F. Scott Fitgerald, 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 centre 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. In showing how jazz became French, he 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.

JEFFREY H. JACKSON is Assistant Professor of History at Rhodes College.

CONTENTS:
Introduction
1. The Arrival of Jazz
2. The Spread of Jazz
3. Jazz and the City of Paris
4. The Meanings of Jazz: America, Negre, and Civilization
5. Making Jazz Familiar: Music Halls and the Avant-Garde
6. Making Jazz French: Parisian Musicians & Jazz Fans
7. New Bands & New Tensions: Jazz & the Labor Problem
8. The Discovery of Hot Jazz
9. Epilogue
Appendix: Histories of Jazz in Interwar France

back to previous page