During the years between the world wars, a small but dynamic community of black American jazz musicians left the United States and settled in Paris, creating a vibrant expatriate musical scene and introducing jazz to the French. While the Harlem Renaissance was taking off across the Atlantic, entertainers in Montmartre, the epicentre of the Parisian scene, contributed enthusiastically to a culture that thrived for two decades, until the occupation of the city by German troops on 14th July 1940. In Harlem in Montmartre, William A. Shack takes a fascinating look at this extraordinary cultural period, one in which black American musicians could flee the racism of the United States to pursue their lives and art in the relatively free context of bohemian Europe. His book is the first comprehensive treatment of the rise and decline of the black American jazz community in Paris. Considering the international dimensions of black experience in the modern era, he explores the similarities and differences of Harlem-style jazz and culture in Europe and America.

Shack focuses on some of the principal actors who played critical roles in shaping the jazz scene in Monmartre - among them Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet and Eugene Jacques Bullard - but he also discusses others who opened clubs, underwrote loans, and contributed their musical talents to this unparalleled experiment. As an anthropologist, Shack pays particular attention to the club culture. He describes the musicians' experiences, the settings in which they performed, and the response of French audiences.

Shack's meticulous research and encyclopaedic knowledge of Montmartre's jazz culture, including the people and places involved, make this a riveting, authoritative work. Seamlessly fusing biographical, sociological, and historical details, he brings this unique era to life and demonstrates how the Paris jazz scene played a crucial role in legitimising jazz - both in Europe and the United States.

CONTENTS: Making Noise and Stomping Feet; Jazz From the Trenches; Le Jazz-Hot The Roaring twenties; Jim Crow - Sans Domicile Fixe; The Golden Age - The Thirties; Le Jazz-Cold The Silent Forties; Final Notes - the Liberation of Jazz.

WILLIAM A. SHACK (1923-2000) was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

This is the fourth book in the publishers' Music of the Diaspora series.

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