
Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris
Jeffrey H. Jackson
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. As he explains, many French people initially regarded jazz as alien because of its associations with America and Africa. Some reveled in its explosive energy and the exoticism of its racial connotations, while others saw it as a dangerous reversal of France’s most cherished notions of "civilization." At the same time, many French musicians, though not threatened by jazz as a musical style, feared their jobs would vanish with the arrival of American performers. By the 1930s, however, a core group of French fans, critics, and musicians had incorporated jazz into the French entertainment tradition. Today it is an integral part of Parisian musical performance. In showing how jazz became French, Jackson 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.
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About Jeffrey H. Jackson
Reviews for Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris
Library Journal
"Jackson makes an important contribution to historical studies in complicating understandings of French cultural nationalism between two world wars. . . . Compelling."
Jody Blake
American Historical Review
"Jackson's interesting . . . work traces how a new 'cabaret culture' replaced big dancehalls, examines the effect recording technology had on the spread of jazz, and shows how, by the end of the 30s, the indefatigable French had managed to incorporate jazz into a new idea of a national cultural tradition."
Steven Poole
The Guardian