Clouds Gather, and the Band Plays On

This chapter focuses on the way cultural production was mobilized to fight fascism and racism in the early 1930s. Yet it simultaneously illustrates how different constituencies in “Black Paris” related to colonialism very differently. The two events that anchor this exploration are the celebration of the tercentenary of France’s colonization of the Antilles and the campaign against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. Various coalitions used music and performance to celebrate the tercentenary. Others made music to generate solidarity and financial support for Haile Selassie and Ethiopia in the face of the Italian invasion. In both cases music and performance became a way of gathering people together and raising money for political causes. The strong support for the pan-African campaign on behalf of Ethiopia was present at the same time as the divided responses to the tercentenary. The conjunction illustrates Paul Gilroy’s characterization of Black identities in the Atlantic region as showing both solidarity and difference.

Conclusion

The conclusion reinforces the point made throughout the book that at times of great crisis, various Black networks in France and the francophone Atlantic found ways to transcend their differences. They did this through cultural production as well as political action. Yet this broader pan-African or pro-Black sense of solidarity coexisted with regional, political, and class affiliations, all of which found expression in music. Some of the complexity of these identities, in fact, found greater expression in music than in literature or politics; this complexity appears very clearly when one traces the musical activities of figures such as Wali Kané, Maïotte Almaby, or Paulette Nardal. The conclusion reflects on how their experiences impacted the following decades in their own lives and in French culture.

Reclaiming the Biguine

This chapter examines how the Caribbean dance known as the biguine gained enormous popularity in Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s. After an Antillean band playing it was a hit feature at the Colonial Exposition, it (briefly) superseded the Charleston and the tango. This popularity was intensified by Josephine Baker’s performance of the biguine in the wildly successful music-hall show Paris qui remue. The chapter focuses on how the biguine was reclaimed both in practice and in print (in large part by three of the Nardal sisters). It shows how music was utilized to build anti-colonial solidarity by pan-African and communist movements and how the police then responded to musical events as a political threat.

Jazzing Around, or “How ’Ya Gonna Keep ’Em Down?”

In the 1920s, Paris became a central site in a Europe-wide process of touring and musical mixing that fostered Black cosmopolitanism. Performers experienced travel and touring as a social and political triumph over racial discrimination. This chapter also shows how economic depression at the end of this period heightened racial antagonism in Paris. The government responded with racial quotas on employment, and unions and laborers expressed hostility to immigrant workers (particularly those of color, whether French citizens or not). The quotas were particularly contentious regarding bands that played in popular venues, because many were marketed precisely on the basis of being foreign and thus best suited for tango, jazz, or biguine. Facing increased hardship, Black communities expressed solidarity against racial prejudice and economic discrimination. This, along with musical mixing during gigs and images and gossip in the Blackpress, contributed to the emergence of an everyday Black cosmopolitanism in interwar Paris.

The Flip Side of Jazz

This chapter describes the entry of jazz into Europe in 1919 after World War I. It demonstrates how the jazz craze presented French men and women of color with opportunities for recognition but also threatened them with widespread misrepresentation. French Antilleans and Africans responded to the jazz craze by offering their own interpretations of Black music and Black identity in political meetings, journalism, and literary reactions. By 1924, police were monitoring these activities carefully. The chapter argues that musical developments contributed powerfully to an interwar context within which racial representation in France was both widespread and contested. It shows how the French state responded by surveilling Black francophone populations closely even in their “leisure” activities such as music making. The chapter emphasizes throughout how the tumulte noir catalyzed Black French to articulate their differences from Black Americans in print and in performance.

Introduction: Setting Up

This chapter introduces the book. It argues that music making in interwar Paris was a form of cultural politics. It contextualizes the subject with a short overview of French colonial history, describes the groups involved in making Afro-diasporic music in interwar Paris, analyzes how their music making was political, and considers what it means to feel “at home” through music. It argues that the cultural politics of Black music making in Paris included challenging prevailing ideas about race and racial hierarchies. It shows how various groups of Africans, Antilleans, and African Americans in interwar Paris were brought together by music while their music making also revealed differences and factions among Black networks and communities both in Paris and globally.

Performing Racial Difference at the Colonial Exposition of 1931

This chapter analyzes the unabashed moment of imperial pride that was the Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931. It explains how music making at the Exposition performed ideas about race. The Exposition presented challenges and possibilities for colonial subjects trying to work out where they belonged, how they belonged, and whether they wanted to belong in the French Empire. The chapter examines both the official, state-sanctioned representation of race and ethnicity at the Exposition and some critiques of it generated by anti-colonial groups. The Exposition demonstrated hierarchies of race through displays of music and dance. It asserted the value of France’s “civilizing” influence based on those representations. French colonial subjects exposed some of those representations as false and promoted their own “authentic” music and dance performances both at the Exposition and at an anti-Exposition organized by surrealist, communist, and anti-colonial activists. The chapter argues that the Colonial Exposition had such a high profile that it galvanized French men and women of color to resist misrepresentations of their cultures. It may, therefore, have had a longer-lasting effect on them than on the white metropolitan French population targeted by the Exposition.