Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story Between the Great Wars

Rating:
Summary: A Paris Jazz Story Between the Great Wars
Review: Prior to WW I, American artists sought legitimacy through study and approval in Germany. When the US entered the war, James Europe's Army band introduced the newest African American music making to the French. The influence was enormous, and the public was captivated. When the war ended, Americans flocked to Paris. This was the time of the Harlem Renaissance, and this posthumously published volume is the first publication in recent years to show how that movement invaded France. Shack (anthropology, Univ. of California, Berkeley) discusses how within the decade Josephine Baker had arrived, as had Sidney Bechet and Alberta Hunter; how Bricktop had opened her club, attracting high society--Gloria Swanson, Charles Chaplin, Sophie Tucker, the Prince of Wales; and how that scene was interrupted by the Nazi occupation. This reviewer wishes Shack had extended his discussion to the European composers who created musical works reflecting this African American culture--Poulenc, Milhaud, Ravel. But despite this--and the fact that in minor ways the narrative reflects the author's discipline as outside music--Shack's scholarship is evidenced by the coverage of black music in Paris, the endnotes, the splendid bibliography, and the excellent index. Recommended for all music collections.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant story!
Review: William Shack, late professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, has done a terrific job in bringing to life the Parisian jazz scene between the Great Wars. At the end of the First World War black Americans in the US Expeditionary Force, most notably James Reese Europe's Hellfighters Band, essentially introduced jazz to France and, by staying in Paris or returning thereto after demobilization, they formed the condensing nucleus of the black American jazz community that flourished in Montmartre between the Wars. Contemporary to the Harlem Renaissance in New York, the "Harlem in Montmartre" community provided black jazz musicians, entertainers, and entrepeneurs, an exciting environment, largely free from the racial bigotry and Jim Crow policies common in the US. This book goes a long way to become the standard work on the matter, describing the principal individuals, the clubs, the shows, the music, all interwoven in a lively and fluent style that helps to revive these exciting and by now long gone decades. Wonderful!