Terri J. Gordon, "Synesthetic Rhythms: African American Music and Dance Through Parisian Eyes" (page 8 of 8)

The sources for this paper derive from the articles in the press on Josephine Baker and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in the Collection Rondel of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris, as well as from a collection of articles entitled Joséphine Baker vue par la presse française, edited by Pepito Abatino (Paris: Les Editions Isis, 1931). For sources on jazz in the press, I have drawn on Denis-Constant Martin and Olivier Roueff, La France du jazz: Musique, modernité et identité dans la première moitié du XXe siècle (Marseille: Ed. Parenthèses, 2002), which contains a substantial appendix of original articles on jazz from the 1920s and 1930s. This article appeared under the title, "A 'Saxophone in Movement': Josephine Baker and the Music of Dance," in Jazz Adventures in French Culture, ed. Jacqueline Dutton and Colin Nettelbeck, special issue of Nottingham French Studies 43:1 (Spring 2004): 39-52. I am grateful to Nottingham French Studies for permission to reprint this article, which has been slightly modified for The Scholar and Feminist Online. Parts of this essay were published in French in "Joséphine Baker: Parodie ou Pastiche?" Francographies, journal of the Société des Professeurs Français et Francophones d'Amérique, No. Spécial 2, vol. 1 (1999), pp. 141-156. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

Endnotes

1. Le Cri de Paris, 10 oct. 1930 (in Abatino 1931, p. 40). [Return to text]

2. André Levinson, "The Negro Dance: Under European Eyes," in André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties, ed. by Joan Acocella and Lynn Garafola (Hanover, NH, and London: University Press of New England, 1991), p. 74; Phillipe d'Olon, "Au Champs-Elysées Music Hall: Damia, Gabaroche, La Revue Nègre," Le Soir, 1er nov. 1925; Michel Georges-Michel, "Soirée nègre," Comœdia, 28 sept. 1925. [Return to text]

3. Karen C.C. Dalton and Henry Louis Gates Jr., "Josephine Baker and Paul Colin: African American Dance Seen Through Parisian Eyes," Critical Inquiry, 24 (Summer 1998), p. 933. For a discussion of Baker as a figure of primitivist modernism, see Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1998), pp. 95-116. [Return to text]

4. Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918-1937 (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1961), entry for February 26, 1926, p. 482. Quoted in translation in Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 171. [Return to text]

5. Pierre de Régnier, "Aux Champs-Elysées: La Revue Nègre," Candide, 12 nov. 1925. [Return to text]

6. Louis Mitchell's Seven Spades, which performed in Paris in November 1917 and evolved into the Jazz Kings, is thought to be the first jazz band to make an appearance in Paris. For discussions of early jazz in the French capital, see Jody Blake, Le Tumulte noir: Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900-1930 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 62-66; Bernard Gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 108-110; and William A. Shack, Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story Between the Great Wars (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 11-25. [Return to text]

7. Jody Blake, "'Jazz-band Dada': L'afro-américanisme dans le Paris de l'entre-deux-guerres," Revue de L'Art, 118: 4 (1997), p. 70. [Return to text]

8. L'Illustration, 15 nov. 1930 (in Abatino (1931) p. 41). "I begin to understand the rhythm of jazz," writes Pierre Bret. "This rhythm, it's Josephine Baker" ("L'étoile noire s'est levée," L'Intransigeant, 7 nov. 1925). [Return to text]

9. Andre Rivollet, "Du Jazz Hot à 'La Créole,'" conférence de M. André Rivollet, faites le 21 mars 1935, Conferencia, 1er juillet 1935, p. 102. [Return to text]

10. The opening of La Revue Nègre drew le "tout Paris," including Robert Desnos, Francis Picabia, Ferdinand Léger. and Blaise Cendrars. See Lynn Haney, Naked at the Feast: The Biography of Josephine Baker (London: Robson Books, 1981), pp. 58-59. [Return to text]

11. Jean-Claude Klein, "La Revue nègre," in Entre deux guerres, ed. by Oliver Barrot and Pascal Ory (Paris: F. Bourin, 1990), p. 374. [Return to text]

12. Gérard Bauer, "Le Romantisme de Couleur," conférence du 20 janvier, 1930 (in Abatino 1931, p. 20). [Return to text]

13. Claude Berton, "Réflexions sur le music-hall," La Revue de Paris, 1er nov. 1929, p. 674. [Return to text]

14. Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra (New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 20. [Return to text]

15. American journalist Janet Flanner, who wrote a column for The New Yorker entitled "Letters from Paris" at the time, recalls the danse sauvage as follows: "She made her entry entirely nude except for a pink flamingo feather between her limbs; she was being carried upside down and doing the split on the shoulder of a black giant. Midstage, he paused, and with his long fingers holding her basket-wise around the waist, swung her in a slow cartwheel to the stage floor, where she stood like his magnificent discarded burden, in an instance of complete silence. She was an unforgettable female ebony statue. A scream of salutation spread through the theater." Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday 1925-1939 (New York: Popular Library, 1972). [Return to text]

16. André Levinson, "Paris ou New-York? Douglas. La Vénus noire," Comœdia, 12 oct. 1925. [Return to text]

17. Baker loaned her name to a series of products, from skin creams and lipsticks to perfumes, liquors, and bathing suits. Le Bakerfix, a hair-straightening cream, brought her almost as much revenue as her appearances on stage. See Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 171. [Return to text]

18. Louis Léon-Martin, Paris-Midi, 8 oct. 1930 (in Abatino 1931, p. 15). [Return to text]

19. Excerpts from Abatino (1931), pp. 26, 24, and 37: Gérard Missaire, Journal des Débats, 9 oct. 1930; Simon Gregorio, La Rampe, 1er nov. 1930; G. de Pawlowski, Le Journal, 9 oct. 1930. [Return to text]

20. In an article devoted to "Negro dancing," André Levinson comments on the "irrepressible animality" of black dancers: "[T]he undeniable rhythmic superiority of these Negro dancers is nothing less than an adjunct of their irrepressible animality. The tom-tom of the cannibal may be termed the apotheosis of brute rhythm" (Levinson 1991, p. 73). [Return to text]

21. Marcel Sauvage, Voyages et aventures de Joséphine Baker, feuilleton in L'Intransigeant du 12 oct. 1930. [Return to text]

22. In Primitivist Modernism, Sieglinde Lemke remarks that rejuvenation is a key trope of primitivist modernism: "[T]he black cultural idiom—be it a West African sculpture, or syncopated jazz, or an evening at the Savoy—is, somehow, primarily invigorating" (Lemke 1998, p. 101). The interpretation of the postwar popularity of African American cultural forms as arising from a profound cultural need for revitalization runs through the critical literature. See, for example, Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1996), pp. 30-32. [Return to text]

23. Paul Guillaume, "Opinion sur l'Art nègre," La Dépêche africaine, 17 (October 15, 1929). See also "L'art nègre et l'esprit de l'époque," Paris-Soir, 25 nov. 1925. [Return to text]

24. Erich Maria Remarque, 1930, dédicace (in Abatino 1931, p. 51). Colette, who frequented Chez Joséphine, Baker's nightclub in Montmartre, also included a dedication in this collection, in which she wrote: "To the most beautiful panther, to the most charming woman, with my friendship." [Return to text]

25. Robert de Flers, "La Semaine Dramatique," Figaro, 16 nov. 1925. [Return to text]

26. André Levinson, "'Loin du bal:' Joséphine siffléeÑBlanc et noir," Comœdia, 7 déc. 1925. [Return to text]

27. Maurice Hamel, "A Mademoiselle Joséphine Baker," La Rumeur, 14 jan. 1928. [Return to text]

28. Georges Schmitt, "Joséphine Baker passant à Paris nous dit...," Volonté, 20 avril 1929. [Return to text]

29. This stage image translated as well in Baker's quotidian life. Constructing a glamorous public persona, Baker adorned herself in jewels from Tiffany and Cartier and dressed in gowns designed by Paul Poiret and Coco Chanel. She bought a fifteenth-century chateau in the Dordogne Valley with 50 rooms and a bed said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. See Wendy Martin, "Remembering the Jungle: Josephine Baker and Modernist Parody," in Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism, ed. by Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 313, 323. [Return to text]

30. Dominique Sordet, Ric et Rac, 8 nov. 1930 (in Abatino 1931, p. 35). [Return to text]

31. Jean Sejournet, Le Concours Medical, 8 fév. 1931 (in Abatino 1931, p. 20). [Return to text]

32. Baker was outraged by this claim: "It's blasphemy," she declared, "I have not gotten one drop whiter!" ("Joséphine et ses mémoires," Cyrano, 7 déc. 1930). [Return to text]

33. Arthur Hoérée, "Le jazz et le disque (essai critique et historique)," L'Edition musical vivante, no. 46 (Dec. 1931), pp. 7-15 (in Martin and Roueff 2002, p. 295). [Return to text]

34. Siegfried Kracauer, "Renovierter Jazz," in Schriften, vol. 2: Aufsätze 1927-1931, ed. by Inka Mülder-Bach (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), pp. 390-392. [Return to text]

35. Nancy Nenno, "Femininity, the Primitive, and Modern Urban Space: Josephine Baker in Berlin," in Women in the Metropolis, ed. by Katharina von Ankum (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997), p. 154. [Return to text]

36. André Schaeffner and André Cœuroy, "Enquête sur le jazz band," Paris-Midi, 8 mai-1er juillet, 1925 (in Martin and Roueff 2002, p. 182). [Return to text]

37. Lucien Fugère's response is drawn from Martin and Roueff (2002), p. 199. Michel Georges-Michel writes, "Is jazz music? Not long ago there were people who cried: 'Wagner, Debussy, it's not music.' After this, who would dare to venture to deny jazz. It's a super-music [sur-musique] which stands head and shoulders even above Stravinsky" (in Martin and Roueff 2002, p. 183). [Return to text]

38. Louis Vuillemin, "Concerts métèques...," Courrier musical, 1er janvier 1923 (in Martin and Roueff 2002, p. 170). [Return to text]

39. Gustave Fréjaville, "L'orchestre du Dr. Moreau," Débats, 9 juillet 1927. Quoted in Jeffrey Jackson, "Making Enemies: Jazz in Inter-war Paris," French Cultural Studies, 10:29 (June 1999), p. 192. [Return to text]

40. Quoted in André Mauprey, "Le jazz peut-il rendre fou?" Jazz-Tango-Dancing (August 1931). See also Jackson (1999), p. 193. [Return to text]

41. For examples of "jazz poetry," see Blake (1997), p. 72. [Return to text]

42. Jean Cocteau, "Jazz-Band," 4 aoôt 1919, Le Rappel à l'ordre, in Oeuvres completes de Jean Cocteau IX (Genève: Marguerat, 1946-51), pp. 124-127. For a discussion of the expression faire le bœuf, see Bernard Gendron, "Jamming at Le Bœuf: Jazz and the Paris Avant-Garde," Discourse 12:1 (Fall-Winter 1989-90), p. 23, and Martin and Roueff (2002), p. 37. [Return to text]

43. Philippe Soupault, Mémoires de l'oubli: 1923-1926, vol. 2 (Paris: Lachenal & Ritter, 1986), p. 35. [Return to text]

44. René Wisner, "C'est un enfer sonore," Le Soir, 18 juin 1926. Quoted in Jackson (1999), p. 193. [Return to text]

45. See Shack (2001), p. 57. [Return to text]

46. See Jackson (1999), p. 199. [Return to text]

47. See Blake (1999), p. 89. [Return to text]

48. Paul Morand, Magie noire, in Nouvelles completes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, ed. by Michel Collomb (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), p. 514. [Return to text]

49. The narrator writes of Congo at the ball: "This evening, in this high hut of the dukes of Ré, she crushes classes, grinds races [...] and tramples on ages" (Morand 1992, p. 516). [Return to text]

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8