Synesthetic Rhythms:
African American Music and Dance Through Parisian Eyes

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.