At Home in Our Sounds

Abstract

Abstract This book shows how and why music became part of the social changes Europe faced in the aftermath of World War I. It focuses on the story of Black music in Paris and the people who created it, enjoyed it, criticized it, and felt at home when they heard it. African Americans, French Antilleans, and French West Africans wrote, danced, sang, and acted politically in response to the heightened visibility of racial difference in Paris during this era. They were consumed with questions that continue to resonate today. Could one be Black and French? Was Black solidarity more important than national and colonial identity? How could French culture include the experiences and contributions of Africans and Antilleans? From highly educated women, such as the Nardal sisters of Martinique, to the working Black musicians performing in crowded nightclubs at all hours, the book gives a fully rounded view of Black reactions to jazz in interwar Paris. It places that phenomenon in its historic and political context, and in doing so, it shows how music and music making formed a vital terrain of cultural politics. It shows how music making brought people together around pianos, on the dance floor, and through reading and gossip, but it did not erase the political, regional, and national differences among them. The book shows that many found a home in Paris but did not always feel at home. This book reveals these dimensions of music making, race, and cultural politics in interwar Paris.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.