Dancing with De Beauvoir: jazz and the French
Music
Human-narrated audio
Summary
When live jazz arrived in France towards the end of World War I, it was seen from the start as a fertile symbol of other things. It was an embodiment of artistic freedom, it was modernism, it was America, it… was African primitivism, sexual liberation, social decadence and moral decay. Its energy and innovation helped produce an unprecedented explosion of activity in modern French art and thought. From the United States flowed a stream of black jazz artists keen to taste the freedom and sophistication of the City of Light. In their audiences were other significant Americans who called Paris home - Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, Sylvia Beach, and Man Ray. French artists and intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle and Jacques Derrida also responded, transforming their culture into jazz's second home. This authoritative cultural history not only recalls influential performances and recordings. It also teases out the threads of artistic collaborations and rivalries, revisits influential meetings, love affairs and friendships, and explores tensions in US-French relations, to show how jazz has helped shaped modern French culture.