Harlem in Montmartre

Harlem in Montmartre PDF Author: William A. Shack
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520225376
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Illuminates the expatriate African American community of jazz musicians that thrived in the Montmartre district of Paris in the '20s and '30s and helped turn the "city of lights" into the major jazz capital it remains today.

Harlem in Montmartre

Harlem in Montmartre PDF Author: William A. Shack
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520225376
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Illuminates the expatriate African American community of jazz musicians that thrived in the Montmartre district of Paris in the '20s and '30s and helped turn the "city of lights" into the major jazz capital it remains today.

From Harlem to Paris

From Harlem to Paris PDF Author: Michel Fabre
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This academic study uses accounts from more than 60 African American writers--Countee Cullen, James Baldwin, Chester Himes et al.--to explain why they were more readily accepted socially in Paris than in America. Fabre (The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright) shows that French/black American affinity started in pre-Civil War New Orleans (and not, as the title suggests, in Harlem), when illegitimate mulattos with inheritances from French slave-owners sent their children to Paris to be educated. The book concludes that acceptance and appreciation of black Americans were based largely of French distaste both for white Americans, whom the French found egotistical, and for black Africans, with whom the French had a bitter "mutual colonial history."

Making Jazz French

Making Jazz French PDF Author: Jeffrey H. Jackson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822385082
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Between the world wars, Paris welcomed not only a number of glamorous American expatriates, including Josephine Baker and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also a dynamic musical style emerging in the United States: jazz. Roaring through cabarets, music halls, and dance clubs, the upbeat, syncopated rhythms of jazz soon added to the allure of Paris as a center of international nightlife and cutting-edge modern culture. In Making Jazz French, Jeffrey H. Jackson examines not only how and why jazz became so widely performed in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s but also why it was so controversial. Drawing on memoirs, press accounts, and cultural criticism, Jackson uses the history of jazz in Paris to illuminate the challenges confounding French national identity during the interwar years. As he explains, many French people initially regarded jazz as alien because of its associations with America and Africa. Some reveled in its explosive energy and the exoticism of its racial connotations, while others saw it as a dangerous reversal of France’s most cherished notions of "civilization." At the same time, many French musicians, though not threatened by jazz as a musical style, feared their jobs would vanish with the arrival of American performers. By the 1930s, however, a core group of French fans, critics, and musicians had incorporated jazz into the French entertainment tradition. Today it is an integral part of Parisian musical performance. In showing how jazz became French, Jackson reveals some of the ways a musical form created in the United States became an international phenomenon and acquired new meanings unique to the places where it was heard and performed.

Bricktop's Paris

Bricktop's Paris PDF Author: T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143845502X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
2015 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Longlisted for the 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award During the Jazz Age, France became a place where an African American woman could realize personal freedom and creativity, in narrative or in performance, in clay or on canvas, in life and in love. These women were participants in the life of the American expatriate colony, which included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Cole Porter, and they commingled with bohemian avant-garde writers and artists like Picasso, Breton, Colette, and Matisse. Bricktop's Paris introduces the reader to twenty-five of these women and the city they encountered. Following this nonfiction account, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting provides a fictionalized autobiography of Ada "Bricktop" Smith, which brings the players from the world of nonfiction into a Paris whose elegance masks a thriving underworld.

Paris Noir

Paris Noir PDF Author: Tyler Stovall
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781469909066
Category : African American
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Originally published in 1996 by Houghton Mifflin.

Underneath a Harlem Moon

Underneath a Harlem Moon PDF Author: Iain Cameron Williams
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
"In Underneath a Harlem Moon, Iain Cameron Williams takes the reader on a fascinating rollercoaster ride from Adelaide's birth in Brooklyn through her humble childhood in Harlem, from her triumphs on Broadway to the glamour of the Moulin Rouge in Paris, appearances at the most sophisticated and celebrated nightclubs in the world, and across two continents on a ground-breaking eighteen-month RKO tour. By the end of 1932, Adelaide had performed to millions and in the process became one of America's wealthiest black women. Her exile to Paris in 1935 brought new challenges and rewards. By 1938, not content with being dubbed the Queen of Montmartre, she set her sights on conquering Britain. The book concludes with her mysterious disappearance in November 1938, which until now has never been publicly explained."--BOOK JACKET.

The Book of Harlan

The Book of Harlan PDF Author: Bernice L. McFadden
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617754544
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Bernice L. McFadden has been named the Go On Girl! Book Club's 2018 Author of the Year WINNER of the 2017 American Book Award WINNER of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Fiction) 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee (Fiction)! A Washington Post Notable Book of 2016 "McFadden uses the experiences of her own ancestors as loose inspiration for the life of Harlan, whom she portrays from his childhood in Harlem through imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and his struggles afterward to put his life back together." --Library Journal "Simply miraculous...As her saga becomes ever more spellbinding, so does the reader's astonishment at the magic she creates. This is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over bigotry, intolerance and cruelty, and at the center of The Book of Harlan is the restorative force that is music." --Washington Post "Bernice L. McFadden took me on a melodious literary journey through time and place in her masterpiece, The Book of Harlan. It's complex, real, and raw...McFadden intricately and purposefully weaves history as a backdrop in her fiction. The Book of Harlan brilliantly explores questions about agency, purpose, freedom, and survival." --Literary Hub, one of Nicole Dennis-Benn's 26 Books From the Last Decade that More People Should Read "McFadden's writing breaks the heart--and then heals it again. The perspective of a black man in a concentration camp is unique and harrowing and this is a riveting, worthwhile read." --Toronto Star "The Book of Harlan is an incredible read. Bernice McFadden...has created an amazing novel that speaks to lesser known aspects of the African-American experience and illuminates the human heart and spirit. Her spare prose is rich in details that convey deep emotions and draw the reader in. This fictional narrative of Harlan Elliot's life is firmly grounded amidst real people and places--prime historical fiction, and the best book I have read this year." --Historical Novels Review, Editors' Choice "McFadden packs a powerful punch with tight prose and short chapters that bear witness to key events in early twentieth-century history: both World Wars, the Great Depression, and the Great Migration. Partly set in the Jim Crow South, the novel succeeds in showing the prevalence of racism all across the country--whether implemented through institutionalized mechanisms or otherwise. Playing with themes of divine justice and the suffering of the righteous, McFadden presents a remarkably crisp portrait of one average man's extraordinary bravery in the face of pure evil." --Booklist, Starred review The Book of Harlan opens with the courtship of Harlan's parents and his 1917 birth in Macon, Georgia. After his prominent minister grandfather dies, Harlan and his parents move to Harlem, where he eventually becomes a professional musician. When Harlan and his best friend, trumpeter Lizard Robbins, are invited to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre--affectionately referred to as "The Harlem of Paris" by black American musicians--Harlan jumps at the opportunity, convincing Lizard to join him. But after the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, Harlan and Lizard are thrown into Buchenwald--the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany--irreparably changing the course of Harlan's life. Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden's mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden's familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.

The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance PDF Author: Cheryl A. Wall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199335559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This Very Short Introduction offers an overview of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural awakening among African Americans between the two world wars. Cheryl A. Wall brings readers to the Harlem of 1920s to identify the cultural themes and issues that engaged writers, musicians, and visual artists alike.

Blowin' the Blues Away

Blowin' the Blues Away PDF Author: Travis A. Jackson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520951921
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the city’s jazz scene is more important now than ever before. Blowin’ the Blues Away examines how jazz has thrived in New York following its popular resurgence in the 1980s. Using interviews, in-person observation, and analysis of live and recorded events, ethnomusicologist Travis A. Jackson explores both the ways in which various participants in the New York City jazz scene interpret and evaluate performance, and the criteria on which those interpretations and evaluations are based. Through the notes and words of its most accomplished performers and most ardent fans, jazz appears not simply as a musical style, but as a cultural form intimately influenced by and influential upon American concepts of race, place, and spirituality.

Paris Blues

Paris Blues PDF Author: Andy Fry
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022613895X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
The Jazz Age. The phrase conjures images of Louis Armstrong holding court at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Duke Ellington dazzling crowds at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and star singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the Jazz Age was every bit as much of a Paris phenomenon as it was a Chicago and New York scene. In Paris Blues, Andy Fry provides an alternative history of African American music and musicians in France, one that looks beyond familiar personalities and well-rehearsed stories. He pinpoints key issues of race and nation in France’s complicated jazz history from the 1920s through the 1950s. While he deals with many of the traditional icons—such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, among others—what he asks is how they came to be so iconic, and what their stories hide as well as what they preserve. Fry focuses throughout on early jazz and swing but includes its re-creation—reinvention—in the 1950s. Along the way, he pays tribute to forgotten traditions such as black musical theater, white show bands, and French wartime swing. Paris Blues provides a nuanced account of the French reception of African Americans and their music and contributes greatly to a growing literature on jazz, race, and nation in France.