Crossing the pond : jazz, race, and gender in interwar Paris
Laura L. Frader Timothy Brown, Judith Tick Date of Award Doctor
of Philosophy Department or Academic Unit College of Arts and
Sciences. Department of History. Black Atlantic, Black music,
Interwar France, Jazz, Josephine Baker, Race Between 1920 and
1939 the nightclubs of Montmartre became a venue where different
nationalities came into contact, danced, talked, and took
advantage of the freedom to cross the color line that Paris and
the "color-blind" French audience seemed to offer. The
fascination for black performers known as the tumulte noir
provided the occasion for hundreds of jazz and blues performers
to migrate to Paris in these years. French society was inundated
with the sounds of jazz and also with images and stereotypes of
jazz performers that often contained primitivist, exotic and
sexualized associations. The popularity of jazz and its
characterization as "black" music raised the question of how the
French state dealt with racial differ