Introduction:
· A Classic Origin Myth with Contemporary Significance
· Reading jazz discourse as social history
I. The Trajectory of Paris Jazz Culture
II. The Jazz Musician as Critic?
III. The French Audience – Hearing Jazz as Criticism (20 pages):
· Analytical variables:
o         Amateur vs. Consommateur
o         Sources: jazz press, mainstream press, political presses
o         Anti-Americanism: criticism vs. opposition
o         Anti-American vs. pro-French
o         The slant of jazz discourse: social (race) vs. cultural (taste) issues
· 5 events (3 related to jazz in France and 2 related to civil rights in the US)
o         Dizzy Gillespie tour (1948)
o         Duke Ellington tour (1950)
o         Little Rock (1957)
o         Duke Ellington tour (1958)
o         Birmingham (1963)
Conclusions

“I went down to the St. James Infirmary. Saw my baby there; stretched out on a long white table. So sweet…so cold…so fair.” So goes the opening verse to St. James Infirmary, a traditional New Orleans jazz number whose edgy ambiance brought it to prominence in both the US and France during the early twentieth century. Still fashionable following the Second World War, the tune provides the soundtrack to Albert Camus’ allegorical presentation of France under the Occupation in his 1947 novel The Plague. The song’s lyrics convey an image of an embattled France, and resonate with the ideal of resistance. Camus’ use of jazz music is significant: from its origins as a disenfranchised black American subculture, jazz established itself as a mainstay in French society during the First World War. However, this transatlantic love affair was strictly forbidden after the Nazi conquest of 1940. For many living under Nazi rule, including Camus, jazz became the music of protest. In the aftermath of the war, as French men and women engaged in the task of reconstruction, many embraced jazz music as a form of cultural reassertion. Meanwhile, with racial prejudice dictating the status quo in America, increasing numbers of black American musicians sought refuge overseas. The era of jazz expatriation had resumed with vigor.

Steadily, over the course of the 1940s and 1950s, the social life of jazz music evolved: for black musicians (joined increasingly by black writers), France ceased to provide merely a hospitable venue; it became a stage upon which the manifest inequalities imposed upon African-Americans in the United States attracted widespread attention in the media and among jazz enthusiasts. In addition to racial issues, the economic instability and the absence of mainstream artistic recognition for a career in jazz inspired frustration with American values in the hearts and minds of many musicians. For the French “hosts,” who adopted the musicians along with the music, the exotic Negro musician of the 1920s and 1930s was left for dead; in his place stood the venerable black jazzman, both artist and ideological symbol. When jazz culture resurfaced following the war, it did so from the caves of the Parisian Left Bank, as opposed to the clubs of the Right Bank that had provided jazz’s home during the interwar years. Concomitant with this geographic shift, there was a transfer in the music’s fan base. Among the new enthusiasts were the soon-to-be critics of America, namely an increasingly radical youth, and the writers and intellectuals of the Left. These neophytes fractured the traditional category of French jazz spectatorship, which had been typified by the amateur (lover), a fan whose passion concerned little other than jazz proper. At the other end of the spectrum lay the consommateur (consumer), whose interests latched upon the idea (or image) of jazz culture in addition to an appreciation of the music itself.

Concurrently, jazz discourse became marked by two new rhetorical trends that juxtaposed the United States and France: first, pundits alleged that French and American cultural tastes had become irreconcilable. Specifically, they declared that the variety music (a diluted version of jazz) that prospered in the United States represented an anathema to the authentic jazz artistry that thrived in France. Second, commentators espoused a faddish condemnation of American racial segregation. The congenial climate afforded to black Americans who visited France was taken as indicative of the divergent courses set by the two societies following the war. As French opinions of the United States cooled, jazz culture developed as an avenue of criticism vis à vis the new world superpower. Moreover, the dual-nature of this critique, which was at once cultural (taste) and social (race), helped to set the tone for subsequent French attitudes towards the United States. Recent history reveals that, as Franco-American relations have ebbed and flowed from friendly to fraught, French appraisals of the United States have consistently blended cultural and social elements. Thus it becomes clear that the Franco-American confrontation which emerged following 1945 hinged upon music—not to mention Coca Cola and automobiles—only partially; below the surface, this stand-off was shaped profoundly by conflicting visions of national ethos.