[JPL] Josephine’s Bananas, Boogie-Woogie Strut in Paris Jazz Show

[Dr. Jazz]

Josephine’s Bananas, Boogie-Woogie Strut in Paris Jazz Show
Review by Jorg von Uthmann

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Jazz had a hard time in Stalinist Russia and Nazi 
Germany. Maxim Gorki, the first president of the Soviet Writers’ Union, 
likened it to “the amorous croaking of a monstrous frog.” In 1935, the 
Reich’s broadcasting companies banished the “cultural plague disguised 
as music” from the airwaves.

The French, on the other hand, soaked up jazz with the same fervor that 
greeted the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force and its infantry 
band, the Harlem Hellfighters, in the last months of World War I. They 
even flatter themselves to have been the first who discovered that jazz 
was a worthy subject for serious research.

So it’s no accident that the Musee du Quai Branly 
<http://www.quaibranly.fr> in Paris, the new museum of non-European 
civilizations, has organized an exhibition titled “Le Siecle du Jazz,” 
or “The Jazz Century.” This isn’t the first show about jazz but it may 
be the biggest.

The difficulty, of course, is how to make sounds visible. The museum 
seeks to solve that dilemma by shifting the focus from the music, which 
you can listen to on 40 outlets, to the artistic and intellectual 
environment for jazz.

The 1,000 items on display include posters, record covers, photographs, 
books, magazines, movies, music scores and some 60 paintings inspired by 
jazz bands.

The chronological order in which they are presented will come as no 
surprise to the cognoscenti.

Dinner Music

The show starts in the early 20th century when the new musical idiom, 
emerging from ragtime, cake walk and blues, was still without a name. 
That arrived in 1917, with the first recording of the Original Dixieland 
Jazz Band, a group of white musicians who entertained the diners at 
Reisenweber’s, then New York’s newest and largest cafe.

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Scott+Fitzgerald&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> 
coined the term “Jazz Age,” which became a label for the entire decade.

The curators have broadened the horizon to include the Harlem 
Renaissance, primarily a literary movement, and black painters such as 
Aaron Douglas, who is regarded as the first U.S. artist to incorporate 
African imagery in his pictures.

For French jazz fans, the most important event was the arrival, in 1925, 
of the “Revue Negre” at the Champs-Elysees Music Hall. Its star, 
Josephine Baker 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Josephine+Baker&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, 
won the hearts of the Parisians and inspired many writers and painters, 
including Jean Cocteau 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Jean%0ACocteau&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, 
Georges Bataille 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Georges+Bataille&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, 
Kees van Dongen, Pablo Picasso 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Pablo+Picasso&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> 
and Fernand Leger 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Fernand+Leger&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>. 


Baker subsequently appeared in various Paris shows, most famously in the 
revue “Un Vent de Folie,” or “Wind of Madness,” skimpily dressed in a 
girdle of fake bananas.

Other artists tried to capture the spirit of the 1930s -- the “swing 
years” -- with big bands led by Duke Ellington 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Duke+Ellington&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, 
Count Basie 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Count+Basie&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, 
Benny Goodman 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Benny+Goodman&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> 
and Glenn Miller 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Glenn+Miller&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, 
to cite a few.

Syncopated Mondrian

The Dutch painter Piet Mondrian 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Piet+Mondrian&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> 
had no sooner arrived in New York in 1940 than he discovered 
Boogie-Woogie, which would influence the “syncopated” style of his late 
work.

His colleague Stuart Davis 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Stuart+Davis&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>, 
with whom he went to jazz concerts, said: “Jazz was the only thing that 
corresponded to an authentic art in America. All my paintings come from 
this influence.”

The competition between black and white bands inspired Larry Rivers 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Larry+Rivers&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>’s 
witty canvas “America’s No.1 Problem,” displaying a black and a white 
phallus -- both of equal size.

The last sections of the show cover the innovations introduced after 
World War II -- bebop and free jazz -- which took the music away from 
its popular origins. The organizers make a point of linking them to the 
black liberation movement.

True or not, I can’t help feeling that the increasing atonality and 
intellectualism maneuvered jazz into the same ghetto in which the 
classical avant-garde has been languishing for the past 50 years.

No wonder the show ends on a nostalgic note. A giant photograph by Jeff 
Wall 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Jeff+Wall&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> 
re-enacts a scene from Ralph Ellison’s novel “Invisible Man”: Under a 
ceiling plastered with light bulbs, the hero listens, again and again, 
to Fats Waller 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Fats+Waller&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1>’s 
1929 song “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue?”

“Le Siecle du Jazz” is at the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris, through June 
28. For more information, go to http://www.quainbranly.fr or call 
+33-1-5661-7000.

(Jorg von Uthmann 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Jorg+von+Uthmann&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> 
is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Jorg von Uthmann 
<http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Jorg+von+Uthmann&site=wnews&client=wnews&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfields=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> 
in Paris at uthmann at wanadoo.fr <mailto:uthmann at wanadoo.fr>.


-- 
Dr. Jazz
Dr. Jazz Operations
24270 Eastwood
Oak Park, MI  48237
(248) 542-7888
http://www.drjazz.com
SKYPE:  drjazz99