Paris Noir Course Description

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Paris Noir Course Description P a r i s N o i r Black Poetry & Performance in the City of Light Professor: Edwin HILL Dept: French & Italian / COLT Office: 155E Taper Hall Email: [email protected] Description This course focuses on a crucial period and location in the intellectual and artistic histories of the black Diaspora: Jazz-Age France. From the teens to the second world war, black artists, students, writers, and musicians, and many others from all over the world found themselves and each other in France. Their mutually stimulating encounters produced dialogs and debates that shaped contemporary ideas about the meaning of race, of poetry, and of modernity. The corpus of writers we will take on in this course come from the United States and the Caribbean, from East Saint Louis and Harlem to Martinique and Haiti, with Jamaica and French Guiana in between. They converge on a city and country whose cultural frameworks, in the form of publishing houses, performance venues, and institutional traditions, would profoundly inflect their understandings and expressions of their place in history, in the word, and in the world. We will read fiction by Claude McKay (Banjo), selections of poetry from the anthology The New Negro : Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (edited Alain Locke), Aimé Césaire's epic poem Notebook of a Return to my Native Land, and a collection of poems by Léon Gontran Damas. The critical essays we will read come from the Locke anthology, the 1956 Congress for Black Artists and Writers, and contemporary scholarship on "Jazz-Age France. We'll also watch and listen to performances by Josephine Baker, Sydney Bechet, Adelaide Hall, Will Marion Cook, and several others. .
Recommended publications
  • Instead Draws Upon a Much More Generic Sort of Free-Jazz Tenor
    1 Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. MARIAN McPARTLAND NEA Jazz Master (2000) Interviewee: Marian McPartland (March 20, 1918 – August 20, 2013) Interviewer: James Williams (March 8, 1951- July 20, 2004) Date: January 3–4, 1997, and May 26, 1998 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History Description: Transcript, 178 pp. WILLIAMS: Today is January 3rd, nineteen hundred and ninety-seven, and we’re in the home of Marian McPartland in Port Washington, New York. This is an interview for the Smithsonian Institute Jazz Oral History Program. My name is James Williams, and Matt Watson is our sound engineer. All right, Marian, thank you very much for participating in this project, and for the record . McPARTLAND: Delighted. WILLIAMS: Great. And, for the record, would you please state your given name, date of birth, and your place of birth. McPARTLAND: Oh, God!, you have to have that. That’s terrible. WILLIAMS: [laughs] McPARTLAND: Margaret Marian McPartland. March 20th, 1918. There. Just don’t spread it around. Oh, and place of birth. Slough, Buckinghamshire, England. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 2 WILLIAMS: OK, so I’d like to, as we get some of your information for early childhood and family history, I’d like to have for the record as well the name of your parents and siblings and name, the number of siblings for that matter, and your location within the family chronologically. Let’s start with the names of your parents.
    [Show full text]
  • Duke Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974)
    Duke Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) The Duke, was a title Duke Ellington never tried to shed, nor wanted to. If his accomplishments were a criminal record, with over a thousand compositions, they would have locked him up and threw away the key. There was no doubt Duke was a leader. Leading his band through his long career until his death. Duke brought to my attention of the big band sound of Jazz. Even though he preferred not to call it Jazz, just American Music. He showed how important it was to read music and even better, how important it was to compose your own. Edward, (Yes his original name was Edward) stayed true to his course and like I’ve said, played to whatever crowds that would listen. Of course it had that swing and boy did people swing to it. Ellington made eight records in 1924, receiving composing credit on three including Choo Choo.[19] In 1925, Ellington contributed four songs to Chocolate Kiddies starring Lottie Gee and Adelaide Hall,[20] an all-African-American revue which introduced European audiences to African-American styles and performers. "Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra" grew to a ten-piece organization; they developed their own sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington’s arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic- sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members. For a short time soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet played with the group, imparting his propulsive swing and superior musicianship to the young band members.
    [Show full text]
  • Garnett Clarke
    1 The PIANO of GARNETT CLARKE Solographer: Jan Evensmo Last update: Nov. 25, 2019 2 Born: Garfield Memorial Hospital, 11th & Florida Avenues N.W., Washington, D. C., Feb. 7, 1916 Died: Hopital Psychiatrique, Saint Remy, Haute-Saone, France, Nov. 30, 1938 Introduction: Garnett Clarke is a real piano legend and passed away much, much too early. However, his few recordings show an enormous talent, and he shall not be forgotten. History: Played piano for drummer Tommy Myles’ Band in Washington from ca. 1930. Moved to New York (ca. 1934), played at Pod’s and Jerry’s, recorded with Alex Hill and together with Benny Carter worked for Charlie Barnet. Went to Europe with Benny Carter in 1935 and together they joined Willie Lewis’ Band in Paris for a short while. Did solo work in 1936, also toured Switzerland as accompanist for Adelaide Hall. In autumn 1937 he suffered a mental breakdown and spent the rest of his life in a hospital (conflicting information on which one). Died from pulmonary tuberculosis. Message: Clark’s first name is often spelled with two t’s. However, whether Garnet or Garnett is correct cannot be decide from public information (ref. Howard Rye). If somebody has got his signature, let us know!! Postscript of Nov. 20, 2019: Extensive research by Melissa Jones and also Charles Iselin and Phil Schaap, confirms the birth and death dates above, gives more hospital information and also gives his name as Garnett Clarke. This name is now used in the solography. 3 GARNETT CLARKE SOLOGRAPHY ALEX HILL & HIS HOLLYWOOD SEPIANS NYC.
    [Show full text]
  • Sonia Boyce: Sound and Collaboration Scat — Sonia Boyce: Sound and Collaboration
    Scat — Sonia Boyce: Sound and Collaboration Scat — Sonia Boyce: Sound and Collaboration Curated by Tessa Jackson, Teresa Cisneros and Sonia Hope, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) Exhibition Guide generously supported by University of the Arts London and TrAIN Contents Cover: Still taken from Oh Adelaide, 2010 04 Introduction by the curators Courtesy the artist 07 Sonia Boyce: sound, tension and the sacred by Sophie Orlando Right: For you, only you, 2007 15 Sonia Boyce and Mikhail Karikis with Tessa Jackson discussing Photograph by Stuart Bunce For you, only you Courtesy the artist 23 Acknowledgements Scat — Sonia Boyce: Sound and Collaboration 04 05 For you, only you, 2007 Photograph by Stuart Bunce Introduction Courtesy the artist Scat is a collaboration between Sonia Boyce and Iniva, Oh Adelaide (2010), a collaborative work by Sonia Boyce Sonia Boyce has had a long standing relationship with creating a major solo show of her work to occupy the and sound artist Ain Bailey, incorporates found film Iniva. She was one of the many voices that spoke up in the public spaces in Rivington Place. It focuses upon her long footage, downloaded from the internet, of the jazz singer 1980s and early 1990s against the lack of representation in established interest in sound and brings together two and entertainer Adelaide Hall (1901–1993). Hall’s voice museums and galleries across the UK, of culturally diverse immersive video works that are presented together for the is mixed with digitised and condensed recordings taken artists and curators, and the marginalisation of ‘other’ art first time. Scat explores how we experience sound — both from music and songs in Boyce’s devotional archive.
    [Show full text]
  • Uptown Conversation : the New Jazz Studies / Edited by Robert G
    uptown conversation uptown conver columbia university press new york the new jazz studies sation edited by robert g. o’meally, brent hayes edwards, and farah jasmine griffin Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2004 Robert G. O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uptown conversation : the new jazz studies / edited by Robert G. O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-231-12350-7 — ISBN 0-231-12351-5 1. Jazz—History and criticism. I. O’Meally, Robert G., 1948– II. Edwards, Brent Hayes. III. Griffin, Farah Jasmine. ML3507.U68 2004 781.65′09—dc22 2003067480 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 contents Acknowledgments ix Introductory Notes 1 Robert G. O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin part 1 Songs of the Unsung: The Darby Hicks History of Jazz 9 George Lipsitz “All the Things You Could Be by Now”: Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus and the Limits of Avant-Garde Jazz 27 Salim Washington Experimental Music in Black and White: The AACM in New York, 1970–1985 50 George Lewis When Malindy Sings: A Meditation on Black Women’s Vocality 102 Farah Jasmine Griffin Hipsters, Bluebloods, Rebels, and Hooligans: The Cultural Politics of the Newport Jazz Festival, 1954–1960 126 John Gennari Mainstreaming Monk: The Ellington Album 150 Mark Tucker The Man 166 John Szwed part 2 The Real Ambassadors 189 Penny M.
    [Show full text]
  • Cab Calloway
    Cab Calloway Background information Birth name Cabell Calloway Born December 25, 1907 Rochester, New York, U.S. Died November 18, 1994 (aged 86) Hockessin, Delaware, U.S. Genres Jazz, blues, swing Occupation(s) Bandleader, singer-songwriter Instruments Vocals Years active 1930–94 Associated acts The Cab Calloway Orchestra Website www.cabcalloway.com Cabell "Cab" Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was a jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, where he was a regular performer. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular big bands from the start of the 1930s through to the late 1940s. Calloway's band featured performers including trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform until his death in 1994 at the age of 86. Biography Early years Calloway was born in Rochester, New York, on Christmas Day in 1907. The family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Martha Eulalia Reed, was a Morgan State College graduate, teacher and church organist. His father, Cabell Calloway, Jr., was a graduate of Lincoln University of Pennsylvania in 1898 and worked as a lawyer and in real estate. Cab Calloway spent his adolescent years growing up in West Baltimore's Sugar Hill, considered the political, cultural, and business hub of black society. There he grew up comfortably in a middle-class household. Early on, his parents recognized their son's musical talent and he began private voice lessons in 1922.
    [Show full text]
  • Dems Bulletin Duke Ellington Music Society
    THE INTERNATIONAL DEMS BULLETIN DUKE ELLINGTON MUSIC SOCIETY FOUNDER: BENNY AASLAND HONORARY MEMBER: FATHER JOHN GARCIA GENSEL EDITOR: SJEF HOEFSMIT ASSISTED BY: ROGER BOYES Voort 18b, Meerle, Belgium Telephone: +32 3 315 75 83 Email: [email protected] If you are like me, you save your DEMS Bulletins and consult them with reasonable frequency. I often have trouble remembering when something was published in DEMS, thus I thought to make this Table of Contents for the DEMS Bulletins (with Sjef Hoefsmit's permission, of course). The items below are listed in the order that they were published in DEMS. Issues are arranged in reverse chronological order. Each item consists of the DEMS issue and the title and page number of each article. You can search the article titles using the search function on your internet brower, which in Netscape is Ctrl + F (both keys at the same time). Thus, if you remember reading about a good place to buy discographies somewhere in a DEMS Bulletin, hit Ctrl + F, type discog into the search window (you don't have to type the whole word) and hit enter. You will be taken to the following entry: 2001/3 DEMS 4 : Discographies available from Arthur Newman Here you learn that Arthur Newman is the man and that the information you seek is in the 2001 DEMS Bulletin, issue number 3, on page 4. Admittedly you can only find entries if you remember a word from the title of the DEMS article, but I still found this useful. I began with the most current DEMS Bulletin and am working backwards.
    [Show full text]
  • JREV2.11Full.Pdf
    SPIRITUALS to SWING FROM THE FAMOUS CARNEGIE HALL CONCERTS — with such artists as: COUNT BASIE ORIGINAL ORCHESTRA • BENNY GOODMAN SEXTET • LESTER YOUNG • BUCK CLAYTON • SIDNEY BECHET • TOMMY LADNIER • JOE TURNER • HELEN HUMES • BIG BILL BROONZY • CHARLIE CHRISTIAN • JO JONES • JAMES P. JOHNSON • ALBERT AMMONS • "LIPS" PAGE • MEADE LUX LEWIS • PETE JOHNSON • Mitchell's Christian Singers • Fletcher Henderson • Ida Cox • Harry Edison • Herschel Evans • Lionel Hampton • Ed Lewis • Golden Gate Quartet • Sonny Terry • Bull City Red • Shad Collins • Kansas City Six • Earl Warren • Dickie Wells • Benny Morton • Arthur Bernstein • Jack Washington • Nick Fatool • Walter Page • Freddie Greene • Dan Minor Regular List Price $7.96 Special Jazz Collectors Price; 39 FOR THE TWO- RECORD SET Postage Prepaid on this item CHESTERFIELD MUSIC SHOPS, INC. 12 WARREN STREET NEW YORK 17, N. Y. for your Please send sets of John Hammond's Spirituals To Swing at the convenience special Collectors Price of $6.39 per set. $ enclosed. in Send FREE LP Catalog. ORDERING Name BY MAIL Address use this City Zone State handy blank Sorry no C.O.D. Discount Records—262 Sutter St., San Francisco, Calif. Special offer also available Discount Records—201 North La Salle, Chicago, Illinois from coast to coast at: Discount Records—202 Michigan Ave., Detroit, Michigan Chesterfield Music Shops—485 Madison Avenue, New York City, N. Y. Or take the next paragraph, same col• Naturally, when I speak of jazz, I speak umn, when I wrote, "the following prop• of a band style, an instrumental and LETTERS ositions are offered for consideration," orchestral style. It is not merely a use and what came out was "the following of blues scales nor for a notable proportions".
    [Show full text]
  • Beginnings of Jazz. Jazz Performers and Composers at the Time Such As Eubie Biake, Noble Sjssle, Jelly Roll Morton, Luckey Roberts, James P
    POetS, from伽e weil-known, SuCh as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay, tO the Iesse「known, iike請e poet Anne Spence「, Many poets of肌e Harlem Renaissance were inspired to tie in threads of A膚ican American cu!ture into抽eir poems; aS a reSuミt, jazz poetry was heavily deveioped during踊S time. 1丁he V¥leary BIuesn was a notabie jazz poem w柵en by Langston Hughes. Through their works of Iiterature,馴ack authors were abIe to give a voice to the A純Can American identity, aS WeI! as strive fo「 a communfty of support and acceptance, Music - A new wa[y of pIaying請e piano called請e HarIem S帥de style was created du血g仙e Harlem Renaissance, and helped bIu「 the lines between the poo「 A節Can Americans and socia=y e!ite A師Can Americans. The t輪ditional jazz band was composed primarty of brass instmments and WaS COnSidered a symboI of the south, but the piano was considered an inst調ment Of the wea伽y. With輔S ins血mentaI modification to伽e exi朗ng genre,伽e wealthy A鵬Can Ame「icans now had more a∞eSS to jazz music, Its popuIarty soon spread請roughout the country and was consequently at an al!-time high. 1nnovation and Iive!iness were important characteris cs of pe「fo「mers in the beginnings of jazz. Jazz performers and composers at the time such as Eubie Biake, Noble Sjssle, Jelly Roll Morton, Luckey Roberts, James P. Johnson,湘Ilie ”The Lion’’Sm軸, Fats W訓e「, Ethe! V¥fate「S, AdeIaide Hall,四F10rence Milis and bandleaders Duke EIlington, Louis A「mstrong and FIetdle「 Henderson were extremeiy taIented, SkiI冊i, comPetitive and inspi閤tional. They are stiII COnSidered as having !aid great parts of the foundations fo「 future musicians of請eir genre.囲開聞 Duke副ington gained popu!arity during the Harlem Renaissance.
    [Show full text]
  • *««««* It S a Matter of Wanting to Live
    EDITORIAL Chicago, January 27, 1950 203 NORTH WABASH, CHICAGO I, ILI___ ANdovar 3-1612 GLENN BURRS. Publislwr NED E. WILLIAMS. Editor BUSINESS DEPARTMENT lloe el I,».el 47 la Le. Angele.. I -r sImi drew tbs orempsmlag eartoon, Hkewi. reproduced fren. Oeortaro by prrmlwloa of EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT H«w terh Staff: Cbicag* Staff: Hollywood Staff: “Jais" is here to stay, or such JOHN S. WILSON JACK TRACY CHARLES EMSE is the belated conclusion, hastily 2M I 71st Strew* PAT HARRIS 1103 N. El Centre Ave. subscribed to by the red-faced edi Itar Yer* 21 N » M3 N. Wabash Room 20S tors of Ye Down Beat magazine! Chicago I, IIL Los Angola* 30. Calif. Somt weeks ago, D. B decided that ANdover 3-1612 HEmsfend 6006 the iegularly conceived term “Jazz” —out of crib houses by Bud- dj Bolden was not commensurate with the lofty place aspired to by CREW this particular type of indigenous music. So, they launched a contest CATS to replace the effete term with more spectacular vernacular. Al­ MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS though I did not hold with the breath during these fierce, tense weeks, I did not realize the thing ’Oh, play that Creutcut, Jack!1 would lay an egg that would frighten an ostrich! The contest is over and the people at Down Beat are probably more embarrassed than the lady who ran over a cop own statement mad«* a decade ago not be used, no: his address, si —and would just a soon forget is tulid, he was badly upset when l»oth would be known and ea It s A Matter Of the whok thing.
    [Show full text]
  • "The Lion" Smith, "Fats" Waller, and James P. Johnson: an Analysis of Historical, Cultural, and Performance Aspects of Stride Piano from 1910 to 1940
    Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2013 Luckey Roberts, Willie "the Lion" Smith, "Fats" Waller, and James P. Johnson: An Analysis of Historical, Cultural, and Performance Aspects of Stride Piano from 1910 to 1940 Jacob Womack West Virginia University Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Recommended Citation Womack, Jacob, "Luckey Roberts, Willie "the Lion" Smith, "Fats" Waller, and James P. Johnson: An Analysis of Historical, Cultural, and Performance Aspects of Stride Piano from 1910 to 1940" (2013). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 5012. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/5012 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Luckey Roberts, Willie “the Lion” Smith, “Fats” Waller, and James P. Johnson: An Analysis of Historical, Cultural, and Performance Aspects of Stride Piano from 1910 to 1940. Jacob Womack Research Document submitted to the College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance Peter Amstutz, D.M.A.
    [Show full text]
  • 5. Duke Ellington in Cleveland
    5. Duke Ellington in Cleveland Cleveland Press I CSU Archives Duke Ellington and his orchestra at Cleveland's Palace Theatre in 1937. Front row (L-R): Freddie Guy, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Otto Hardwick and Harry Carney. Second row: Rex Stewart, Ray Nance, Arthur Whetsol, Joe Nanton, Juan Tizol, Lawrence Brown. Back row: Billy Taylor, Sonny Greer and Hayes Alvis. (Note two bassists) dward Kennedy Ellington was probably the most Clevelander Noble Sissie, the son of the pastor of creative force in jazz history. For more than 40 Cleveland's Cory Methodist Church, who opened the Eyears, he made monumental contributions as a door for Ellington and other black entertainers by composer, arranger, pianist and bandleader in a variety producing an all-black Broadway review, Shuffle Along, of musical forms. Christoph von Dohnanyi, the world in 1921. famous classical conductor and the music director ofthe When Ellington, a native ofWashington, D.C., went Cleveland Orchestra, told me in 1985 that he believed to New York, he met violinist and orchestra leader Will Ellington was "one ofthe really great people in music." Marion Cook. Ellington said Cook was one of his Ellington biographer John Edward Hasse said it was strongest musical influences. He called him "Dad Cook" and said the Oberlin graduate gave him lectures in music. But, according to Ellington, the most important thing Cook told him was, "Don't try to be anybody else but yourself," advice that Ellington followed throughout his career. Ellington had many local connections. When he was leading his band at Harlem's Cotton Club in 1928, he hired a four-foot ten-inch left-handed trumpet player from Ohio' s Wilberforce University.
    [Show full text]