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When African Americans Joanne Burke and David Burke Came to Paris A Film Companion

FROM HELLFIGHTER TO MUSICAL DIRECTOR When James Reese Europe enlisted in Harlem s 15th Infantry Regiment in September 1916 he had no interest in marching bands He was there to be a fighting man But Colonel William Hayward asked him to create a marching band for the regiment Although renown as an orchestra conductor Europe decided that a marching band would be good for morale but he insisted on having highly skilled players Hayward had great connections and found the money for everything Europe asked for By May 1917 the regiment had the jazziest most original military marching band ever However in 1918 in France Lieutenant Europe s role was as an infantry officer In June of that year he was stationed at the Ch teauThierry front when on the third week a barrage of German gas shells exploded near him His lungs were damaged and he was rushed to the hospital After more than a month of convalescence he was declared unfit for front line duty James Reese Europe was devastated Lieutenant James Reese Europe and the regimental band on board ship That summer Colonel Hayward came to Paris to ask him for a favor once again An important conference of the Allies would be ending soon and he asked Europe if he would give a concert at the upscale Th tre des Champs Elys es So on August 18 there he was with his baton and his 60 musicians playing for French President Poincar and numerous other political bigwigs The 369th Harlem Hellfighters Band marching into a French village It was a smash hit Military leader Marshal One of many temporary cemeteries P tain went wild with enthusiam A newspaper wrote Jazz Music Makes Hit with French Officials Noble Sissle wrote that The Hellfighters Band were filling France full of jazz From then on it was nothing but jazz jazz jazz for James Reese Europe and the band Meanwhile the 92nd and 93rd African American combat divisions were finally at the front and doing well In all there were 42 000 African American men who fought The 369th Harlem Hellfighters spent 191 days at the battlefront the most of any Americans in the war and they received the most medals African Americans had accomplished the impossible establishing themselves as heroes on foreign soil and implanting America s greatest music Le Jazz

James Reese Europe and his band playing at the Hotel Tunis in Paris James Reese Europe machine gun company commander Officers with a young French flower girl Members of the 369th regiment who won La Croix de Guerre The French Army decorating African American soldiers

LE JAZZ Louis Mitchell s Jazz Kings was the first commercial jazz band to play in Paris after World War I They opened in the splendid concert hall of the Casino de Paris in February 1919 The band signed for a week but five years later they were still playing in the elegant Tiffany glass decorated Perroquet Room French audiences were going wild for jazz including French stars like Maurice Chevalier and Mistinguett Club owners too were clamouring for African American musicians They found out who was available and hired them on the spot often only because of their color Band leader Louis Mitchell was a drummer with a heavy style the supreme artist of noise one critic dubbed him but a sharp businessman as well Born in Philadelphia in 1885 Mitchell played in James Reese Europe s Clef Club Orchestra in New York in 1914 He then led jazz bands in England during the war At the end of 1918 he went back to New York to recruit musicians to go to Paris One of his recruits composer and pianist Dan Parrish eventually also did musical arrangements for the poet Jean Cocteau Cricket Smith was the star trumpeter The band recorded 50 numbers for Path such as their hit Montmartre Blues The Casino de Paris in lower Montmartre in Paris Just up the street from the Casino de Paris a cluster of little nightclubs was opening up around rue Pigalle and rue Fontaine It soon became known as The Harlem of Montmartre And there was plenty of work for all musicians Mitchell and his band were delighted to help newly arrived jazzmen When the accomplished Red Devils Band came in 1920 their leader asked Cricket Smith if the money from a certain club owner would be fair Cricket scoffed Three times that amount would be more like it Cricket was getting 250 to 300 a week at the Casino de Paris a small fortune Louis Mitchell was generous with his time and money He partnered with other musicians like singer and hostess Florence Embry Jones to open their own nightclubs Mitchell remained in Paris until the impending war forced him back to the States in 1939 Louis Mitchell and the Jazz Kings at the Casino de Paris

Benny Peyton s Orchestra Pelican Variety Five Le Jazz magazine cover The Cracker Jacks Red Devils Jazz Band The Ramblers Jazz Band

YOUNG LANGSTON HUGHES Langston Hughes s autobiography The Big Sea about his days working on sea going cargo freighters in the early 1920s paints a vivid picture of his worldwide wanderings On the occasion when he landed in Rotterdam worried that the ship wasn t seaworthy he took his scanty belongings and headed to Paris a city he had dreamed about His meager savings ran out and he scrounged for work Luckily the young poet landed a job as a busboy at Le Grand Duc jazz club and began soaking up its stimulating atmosphere All his life he would use jazz rhythms and dialect in his poetry Hughes first book of poetry Weary Blues established his poetic style and commitment to Black themes and heritage EXCERPT FROM THE BIG SEA Then when all the other clubs were closed the best of the musicians and entertainers from various other smart places would often drop into the Grand Duc and there d be a jam session until seven or eight in the morning only in 1924 they had no name for it The cream of the Negro musicians then in France like Cricket Smith on the trumpet Louis Jones on the violin Palmer Jones at the piano Frank Withers on the clarinet and Buddy Gilmore at the drums would weave out music that would almost make your heart stand still at dawn in a Paris night club in the rue Pigalle when most of the guests were gone and you were washing the last pots and pans in a two by four kitchen with the fire in the range dying and the one high window letting the soft dawn in Young Langston Hughes often earned his crust of bread working as a busboy Blues in the Pigalle Black and laughing heartbreaking blues in the Paris dawn pounding life a pulse beat moving like the Mississippi Play it Mister Palmer Jones Lawd Lawd Lawd Play it Buddy Gilmore What you doin to them drums Man you gonna bust your diamond studs in a minute Dreams by Langston Hughes Is you ever seen a One eyed woman cry I say is you ever seen a One eyed woman cry Jack she can cry so good Just out of that one old eye Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken winged bird That cannot fly Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow

Hughes often wrote for Opportunity magazine Hughes s poetry collection published in 1925 after his stay in Paris Harlem Renaissance poster A young Langston Hughes

JOSEPHINE AND BANANAS Josephine Baker left Berlin in the summer of 1926 to star in a new revue called La Folie du Jour at the Folies Berg re in Paris This was just a year after her sensational debut in La Revue N gre Her number in this new show was even wilder than the Danse Sauvage In what has become known as the famous banana dance Josephine was topless again Against a tropical background she enters wearing only a belt of bananas around her waist shaking her hips seductively in the face of a white French planter As she dances the man watches as if hypnotized as the bananas to come to life The banana dance was loaded with symbolism and Josephine delighted in its complexity It signified the reach of France around the world where bananas are grown a sign of wealth And as Terri Francis explains in the Paris Noir documentary having a half nude Baker shaking delectable fruit in front of a lazy planter is wild enough but then its a girl wearing phallic fruits lots of them As she dances each of the bananas moves on it s own This was colonial fantasy in action all of nature coming to him including Josephine as bananas French audiences went crazy Already a star it was clear that she was here to stay SIDNEY AND A PROBLEM In 1928 Sidney Bechet returned to Paris and settled into Montmartre He was making good money as a featured soloist at the elegant Ambassador in the orchestra of Harlem Hellfiighters veteran Noble Sissle Alas here too trouble found him After hours he hung out with other musicians at late nightclubs A few nights Josephine in her banana belt in La Folie du Jour before Christmas talk between Sidney and a banjo player turned mean and they spilled out into the street Like many jazzmen they packed revolvers and weren t afraid to use them Stray bullets hit a man and two women critically injuring one of woman Once again Bechet was arrested Eugene Bullard tried to use his influence but Bechet was sent to prison Eventually the sentence was shortened to 11 months but on the condition that he be deported from France for the second time from a Euorpean country and this time forbidden to re enter France ever

Poster advertising La Folie de Jour Les Folies Beg re at night Sidney starring with the Noble Sissle s Band Bechet s record of misbehavior SIdney Bechet with fellow saxophonists in Paris in 1928

TANNER IN PARIS After his studies at the Academy just as his father had predicted Henry could not make a living Discrimination meant no gallery would take his work He tried photography unsuccessfully so he decided to change his life dramatically With the support of friends and patrons in 1891 at the age of 32 he left for Paris a place where he would not be thwarted by racism The city opened up a new world to him He joined the prestigious Acad mie Julian and the American Art Club of Paris in Montparnasse Beginning in 1894 he began to exhibit works in the Paris salons Tanner painted in a variety of styles he did landscapes and portraits and like his father was drawn to biblical scenes His big breakthrough came in 1896 when his luminous painting Daniel in the Lions Den won an honorable mention at the Salon de Paris The following year the French government purchased Resurrection of Lazarus for the Mus e de Luxembourg As artist and author Barbara Chase Riboud explains He changed from a provincial to an internationalist and that s a big step And it s a big step for an African American because we have two provincials We have the provincialism of being an American and the provincialism of being an African American and so to break out of that takes a lot of courage In 1898 Tanner met his future wife Jessie Olssen a white American opera singer from San Francisco The couple moved into a large apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens Their son Jesse was born there in 1903 In 1923 Tanner was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and in 1927 was the first African American elected to the Acad mie nationale des arts et des sciences Around the same time a younger generation of African American artists started coming to Paris The first thing many did was to pay their respects to the venerable Tanner He was a great inspiration to them an African American like themselves who had succeeded Tanner died in 1937 and is buried beside his beloved wife at Sceaux outside of Paris Henry Ossawa Tanner at his easel

The Resurrection of Lazarus The Banjo Lesson Tanner s most famous painting Hale Woodruff s article about Tanner as a mentor to younger artists arriving from America Tanner academician of the Acad mie nationale des arts et des sciences Tanner s streetscape of Paris Les Invalides

THE COLONIAL EXPOSITION OF 1931 In May 1931 the spectacular Colonial Exposition in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris began its six month run It was the most extensive exposition in French history It attracted an estimated seven to nine million people from all over the world to view the 500 acre space dotted with pavilions including a full scale replica of Angkor Wat the famous temple from Cambodia then a part of French Indochina There were several simulated African villages where so called primitive people were on display human zoos in effect African Americans artists in Paris were excited at the chance to feast their eyes on the lavish spectacle but they came mostly to see real Africans for the first time The Africans lived in huts in the villages and carried on their lives as usual The artists who saw them did not see the Africans as primitive people They appreciated the artwork music and dance and felt they had a great deal to learn from them As a result some of the earliest images of Africans by African Americans were created from the Colonial Exposition Palmer Hayden was so thrilled by the exciting drumming and dancing that it inspired him do a series of watercolors like his 1932 painting called Exposition Coloniale In an interview 40 years later Hayden said When we heard it first back in Paris back in 1931 when we were there and the colonial exhibition came from Africa and they had these African drums and this rhythm of dancing well you know it was something that now everybody dances to the rhythm You don t call it savage noise now Sculptress Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was particularly fascinated by the sculptures on display in an African pavilion that she wrote to her mentor W E B DuBois of seeing heads of Poster advertising the 1931 Exposition of the wonders of the French colonies thought and reflection types of great beauty and dignity of carriage I believe it is the first time that this type of African has been brought to the attention of the world of modern times Am I right People are seeing the aristocracy of Africa It moved her so much that she created her own work of art Congolais but based on the head of a Massai warrior It became her most admired piece

A full size replica of Angkor Wat at the 1931 Exposition West African head African dance scene by Palmer Hayden West African sculpture Senegalese dancers performing for an audience Inspired by the Exposition Nancy Elizabeth Prophet carved Conglolais

BRICKTOP AND LOUIS ARMSTRONG IN THE 1930 S After Wall Street collapsed in 1929 most Americans in Paris began returning home Not Bricktop She was doing better than ever thanks to the ultra rich society crowd she had cultivated over the years The audiences were clamouring for more Her club had become too small so in November 1931 she moved and opened a huge nightclub on the Place Pigalle again called Bricktop s With classy singer Mabel Mercer headlining celebrities such as the Prince of Wales the Aga Khan Gloria Swanson and Edward G Robinson kept the club hopping Louis Armstrong s first European tour in 1932 included several countries but unfortunately for French devotees the King of Jazz only gave one concert in Paris At the time everyone was completely enraptured by his Hot Five and Hot Seven records groundbreaking music produced from 1925 to 1929 Satchmo was not only the greatest trumpet player ever but he perfected the art of solo improvisations Even more with that special voice of his he sang talked laughed scatted and crooned He could do it all His next trip to Paris in 1934 was a very different visit Trying to avoid being caught between rival mob bosses who were fighting to control the nightclub scene in New York and Chicago Armstrong took off for the Continent After a grueling schedule in Europe he retired to Paris He said When I Ieft London that summer and Bricktop outside her club in Montmartre I went to Paris I needed a rest My bookings were finished in England so I just lazed around Paris for three or four months had lots of fun with musicians from the States French cats too And I d do a concert now and then Armstrong spent most of his time in Paris resting his overworked lips which had become as hard as wood His old New Orleans pal and clarinetist Peter Ducong lived here with his wife Bricktop Armstrong and his wife Alpha often stayed with them When his lips were recovered he started sitting in with Bricktop s band In October he cut records with a band put together by Ducong Satchmo said that the version of On the Sunny Side of the Street recorded there was the best ever Coleman Hawkins wailing away

Ads for concerts and Louis Armstrong s famous lip salve Benny Carter with his saxophone Louis Armstrong and his trumpet

THE NARDALS AND N GRITRUDE In the 1930s Black intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic began to interact more intensely They came from French West Africa the French West Indies Harlem and metropolitan France People were eager to share and debate literary and political ideas These exchanges had begun in Paris during the 1920s among Alain Locke Ren Maran Langston Hughes and other intellectuals who would meet in cafes but now the suburb of Clamart became the central meeting place This was the home of the remarkable Nardal sisters Paulette Alice and Jane from a wellto do family in Martinique All were Sorbonne graduates At their literary salon African American writers and thinkers met writers and intellectuals from France Africa and the Caribbean The sisters published the bilingual magazine Revue du Monde Noir featuring stories poems articles and graphic arts Langston Hughes L opold Senghor Claude McKay Louis Thomas Achille Paulette Nardal Aaron Douglas and many others were contributors A map of French African and American African connections Paulette Nardal believed that Martiniquan and Guadaloupean communities could learn much from the model of African American writers like Claude McKay and Langston Hughes who freely declared their racial identity and expressed their anger at racism in the US Nardal believed that Caribbean intellectuals should also air their grievances about racism The leftist poet Aim C saire from Martinique and L opold Senghor future president of Senegal who frequented their salons took the Harlem Renaissance inspired ideas and moved them in an even more aggressive direction While at the Alice and Jane Nardal of Martinique and France Sorbonne working on their student newspaper L Etudiant Noir they founded a movement Quotes from Duuna Desir s research paper Poetic Ideologies of Negritude called N gritude The aim was to subvert a negative meaning of the term and turn it into a positive one While Harlem Renaissance ideas and N gritude had some differences both focused on celebrating the history of Black peoples of breaking free from the legacy of oppression slavery and colonialism and confirming the existence of a Black identity as strong worthwhile and as valuable as any other culture

The student newspaper published by C saire and Senghor Aim C saire of Martinique L opold Senghor future president of Senegal