Ultimately early French jazz came not out of an appreciation and respect for diversity of culture, but from a place of profiteering, using a false, exoticized farce of ‘tribal’ cultures for the purpose of shocking audiences, and in turn profiting of this contrived vision of the other. Looking to the writings of French music critics from the time, this false narrative becomes evident. Paul Archard writes that, “La revue nègre succeeded in conforming to age-old fantasies about exotic nègre otherness swirling in the French cultural imagination”. He goes on to describe the music as “soft, splenetic, brutal, lustful, and sad”. Early jazz shows were not seeking to treat African cultures with respect, but to play to stereotypes, and entertain an audience. Of interest, jazz music, though it had African rhythmic roots, was a transplant from the United Staes, and not Africa, leaving tribal overtones to performance even further from accurate, as they weren’t even misrepresenting the right location of musical origin.
Another critic, Jacques Patin, describes the show as a “spectacle”, and the sound of the music as “ultra-modern”. Though seemingly this would not fit in with exoticizing tribal tropes, ultra-modern music is typical characterized as strange, novel, and other to what audiences are used to, providing a perfect foil to the more ‘tribal’ elements of the performance. This can in fact be seen in the advertising for the show, André Daven going so far as to embrace both critical interpretations in publicity campaigns. In doing so he was looking to cash in on the exoticism, both with respect to the new and the ‘primitive’, and making it clear that this performance wasn’t about accurately portraying any one culture or people, but of using them, and peoples reaction to them, to cash in on this spectacle. This is an attitude we continue to see today, with artists regularly appropriating works from other cultures in a bid to differentiate themselves and cash in. As such it is important that when interacting with, using and portraying others cultures and musics, that we try to do so from a place of respect and understanding, and not out of a desire to get rich of someone else’s identity.
