Parisians felt a sense of wonder or “love” for marginalized music, but because their feelings were misguided and racist in motivation, further steps needed to be taken in order for the music to be properly respected. The “tokenization” of other culture’s music – where its purpose is to be included in short musical quotes in French compositions – sells them short of their depth and meaning to the culture they belong. After WWI, when Black people began to settle in France rather than return to the US, negrophilia exploded in popularity in France across all art forms. [1] It was a new artistic movement, it was exciting, and it was something that could be easily exploited and absorbed by French culture. That being said, there were composers such as Milhaud who gave more of an effort in order to “authentically” include jazz and Brazilian influence into their music. Milhaud even believed that jazz was the future of French classical music.
Listen to these two examples and observe how Milhaud attempts to authentically reproduce American jazz by taking heavy influence from the instrumentation and style while Poulenc mocks it as primitive by incorporating nonsense syllables and simple ostinatos in the accompaniment.
Milhaud (Begin at 3:31)
Poulenc (Begin at 3:14)
However, both examples still contribute to the relatively shallow consumption of marginalized music due to its novelty to the French music scene at the time. But this “shallow” consumption is not exclusively a thing of the past.
Oftentimes, we see ourselves as morally learned compared to people from 100 years ago, and while that is true in some circumstances, it is not always the case. We might think that we’re “past that” as a society or that we’ve moved on from racist tendencies. But there are obviously biases, stereotypes, and appropriations that are still prevalent in modern life.
One way to relate this musically to modern day is observing how predominantly white cultures have adopted the Black spiritual into a concert choir setting. There is a strong feeling of “love” and admiration for the music, but in order to fully enjoy and respect it, we need to know the deeper context. Thankfully, this opinion is growing in popularity and more conversations about slavery and the origins of spirituals are being had while performing them. But we are not completely past musical appropriation, so studying it in cultures of the past can help us see how it is perpetuated to this day.
1. Gendron, Bernard. “Negrophilia.” Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant Garde, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (Ill.), 2002, pp. 103–116.