Throughout this course I’ve continued to gain new insights into the idea of modernism in Paris in the 1920s. The readings for our very first day of class discussed Taruskin’s assessment of the idea of lifestyle modernism in Paris, a movement away from romanticism towards something more deliberately shallow.1 The new generation of composers and […]
Reception towards the influx of black cultural products in 1920s France consisted of equal parts attraction and enjoyment but also revulsion and fear. Reading through French author’s impressions of La Revue Nègre, which they describe as “soft, splenetic, brutal, lustful, or sad,” “something animal,” and “frenetic and devilish,” it is clear that what 1920s Parisians […]
The concept of Negrophilia becomes quite convoluted when attempting to dissect it and separate it into its true parts. The question of if Parisian’s really did love African and African American artists at the time cannot truly be answered by a modern scholar, as I’m sure there were Parisians who really did appreciate the music […]
When picking my topic for the first paper I was immediately attracted to Josephine Baker. I was familiar with her work as a civil rights activist for both France during World War II and America in the 1950s. While I was aware of her French performing career, I was entirely ignorant of her popularity and […]