Negrophilia is a captivation with a caricature of Blackness, which blurs the boundaries of black identity and fetishizes \u201cprimal roots\u201d for entertainment value. This was especially common in Paris in the 1920s. It is an odd phenomenon to modern sensibilities, as there was a somewhat positive attitude toward blackness but was nonetheless demeaning and racist.<\/p>\n
Parisians in the 1920s did celebrate and love the African American artists who performed for them. Josephine Baker was an African American dancer for\u00a0La Revue N\u00e9gre,\u00a0<\/em>and was famous for her Danse Sauvage\u00a0<\/em>which emulated the\u00a0supposed wild roots of African people. 1<\/sup><\/a> Andre Levinson, a white dance critic, praised Baker for her \u201ccarnal magnificence and her impulsive vehemence, her unashamed exhibition comes close to pathos . . . . Josephine Baker, by her extraordinary and disturbing genius, is able with one bound to join her savage forefathers and with another to go back to our common animal ancestors.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> Baker, and other African American artists, were very popular during this time. Darius Milhaud encountered jazz on a trip to Harlem, where he was deeply affected by this music which was completely new to him. 3<\/sup><\/a> He \u201cmade the wholesale use of the jazz style to convey a purely classical style\u201d in La Creation Du Monde, using the instrumentation of a jazz orchestra as well as many jazz idioms. 4<\/sup><\/a> Both the artists and the music of Black America were loved in Paris.<\/p>\n But while 1920\u2019s Parisian audiences may have loved and celebrated African American artists, they didn\u2019t truly respect them. France was more racially accepting than the US, but racism was certainly present.\u00a0La Revue N\u00e9gre\u00a0<\/em>was especially disrespectful, as it didn\u2019t think blacks should be represented with \u201cprecision dancing\u201d.5<\/sup><\/a> Instead, La Revue\u00a0<\/em>depicted blacks with savage fervor and animal nature to reflect the jungles of Africa.6<\/sup><\/a> Depictions of slavery in the Southern US were prevalent in La Revue N\u00e9gre, \u201c<\/em>and they served to reinforce a view of African Americans as only partially civilized and working in a \u2018primitive\u2019 agricultural setting.\u201d 7<\/sup><\/a> This is certainly not respect towards Black artists.\u00a0La Creation Du Monde<\/em> attempted authenticity in its depiction of Blackness, but blurred identities between African creation stories (which weren\u2019t very well researched by Paul Cendrars) and African-American jazz.8<\/sup><\/a> Milhaud thought that jazz \u201chad its roots in the darkest corners of the Negro soul, the vestigial traces of Africa.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a> White French creators of this music disrespected African Americans by equating their identities with primitiveness, and by portraying their imaginations of an identity they do not understand.<\/p>\n One tradition to which I can relate some of these phenomena is that of Konnakol. Konnakol is a vocal percussion art from the Carnatic tradition of South India, in which a musician recites complex rhythmic syllables (Solkattu). These syllables are\u00a0based on Sanskrit words from the Hindu Veda texts.10<\/sup><\/a> When listening to Konnakol, I am amazed by the virtuosity and complexity of the performers. However, it is a somewhat exotic fascination, as it is completely different from any Western classical music I am used to. The different language and the centuries of tradition add to its allure for Western musicians.<\/p>\n