{"id":538,"date":"2020-03-10T03:43:11","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T08:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/?p=538"},"modified":"2020-03-10T03:43:11","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T08:43:11","slug":"parisians-lost-the-phila-in-negrophilia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/2020\/03\/10\/parisians-lost-the-phila-in-negrophilia\/","title":{"rendered":"Parisians Lost the Phila in Negrophilia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phila, the root of Negrophilia, comes from one of four the Greek words for love. Philia is often translated as \u201cbrotherly love\u201d or friendship; it is the love of equals. Unfortunately, the term Negrophilia as it was employed by Parisians in the 1920\u2019s, does not live up to its namesake. While Parisians certainly held a peculiar fascination with Negro music and dance, this obsession doesn\u2019t seem to be consistent with the true meaning of philia as a love of equals.<\/p>\n

When Parisian musicians, artists or critics encounter African American culture it is often described by seemingly contradictory ideas or overwhelming emotions. When Pablo Picasso stumbled upon the African section of the Trocadero, \u201chis first impression was one of disgust\u201d [1]. However, as Picasso processed the \u201c\"\"shock\u201d and \u201crevelation\u201d upon encountering these artifacts his disgust turned to fear and then fascination. He felt a \u201c \u2018force\u2019 emanating from this \u2018frightful museum\u2019 \u201d and soon regarded the masks as \u201cmagical things\u201d [1]. This visceral reaction to African-ness is also mirrored in the reception La Revue N\u00e9gre<\/em>. The show was incredibly popular, and the French public became enamored with the show\u2019s star Josephine Baker. People poured in to \u201ctake a peek at La Baker<\/em> and see what the fuss was about\u201d [2]. Reactions varied from screams of delight to screams of disdain, but the common denominator was a wholly provocative response [2].<\/p>\n

These strong reactions all serve to illustrate the Parisian fixation on African and African American culture. For some, such as Milhaud or Cocteau, perhaps this fixation verges on admiration, more closely resembling love. Cocteau abstains from the usual descriptions of African American dance as \u201cprimitive\u201d, \u201cchild-like\u201d, or \u201cnaturally frenzied\u201d. \u00a0Instead he emphasizes its \u201csharp angularities\u201d, \u201cbroken rhythms\u201d and \u201cmodernity\u201d[1]. Another Parisian, Paul Guillaume, expresses this admiration rather explicitly proclaiming that \u201cnegro art is the fructifying seed of the spiritual twentieth century\u201d[1].<\/p>\n

However, by and large this Parisian fixation with African-ness was not really admiration and certainly didn\u2019t view this other as an equal. From Levinson\u2019s review of the Negro dance it is clear that while Levinson was fascinated with its primitive and rhythmic elements, he did not necessarily consider it as an art form like the classical ballet. Levinson believed that Negro dance relied upon a \u201cformless and purely instinctual motor energy\u201d that originated in the uncivilized savage [3]. Although his romantic primitivism grants some credence to Josephine Baker\u2019s \u201cmagnificent gyrations\u201d, he remains ultimately dismissive of the Negro dance as a serious art form.<\/p>\n

This inevitable dismissal is also echoed in the critic\u2019s reviews of La Revue N\u00e9gre<\/em>. Jordan describes a common thread of ambivalence among reviewers, explaining that there was a discursive movement to distance French-ness from African-ness. For example, Jean-Jos\u00e9 Frappa worried that \u201cthe foreign invasion and influence \u2026 was corrupting the purity of French culture\u201d [2]. Ultimately the French were not interested in an honest investigation of African or Afro American culture. They could not truly love African Americans as an equal; they were only interested in their culture to the extent that it benefited their own.<\/p>\n

[1] Bernard Gendron, Between Montmarte and the Mudd Club<\/em> (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2002), 103-116.<\/p>\n

[2] Matthew Jordan, Le Jazz: Jazz and French Cultural Identity<\/em> (Urbana-Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 102-111.<\/p>\n

[3] Andr\u00e9 Levinson, \u201cThe Negro Dance: Under European Eyes,\u201d in Andr\u00e9 Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties<\/em>, ed. Joan Acocella and Lynn Garafola (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1991), 69-75.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phila, the root of Negrophilia, comes from one of four the Greek words for love. Philia is often translated as \u201cbrotherly love\u201d or friendship; it is the love of equals. Unfortunately, the term Negrophilia as it was employed by Parisians in the 1920\u2019s, does not live up to its namesake. While Parisians certainly held a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}