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This chapter talks about the transformations that jazz went through during the 1980s when there was a resurgence of the classic jazz of the 1940s and 1950s. This era has been termed the neoclassical era, when Herman Leonard’s association with jazz was also reborn. This happened in 1988 after there was an exhibit of his work in London. It was Leonard’s photographic depictions of African American jazz musicians that not only created the visual image of a black musician of the 1950s, but also became the standard representation of the musical style of jazz from 1945 to 1959. At the same time, however, his photographs caused a dilemma, particularly among contemporary musicians. The chapter explains this dilemma. It thus traces the influence of the jazz image by explaining its relationship to the current cultural influence of jazz.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the migratory experiences of musicians and their music through case studies of African American jazz musicians (Sidney Bechet, Kenny Clarke, and Inez Cavanaugh) and white French jazz critics and musicians (Boris Vian, Charles Delaunay, René Urtreger, and Claude Luter). It examines the reasons why African American jazz musicians migrated to Paris; the strategies they used to thrive in Paris while maintaining relations with the United States; their mentorship of and collaboration with white French musicians; and their transformations in personal identity that paralleled the music's own evolving racial and national identity. In this period, jazz helped forward illusions of Paris as color-blind, and some African American musicians willfully but not blindly made use of jazz to achieve success in Paris. Some musicians and jazzophiles subtly used jazz as a tool to critique racialized oppression prevalent in the United States and blur racial boundaries in France.

This chapter illustrates the performance of authenticity in French jazz criticism and the perspectives of French jazz musicians. From the 1930s through the postwar era, French jazz discourse disseminated an authenticating narrative. At the end of World War II, Jean Paul Sartre still called French musicians “sad imitators” while a host of French jazz critics, with Hugues Panassié leading the charge, persisted in harshly critiquing French musicians for not playing “real” jazz. French musicians often internalized these narratives and felt insecure about their playing. However, the confidence and popularity of French musicians began to change through collaborations with African American jazz musicians. By the mid-1950s French musicians continued the legacy of their African American counterparts, creating their own French style and transporting the music beyond American and French borders. This jazz diaspora opens up its racial and national significations to white Europeans but not without much persistent resistance from authenticating narratives.

This chapter focuses on bebop cofounder Kenny Clarke, who resided in Paris from 1956 until his death in 1985. Clarke became the cornerstone of the Parisian jazz scene. He was the house drummer for the Blue Note club, the most represented drummer on the Vogue record label, and the go-to guy for such groundbreaking projects as L'ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the gallows) soundtrack. As a highly regarded elder of jazz, he mentored many French drummers, and American musicians flew over to play with him. Through his mentoring, musical collaborations, rhetoric, and travels Clarke helped transform jazz from “black music” to a “universal” music accessible to, and playable by, those in France and beyond. Clarke represents an unresolved and shifting tension between black pride and authenticity and a desire for universal humanity irrespective of race, which potentially threatens racial erasure. The chapter deconstructs multiple performances of the term universal in Clarke's and jazz's journey to assimilation in Europe.

This chapter discusses the increasingly complicated and fluid associations of jazz's “American” identity. It studies some of the ways that jazz musicians displayed or represented “Americanness”—through professional strategy, musical style, and subjective identity—at the start of the twenty-first century. The chapter also aims to deepen the understandings of American jazz musicians in other countries and the notions of authenticity, cultural hybridity, and nationality connected to them.

This chapter excavates the life story of Inez Cavanaugh, a woman about whom little is known in jazz scholarship but whose contributions were significant to the creation and maintenance of a jazz diaspora in post-World War II Paris. Cavanaugh also introduces other stories, thus opening this narrative to a series of collaborations and migratory experiences for both African American men and women living in Paris. Her home, club, and friends were fully integrated into the jazz scene of the late 1940s and 1950s. Her life and work illuminate reasons why so many African American jazz musicians made Paris their home, key experiences and issues in living abroad in Paris, and their prompts for leaving or staying. The case of Inez Cavanaugh also introduces the concurrent possibilities of local community and global movement encompassed in a jazz diaspora.

This chapter introduces the subject of study in this book, which is the photographs of jazz musicians and how these photos have come to represent the genre as a whole. Some of the photographs examined are those that belonged to Herman Leonard, whose depictions of predominantly African American jazz musicians in New York City became a visual representation of jazz in the 1950s. Additionally, Leonard’s photographs have also become the standard manner and means through which the musical style of jazz was, and continues to be, visually represented. The chapter introduces the focus of this study, which is the question of how one is able to recognize the peculiar sounds of jazz and establish the criteria for how a jazz musician appears and looks like.

This chapter examines the later life and career of New Orleans-style clarinetist and saxophonist Sidney Bechet. The 1949 International Jazz Festival in Paris drew Bechet from New York, seducing him to return for more job opportunities. During the final decade of his life (1949–59) Bechet was transformed into a beloved king of jazz in France. Analysis of the 1949 festival, Bechet's memoir, periodical accounts, and the song “American Rhythm” reveals how Bechet constructed his own stardom by performing multiple subjectivities. Shifting among French, American, and African-descended ancestry, he achieved overwhelming success in post-World War II France by way of his ability to play to the racialized expectations and desires of the French. Bechet's life and music represents one type of jazz diaspora rooted in ethnic heritage yet wandering from one home to the next.

This chapter examines the film Paris Blues (1961) to foreground several key points expressed in the present volume. It connects the fictional jazz diasporas of Paris Blues to the very real lives of present-day African American jazz musicians, as well as the author's own experiences residing in Paris. Despite a ferocious political revolt by French of African descent in the 2000s, current jazz diasporas still favor African Americans, and there is a separation between the two diasporic communities. But in the end it is relationships rather than differences that make jazz diasporas. The relationships and exchanges of power among African Americans, white Americans, white French, and French of African descent constantly build, collapse, and rebuild to support the survival of jazz and jazz people.

During World War II, the Japanese constructed prisoner of war camps in fifteen countries, including China. These camps numbered approximately 240. The Japanese—whose attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 brought the United States into World War II— saw their global role as manifest destiny, particularly with respect to China. Militarist Japan's attempt to conquer China began by seizing Manchuria in 1931 and became a full-fledged invasion from 1937 [when they attacked Shanghai] to 1945. This chapters shows that American jazz musicians—all of whom were playing in Shanghai—were not immune to the Japanese invasion and occupation. Some landed in internment camps in China and the Philippines.

This chapter focuses on the author's interview with American jazz musicians Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. It discusses Shorter's stories about the loss of wife, his autistic child, and other emotional pain to which the author could relate to, and explains that it was during this time that his wife asked him to move out of the house.

This chapter focuses on the death of American Jazz musician Dexter Gordon. It explains that Gordon starred in the film Round Midnight directed by Bertrand Tavernier and also died round midnight. The chapter mentions that he was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the said film and was named by the French Minister of Culture as Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, or, a Knight of Arts and Letters.

This chapter focuses on the author's interview with American jazz musician Miles Davis about painting. It explains that painting had become more than a hobby for Davis at the time of the interview. Some of questions asked by the author included why Davis had hired him for his Birth of the Cool nonet and whether Davis's view on musical training was important, mostly in order to understand whether what rules to break applies to painting.

This chapter focuses on the author's relationship with American jazz musician, Chet Baker. It highlights Baker's addiction to heroin, explaining that although he went into self-destruct mode, his need for heroin was never shaken and he consumed about two grams a day. The chapter also discusses the author's experience of being arrested by a French narcotics agent after a heroin session with Baker.