At
the close of the Second World War, waves of African American musicians
migrated to Paris, eager to thrive in its reinvigorated jazz scene. Jazz Diasporas challenges
the notion that Paris was a color-blind paradise for African Americans.
On the contrary, musicians adopted a variety of strategies to cope with
the cultural and social assumptions that confronted them throughout
their careers in Paris, particularly as France became embroiled in
struggles over race and identity when colonial conflicts like the
Algerian War escalated. Using case studies of prominent musicians and
thoughtful analysis of interviews, music, film, and literature, Rashida
K. Braggs investigates the impact of this postwar musical migration. She
examines key figures including musicians Sidney Bechet, Inez Cavanaugh,
and Kenny Clarke and writer and social critic James Baldwin to show how
they performed both as artists and as African Americans. Their
collaborations with French musicians and critics complicated racial and
cultural understandings of who could represent “authentic” jazz and
created spaces for shifting racial and national identities—what Braggs
terms “jazz diasporas.”
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