Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France

FAIN: FT-265225-19

Celeste Day Moore
Hamilton College (Clinton, NY 13323-1295)

Research and writing leading to publication of a book on the transatlantic networks of production, distribution, and performance that led to the rise of African-American music as a globally recognized sign of power and protest after World War II.

My proposed project traces the transatlantic networks of musical production, distribution, and performance that converged in the Francophone world to make African-American music a global signifier of power and protest after World War II. In the context of increasing US power and a declining French empire, African-American music simultaneously represented the threat of American hegemony and the powerful dissent of a minority population. These divergent associations, I argue, were made possible by a cohort of Atlantic intermediaries, whose fluency in French and familiarity with African-American culture gave them privileged positions from which to translate, disseminate, and racially encode this musical tradition. By tracing their efforts to promote and politicize African-American music, this manuscript not only offers a new perspective on postwar African-American history but also uncovers the commercial, political, and diasporic infrastructure of the twentieth-century Atlantic World.

Associated Products

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France (Book)
Title: Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France
Author: Celeste Day Moore
Abstract: In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore traces the popularization of African American music in postwar France, where it signaled new forms of power and protest. Moore surveys a wide range of musical genres, soundscapes, and media: the US military's wartime records and radio programs; the French record industry's catalogs of blues, jazz, and R&B recordings; the translations of jazz memoirs; a provincial choir specializing in spirituals; and US State Department-produced radio programs that broadcast jazz and gospel across the French empire. In each of these contexts, individual intermediaries such as educators, producers, writers, and radio deejays imbued African American music with new meaning, value, and political power. Their work resonated among diverse Francophone audiences and transformed the lives and labor of many African American musicians, who found financial and personal success as well as discrimination in France. By showing how the popularity of African American music was intertwined with contemporary structures of racism and imperialism, Moore demonstrates this music's centrality to postwar France and the convergence of decolonization, the expanding globalized economy, the Cold War, and worldwide liberation movements.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.dukeupress.edu/soundscapes-of-liberation
Publisher: Duke University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-1-4780-146
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France (Book)
Title: Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France
Author: Celeste Day Moore
Abstract: In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore traces the popularization of African American music in postwar France, where it signaled new forms of power and protest. Moore surveys a wide range of musical genres, soundscapes, and media: the US military's wartime records and radio programs; the French record industry's catalogs of blues, jazz, and R&B recordings; the translations of jazz memoirs; a provincial choir specializing in spirituals; and US State Department-produced radio programs that broadcast jazz and gospel across the French empire. In each of these contexts, individual intermediaries such as educators, producers, writers, and radio deejays imbued African American music with new meaning, value, and political power. Their work resonated among diverse Francophone audiences and transformed the lives and labor of many African American musicians, who found financial and personal success as well as discrimination in France. By showing how the popularity of African American music was intertwined with contemporary structures of racism and imperialism, Moore demonstrates this music's centrality to postwar France and the convergence of decolonization, the expanding globalized economy, the Cold War, and worldwide liberation movements.
Year: 2021
Primary URL Description: https://www.dukeupress.edu/soundscapes-of-liberation
Type: Single author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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