American Jazz, Francophone Jazz
Jazz is quintessentially American but its roots in West African musical traditions and flexibility to incorporate a wide variety of influences have given the genre worldwide appeal. The Jazz Age after World War I ended saw musicians travel from New Orleans to the dance clubs and speakeasies of Chicago, New York, and across the Atlantic to Paris. African-American soldiers who served in Europe during the war had introduced jazz to French listeners and the ‘années folles’ after wartime drew American expatriates, writers, and performers to Paris, including notable African-American artists who encountered less virulent racism than they did in the United States. The 1920s saw an explosion of creativity in the arts, literature, music, and fashion in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. The desire for an upbeat mood and the appetite for new ideas and actions contributed to a decade of societal transformation.
Django Reinhardt in 1946. Image credit: William P. Gottlieb, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Parisian enthusiasm for jazz expanded in the mid-1920s with the arrival of African-American singer-dancer Joséphine Baker, whose appearances in musical shows with the Revue Nègre and the Folies Bergère drew crowds and expanded awareness of jazz music in the city. However, jazz was not simply an American import to French shores. French musicians and home-grown jazz groups forged their own sounds by adding their own ideas and interpretations to their jazz performances. Notably, the emergence of Romani-Belgian guitarist and composer Jean “Django” Reinhardt, one of the co-founders of the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934, put a European print on jazz music by developing and popularizing the jazz manouche style. Today, Reinhardt ranks among the greatest jazz guitarists of all time.
By the outbreak of World War II, which prompted many American jazz artists to leave Europe, jazz had become well established in France. The first Nice Jazz Festival in 1948 attracted many American musicians, including Louis Armstrong and his All Stars, where they played alongside jazz musicians from France and other countries. Since then, numerous jazz festivals around France have cropped up, testifying to the ongoing French embrace of jazz music and musicians. These annual events draw performers and visitors from every part of the world, peaking in (but not limited to) the month of July.
Jazz lovers, those new to the genre, and everyone in between have many choices of Francophone destinations to see and hear favorite jazz musicians as well as discover new names at summer jazz festivals in Europe. On the shores of Lac Léman in Switzerland, the 58th Montreux Jazz Festival kicked off on July 5 and offers jazz, blues, rock, soul, and world music performances through July 20. Next door in France, the Jazz à Vienne festival began on June 27 and continues through July 16, welcoming visitors to a unique experience of jazz concerts in an open-air 1st-century Roman theater just south of the city of Lyon.
Scene from Montreux Jazz Festival of July 2023, Montreux, Switzerland. Image credit: Markus Schweizer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
For those seeking a coastal setting, Jazz à Juan runs from July 8 through 18 in Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d’Azur. This festival started in 1960 with a concert to pay homage to saxophonist/clarinetist Sidney Bechet, who had regularly visited and performed in the area throughout the 1950s. Immediately following in a village of 1200 inhabitants near the Pyrenees Mountains is Jazz in Marciac from July 18 through August 4. Not only does the entire village come together to produce the festival and accommodate hundreds of thousands of visitors, it has so embraced jazz music since the first festival in 1978 that jazz has been incorporated into the local school curriculum. And all summer long, including this month, the Paris Jazz Festival hosts free jazz performances in the Parc Floral de Paris in the Bois de Vincennes.
The Francophone love of jazz is not limited to Europe. In fact, the world’s largest jazz festival, le Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (FIJM), recently transformed downtown Montreal into a mecca of indoor and outdoor musical delights. The 44th edition of the festival brought together hundreds of musicians and approximately two million listeners from around the world to Quebec over ten days from June 27 to July 6, mounting shows ranging from intimate sets to outdoor performances attended by hundreds of thousands of fans.
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in 2008. Image credit: Jocelynhade, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The first version of FIJM took place in May 1980 in the wake of several Montréal-based jazz festivals, including the third Rising Sun Festijazz organized by jazz club owner and promoter Rouè-Doudou Boicel. A small group led by music promoter Alain Simard and funded by public media networks drew musicians such as Ray Charles and Chick Corea and an audience of over 10,000 to their first festival. Each year thereafter, a larger number of acts and attendees would convene in Montreal, leading to cooperation with the city to expand the festival’s physical footprint. The festival was officially recognized as the world’s largest jazz festival in 2004, when its 25th anniversary attracted some two million festivalgoers. Five years later, FIJM gained a permanent home in the Quartier des Spectacles, the cultural neighborhood of Montreal with performing and visual arts buildings, bars, and restaurants set among public spaces.
Francophone jazz festivals abound in other towns and cities around the world, from the Festival International de Louisiane in Lafayette, Louisiana to Jazzablanca in Morocco to the Lotto Brussels Jazz Weekend in Brussels, Belgium. In the largest of cities and the smallest of villages, jazz clubs, cafés, and even the metro passageways serve as venues that show how this American export has been adapted and embraced by French and Francophone musicians and audiences.
Jeu de français
Perhaps you now have the urge to attend one of the Francophone jazz festivals mentioned above or another of the many that take place each year. As part of your preparation, or just for fun, review or learn French music terms by completing this word search. (Note that the French term for ‘bass drum’ is ‘grosse caisse’ although the word search shows a slightly different term.)
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