Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781478014690)

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.

Author: Celeste Day Moore
ISBN-10: 1478014695
ISBN-13: 9781478014690
Publisher: Duke University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/29/2021
Pages: 312
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.65d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2022