Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:42:43.703Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tradition, modernity and the supernatural swing: re-reading ‘primitivism’ in Hugues Panassié's writing on jazz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2011

Tom Perchard
Tom Perchard
Affiliation:
Department of Music, Goldsmiths, University of London. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Before WWII, Hugues Panassié (1912–1974) was Europe's leading critical authority on jazz, and by the time of his death he had published a dozen books on jazz music and been President of the Hot-club de France for over 40 years. Yet despite this life's worth of efforts made in jazz's name, Panassié's reputation is no longer a good one: pointing to the fantasies of black exceptionalism and Noble Savagery present in his work, historians have tended to dismiss the critic as a racist primitivist, one in thrall to that contemporary negrophilie most familiar today from early-century Parisian visual art. Indeed Panassié used the term ‘primitive’ himself, and positively. But this article traces the ultra-conservative writer's intellectual and religious formation to show that, rather than contemporary negrophilie, it was a religious and cultural heritage quite distant from the modern European encounter with blackness that first informed Panassié's primitivism. Although this re-reading does not aim to ‘rehabilitate’ someone who remains a troublesome and reactionary figure, the article nevertheless goes on to explore how, in his primitivist rejection of European modernism, Panassié sometimes pre-empts important arguments made by the postmodern jazz scholarship that would seem to marginalise the critic's historical contributions.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 25 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Archer-Straw, P. 2000. Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (London, Thames and Hudson)Google Scholar
Armstrong, L. 1999 [1936]. ‘What is swing?’, in Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History, ed. Walser, R. (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 73–6Google Scholar
Barz, G., and Cooley, T.J. (eds.) 1997. Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (Oxford, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Béguin, A. 1947. Léon Bloy: A Study in Impatience, trans. Riley, E.M. (London, Sheed and Ward)Google Scholar
Berliner, P. 1994. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, J. 1999. Le Tumulte Noir: Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900–1930 (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press)Google Scholar
Bloy, L. 1947. Pilgrim of the Absolute, ed. Maritain, R. (New York, Pantheon Books)Google Scholar
Boas, G. 1997 [1948]. Primitivism and Related Ideas in the Middle Ages (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clergeat, A. 2002. ‘Hugues Panassié’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edn, ed. Kernfield, B. (London, Macmillan), p. 222Google Scholar
Clifford, J. 1988a. ‘On ethnographic surrealism’, in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Harvard University Press), pp. 117–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, J. 1988b. ‘Histories of the tribal and the modern’, In The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Harvard University Press), pp. 189–214Google Scholar
Collier, J.L. 1993. Jazz: The American Theme Song (Oxford, Oxford University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellingson, T. 2001. The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley, University of California Press)Google Scholar
Frith, S. 1988. ‘Playing with real feeling – jazz and suburbia’, in Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop (Cambridge, Polity Press), pp. 45–63Google Scholar
Fry, A. 2003. ‘Beyond Le Boeuf: interdisciplinary rereadings of jazz in France’, Journal of the Royal Musicological Association, 128, pp. 137–153Google Scholar
Gautier, M. 1957. ‘Un peu de silence SVP’, Bulletin du Hot-club de France, 67 (Avril), pp. 3–4Google Scholar
Gendron, B. 1995. ‘“Moldy figs” and modernists: jazz at war (1942–1946)’, in Jazz Among the Discourses, ed. Gabbard, K. (Durham and London, Duke University Press), pp. 31–56Google Scholar
Gendron, B. 2002. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gennari, J. 2006. Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gioia, T. 1989. ‘Jazz and the primitivist myth’, The Musical Quarterly, 73/1, pp. 130–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guénon, R. 1999 [1927]. The Crisis of the Modern World (Delhi, Indica)Google Scholar
Gumplowicz, P. 2000. ‘Vers le droit de cité. Naissance de la critique de jazz, Paris 1930–34’, in Musiques et musiciens à Paris dans les années trente, ed. Pistone, D. (Paris, Honoré Champion), pp. 393–408Google Scholar
Gumplowicz, P. 2004. ‘Musicographes réactionnaires des années 1930’, Le Mouvement Social, 3/208, pp. 91–124Google Scholar
Hadlock, R. 2000. ‘The New Orleans revival’, in The Oxford Companion to Jazz, ed. Kirchner, B. (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 305–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, A. 2007. Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, M. 2007. In Search of the Blues: Black Voices, White Visions (London, Vintage)Google Scholar
Hannerz, U. 2004 [1969]. Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press)Google Scholar
Herment, G. 1936. ‘Hot – sixième sens’, Jazz hot, 9 (Juin), pp. 12–13Google Scholar
Hodeir, A. 1956 [1954]. ‘The Phenomenon of Swing’, in Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, trans. Noakes, D. (London, Secker & Warburg), pp. 195–209Google Scholar
Jackson, J.H. 2003. Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Durham, Duke University Press)Google Scholar
Jordan, M.F. 2001. ‘Amphibiologie: ethnographic surrealism in French discourse in jazz’, in Journal of European Studies, 31, pp. 157–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keil, C. 1966. ‘Motion and feeling through music’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24/3, pp. 337–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lane, J.F. 2007. ‘Rhythme de travail, rhythme de jazz’: jazz, primitivism, and machinisme in inter-war France', Atlantic Studies, 4/1 (April), pp. 103–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maritain, J. 1949 [1920]. Art and Scholasticism, trans. Scanlan, J.F. (London, Sheed and Ward)Google Scholar
Martin, D.-C. 2001. ‘De l'excursion à Harlem au débat sur les “Noirs”: les terrains absents de la jazzologie française’, L'Homme, 158/159, pp. 261–78Google Scholar
Martin, D.-C. and Roueff, O. 2002. La France du jazz: musique, modernité et identité dans la première moitié du XXe siècle (Marseille, Éditions Parenthèses)Google Scholar
Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes, Open University Press)Google Scholar
Middleton, R. 2000. ‘Musical belongings: Western music and its low-Other’, in Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. Born, G. and Hesmondhalgh, D. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press), pp. 59–85Google Scholar
Monson, I. 1996. Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press)Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1936 [1934]. Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music, trans. Dowling, L. and Dowling, E. (London, Cassell)Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1942. The Real Jazz, trans. Williams, A.S. (New York, Smith & Durrell)Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1944. Histoire des disques Swing (Geneva, Ch. Grasset)Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1946. Douze années de jazz (1927–1938): Souvenirs (Paris, Correa)Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1947. Cinq mois à New York (Paris, Études Corrêa)Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1958. ‘Toujours le mal blanc’, Bulletin du Hot-club de France, 77 (Avril), pp. 3–8Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1965. La Bataille du jazz (Paris, Éditions Albin Michel)Google Scholar
Panassié, H. 1975. Monsieur Jazz: Entretiens avec Pierre Casalta (Paris, Stock)Google Scholar
Pautrot, J.-L. 2006. ‘Introduction’, in The André Hodeir Jazz Reader, ed. Pautrot, J.-L. (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press), pp. 1–20Google Scholar
Perchard, T. 2006. Lee Morgan: His Life, Music and Culture (London, Equinox)Google Scholar
Perchard, T. 2007. ‘Writing jazz biography: race, research and narrative representation’, Popular Music History, 2/2, pp. 119–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peretti, B.W. 1992. The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press)Google Scholar
Radano, R. 2003. Lying up a Nation: Race and Black Music (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press)Google Scholar
Ramsey, G. Jr 2003. Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop (Berkeley, University of California Press)Google Scholar
Rousseau, J.-J. 1994 [1755]. Discourse on Inequality, trans. Philip, F. (Oxford, World's Classics)Google Scholar
Sedgwick, M. 2004. Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tournès, L. 1999. New Orleans sur Seine: histoire du jazz en France (Paris, Fayard)Google Scholar
Welburn, R. 1987. ‘Jazz magazines of the 1930s: an overview of their provocative journalism’, American Music, Fall, pp. 256–70Google Scholar
Wright Hurley, A. 2009. The Return of Jazz: Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change (New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books)Google Scholar