Jazzy D's Soul Notes

When I listen to some of the jazz American jazz people have recorded in France and decided to become self-exiled there due to the racism of the USA in the fifties and sixties Paris was a benefactor in many ways. In fact, a recent BBC Radio 4 program explores the encounter between American modern jazz and the French New wave in Paris in the late 1950s and 60s.

Paris in the civil rights era was a hub of artistic collaboration as well as a kind of political refuge - a destination for American jazz musicians escaping racial prejudice and turbulence at home, finding new creative encounters abroad.

As segregation raged in the US, artists from Miles Davis and Bud Powell to Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk felt liberated in the city. Paris was the first foreign city Miles Davis ever visited and it was here he met Picasso. Sartre and Jean Cocteau. "It was the freedom of being in France and being treated like a human being...” he wrote, “It changed the way I looked at things forever. I loved being in Paris and Paris was where I understood that all white people were not the same; that some weren't prejudiced."

The admiration was mutual - French cinephiles loved American jazz. The film score became a key area of collaboration as jazz musicians worked closely with a younger generation of radical directors that made up the French new wave. These scores elevated French films to new levels of intensity, cool, and atmosphere.

Some of the musicians' great but little known work is recorded in these movies. But underlying the beautiful work, this story is one of political exile as well as cultural refuge. For a moment Paris became a jazz capital of the world as well as the free-thinking centre of Europe - a rebuke to prejudice in America, even as it had growing racial tensions of its own.
Paris has made me think about how many different stories are woven together in the city The love affair between French culture especially French film and African American jazz and at the heart of this romance the city itself with its residents from right around the world and its complex web of race relations in Paris the city of light there is one every kind of blues you can think of.

So for your nighttime jazz here is Miles -

Miles Davis - Ascenseur pour l'échafaud



Tracklisting:
00:00 - Générique
2:53 - L'assassinat de Carala
5:04 - Sur l'autoroute
7:24 - Julien dans l'ascenseur
9:37 - Florence sur les Champs-Élysées
12:29 - Dîner au motel
16:27 - Évasion de Julien
17:21 - Visite du vigile
19:26 - Au bar du Petit Bac
22:20 - Chez le photographe du motel


Au revoir, jazz cat signs out.

Enjoy.