‘ People wanted to have fun’: How jazz infected post- WWI Europe

■ Among many novelties that crossed Atlantic when the US entered WWI, jazz was the most upbeat ◗ Historians pinpoint the jazz’s arrival in France to December 1917, with the 369th infantry’s Harlem Hellfighters under the baton of Lieutenant James Reese Eur

Among the many novelties that crossed the Atlantic when the United States entered World War I in 1917, jazz was arguably the most upbeat — and infectious.

Then known as ragtime, the new syncopated sound emanating from American military bands had an irresistible energy and newness that turned the European music scene upside down.

“It was really striking,” said musicologist Laurent Cugny. “They performed at every railway station they passed through, something most French people had never heard before.”

The genre was also set apart by the performers, who were all black, Cugny told AFP. “Beyond any racism, it was an extreme oddity for the time.”

Historians pinpoint the jazz’s arrival in France to December 1917, with the 369th infantry’s Harlem Hellfighters under the baton of Lieutenant James Reese Europe.

While the Harlem Hellfighters gave their first official jazz concert in Europe in the western French city of Nantes on February 12, 1918, the music had already begun making inroads on the Old Continent.

Sheet music from London started crossing the Channel in 1912, with British and French editors striking copyright agreements, according to popular music expert Bertrand Dicale.

Piano sales boomed between 1900 and 1914, when some four million were sold in France alone, Dicale said.

Inevitably, the new sound infiltrated classical music, influencing composers including Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel and Darius Milhaud.

Satie, for example, brought the curtain down on his ballet Parade with a ragtime number in the hope of drawing more punters, according to Russian choreographer Leonide Massine.

Cugny said that these avant- garde musicians were reacting to Wagner’s “sublime, grandiloquent side” as well as Debussy’s “impressionist, too ethereal” music. “What they liked was ( jazz’s) rhythm, its vigour, even if they lost interest in it in the end.”

On the other hand, France’s burgeoning music hall stars truly caught the bug.

The emblematic Maurice Chevalier first came across ragtime sheet music in 1914.

Chevalier’s 1920 Les Jazz Bands, among his first recordings, was the first French song to mention jazz.

“During this time, American brass bands were improvising with Parisian orchestra and bistro musicians,” Dicale told AFP. “The influence of jazz was growing, but there was an exchange.”

For example, the 1920 song Mon Homme by Chevalier’s composer Maurice Yvain later turned up in the United States, sung by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, Dicale noted.

Jazz bands ruled Paris cabarets, clustered in the shadow of Sacre Coeur in the district dubbed Black Montmartre at the time.

Black American jazz chanteuse Josephine Baker burst onto the scene in 1925 with her sensational, risque performances at La Revue Negre.

Duke Ellington’s first recordings began taking Europe by storm at the same time.

“The perception of black people changed,” Cugny said.