African American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora

African American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora is a new book that examines the migration of Jazz Musicians to France, Germany, England, Holland, Russia, China, Japan, Turkey, Morocco, and other countries from the end of World War I to the present. These musicians found that the Jim Crow Laws were not universal, and they were hailed as the epitome of high culture all over the world. For example, soprano saxophone virtuoso Sidney Bechet played at England's Buckingham Palace in 1919, and he fraternized with King George V who remarked to Bechet that his favorite song of the evening was the Characteristic Blues. At the same time, a new wave of violence against African Americans was taking place: it is known as The Red Summer of 1919.

The cultural impact that these musicians had abroad was staggering; today, it is somewhat difficult to fathom that people willingly risked their lives by listening to African American jazz on the radio, but this was commonplace in Nazi Germany and a rich jazz record smuggling trade went on in the record stores. Labels from Johann Sebastian Bach albums were often placed on coveted Duke Ellington or Count Basie albums ,while the Luftwaffe's pilots tuned in the BBC to listen to “good" jazz when they were supposed to be bombing the radio tower: somehow, they never hit the tower. Thus, even in one of the most extremely repressive periods in modern history, jazz music brought people at both extremes together as Nazi officers printed and distributed newsletters at the Russian Front detailing where saxophonist Benny Carter would be playing. The extent to which jazz has influenced global politics and culture over time is remarkable, and African American Jazz Musicians in the Diaspora unifies the disparate strands of this understudied phenomenon. The book will be available at amazon.com in March 2003, and at barnesandnoble.com in April 2003.

Website: http://drlarryross.bizland.com.