Between Duty and Romance: The Attraction of Sounding “Black” in Paris

The histories of Black Americans who significantly influenced French life and culture in Paris are hardly marked or visible across the most frequented tourist destinations or within state-sponsored museums dedicated to national history. Instead, certain tourist-oriented live performances constitute audible monuments to Black soldiers and musicians. Audible monuments are sound objects constructed through live orature, collective participation, or sound-producing movements that recall history and memory for the purpose of witness engagement or tourist consumption. Toward a critical analysis grounded in performance studies theory this essay first replays and reinterprets the music and military histories shared between African-descended US soldiers and the nation of France as a gendered and misaligned romance, and then suggests how performance events like the tours of “Black Paris” can rehearse that romance and then rupture it by a contemporary African presence.

Labor, Pleasure, and Possession in Transnational Black Performance

The study traces histories of African descended sacred music singers and musicians whose work has relied on transatlantic or transnational travel and theorizes performance labor through modes of pleasure and possession. Twentieth century United States examples are drawn from early musical recordings from 1909, concerts from the 1930s, through dramatic literature and theaters including Broadway stages from the 1950s, to internationally popular film and music video renderings of gospel performance through the 1990s. The study concludes with an ethnographic analysis of contemporary francophone African and French African performances in Paris, France that include oral storytelling and “Black American” gospel concerts

Labor, Pleasure, and Possession in Transnational Black Performance

The study traces histories of African descended sacred music singers and musicians whose work has relied on transatlantic or transnational travel and theorizes performance labor through modes of pleasure and possession. Twentieth century United States examples are drawn from early musical recordings from 1909, concerts from the 1930s, through dramatic literature and theaters including Broadway stages from the 1950s, to internationally popular film and music video renderings of gospel performance through the 1990s. The study concludes with an ethnographic analysis of contemporary francophone African and French African performances in Paris, France that include oral storytelling and “Black American” gospel concerts