Watching a Field Study: Part 1 - Making a Dent

There are so many different ways of being good with people, or bad with people, we often get stuck in thinking one way is right, or that someone else's way is wrong.  I'm not sure why we do that.  It occurred to me how right I am for a Field Study, and how wrong I feel for a Field Study.

I am good with people, but perhaps in a different way than Field Studies tries to teach.  Asking questions, being so procedural, sincere people asking insincere questions to get sincere results.  It works, but was never the way I imagined doing it.  I know that once people get out into the field that's not necessarily the way they do it, either.  I was just thinking that the moment someone begins asking questions of someone else to get a particular answer, the question stops being sincere.  I do this everyday, don't I?

"How are you?"

But what I've been learning is perhaps how wrong I feel for a Field Study and yet how Field Studies is the only right program for the way I want to go about learning.  What other program would let me go to Paris to study African American expatriates?  What other program?  And what other program would let me go to France to live there, to study there, without being tied to someone else's agenda?  I could study in France doing some kind of Direct Enrollment, but I wouldn't be taking classes about things I want to study because the point would be studying in France, not WHAT I'm studying in France.  I could go on a Study Abroad, but again, the point wouldn't be to go to France for any particular purpose, but I'd be paying through the nose to go to places that have nothing to do with what interests me (or more likely, because everything interests me) have nothing to do with my focus of study, which is American Studies, American culture.

I keep harping on about American this and American that. Mostly because I don't believe in anything American; and I also believe in everything American.  I always liked the sentiment of Plato's: "I am from the world."  And I believe we can have world citizens, rather than American citizens or French citizens.  But, I don't know.  I'm still fiercely patriotic and I don't think anyone has the right to truly criticize this country unless it also loves it.  I am not this way because my country deserves it, or because my country is superior; maybe I am this way for the opposite reason.  Because it is home; because it's got so far to go in my approximation.  Because there's so far it could go.  And maybe I've got a little bit of that mon pays pride.

I teach the Family History class every week at church.  I think family history work is very important, but why the hell are we doing family history work for strangers?  I don't mean, why do we go to the temple and get baptized for strangers, one could consider that service for others.  I mean, why are we searching for names of people we are related to, birth dates, and then ask these people to be baptized and sealed to our families when we've done nothing else to find out who they are?  I mean--why would you want to be attached forever to someone you don't know?  For this reason, I find it so important to find out as much as you can about someone, not necessarily BEFORE you do temple work for them, but during and after as well.

A friend offered me tea  yesterday.  I tried it for the second time in my life.  The last time I tried it was probably about two and a half years ago.  I still don't like it, though this cup of tea had sugar in it, at least.  I still have a box of tea bags that Jake gave me my senior year of high school with a mug.  The mug I use every day, the Earl Grey tea I've never touched.  But I've also never been able to throw it away.  Because Jake was certain that someday I'd try tea.  I always said I didn't drink tea, it was a religious thing.  Now I don't care so much, and I'd drink tea if I liked it.  Two and a half years ago I finally broke down and told Jake I'd try some of his tea.  It was green tea.  He didn't put sugar or honey in it.  Grossest thing I've ever tasted.  But I remember when there was a time tea was just something I wouldn't do.  I thought I'd always feel that way.  Now I don't think I see any point.  Do you think I'll ever get to that point with alcohol?...Just kidding.  I think about Jake often, especially when I think about Family History work.  Because he's made such a big impression in my life and yet I'm not sure if anyone really knows it the way I do.  If someone were to ask my sisters about me, I'm not sure they'd have a clue who I was to anyone other than them.

Why does this matter?  Well, I just think about Field Studies, and how we have these experiences that take a fraction of a second that change who we are.  Or we meet these people that just leave these impressions we'll never iron out.  And who will know?  But worse, who will have those experiences if they aren't taught to appreciate them?  For I fear that every day I have experiences that could change me, if I'd let them, but so often I don't.  Field Studies is about teaching people HOW to have those experiences, and how to let other people make dents in you so that you'll never be the same.  Because what's the point of living life the other way?

I think this is one reason I'm sad to see Field Studies go.

Proposal: Methodology and Procedures

Entry

            I plan to find a host family that I might live with, who might help me enter some facet of the community in Paris where I might become more acquainted with Parisian-French culture.  Though I will do no formal interviews on French culture, I do expect the interactions and conversations I have to help me better understand the experiences of the expatriates I am studying.  Though I am aware that Parisian culture has changed in the last 100 years, given the length of time French culture has been developing, an hundred years will make little difference in the large scheme of culture, which has its roots in centuries of history.

            Furthermore, I hope to familiarize myself with the city, but particularly the parts of the city where African-American expatriates lived, worked, and socialized.  I hope to visit many areas in Paris with sufficient history and representation of French culture to help me gather a larger understanding of what the French value, and by association what many expatriates would have clung to as their own values.  I believe I will find these cultural insets within museums of art, history, monuments, churches and cathedrals, day-trips in and directly around Paris to important places.

            More specifically, I also plan to attend some of the most directly related areas where jazz and blues have been fostered in Paris, attend concerts, revues or small shows.  By making myself available to these activities, I hope to meet others who share these interests and might be willing to share their experiences and understanding of Jazz with me.

Informants

            I expect my informants to be musicians and writers of the period I study, and therefore will be reading and listening a lot, analyzing their work and my understanding of their work within their historical context.

            Though I don’t want to focus on contemporary Jazz and its modern expression in France, I will not turn down the opportunity to talk to others about jazz, soul, or blues, if they should want to.  In this way, I am sure my opinions and understanding will be altered by what is shared with me, but I do not plan on formal interviews.  If one should occur, or I find it necessary or beneficial, I will be explicit about the work and study I am doing, what part they play in it, and will most definitely share with them, if given the chance, the understanding they have helped me gain.

Sampling and Recruitment

            I will stick to those sources in American and French history and culture, and African-American music and/or literature.  Because my research focuses in history, few of those ‘sources’ will be living informants.  As such, conversations or interactions with living informants about these topics will either be informal and/or consented to.

            If interviews should be necessary or if they occur, I will have consent forms in French and English to help those informants be aware of my work, how they will influence it, giving them access to my final piece so they have an opportunity to be accurately and faithfully represented.  This is not the focus of my research, however, and so I do not expect it to be a time-intensive or significant part of my overall project.

Description of Method

            The methodology I will be using is primarily an American Studies methodology in which I will gather sources to help me with all four facets of the methodology: Textual Interpretation, Archive Building, Institutional Contextualization and Social Theory.  The intention of looking at all four facets of an event, a place, or an ‘artifact’ is particular to the American Studies field, as it is interdisciplinary in nature and seeks to regards facets of American culture more holistically than if one were to look at American culture through history, sociology, economics, or literary movements alone.

            Textual Interpretation will be gathered from autobiographies of the musicians and writers that lived in Paris and recorded their experiences in Paris.  It will include music recordings as well, and may include a close reading of certain areas of the city.  I will use theories of space and place to help me with this type of close reading.

            Archive Building will consist of everything I can get my hands on from an understanding of the city itself, and its history, African American history, but particularly the history of music and jazz, and the history of African Americans in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.  A lot of this will be history of people and places.  I will glean much of this information from books, but I plan to use the city itself as a guide, as I visit historical monuments, museums that can share particular insights on archeology, history, culture (art, music, etc.) and other influences the city has sustained or inspired.

            Institutional Contextualization will primarily focus on the institution of jazz and its contextualization within the time period, however once one tries to contextualize an institution with regards to a particular cultural artifact—i.e. a song, a painting, a particular building, or a wall of graffiti—its application differs.  As such, my use of this methodology will change in regards to particular artifacts or places.  I hope my understanding of jazz as an institution, particularly in France will be aided by my attendance to jazz concerts in Paris and a better understanding of how the French took in Jazz as their own during and after the 1920s.

            Last, Social Theory plays a big part in American Studies methodologies and the few I will focus on include race, transnational studies, and urban studies.  Again, much of this information will come from reading, however, I will also try to glean information from the culture of Paris that I observe as I become familiar and acquainted with the city, and the cultures that have contributed to its diversity and culture.  Much of this social theory, however, will be taking place within a better understanding of how African Americans were treated in America and a comparison of how they were treated in France.  Since I cannot interview those who experienced the move from America to France during this time, I will have to rely more on history and a strong ‘archive’ to supplement my understanding.
edited 3/6/12

Inquiry Conference

I've been helping at Inquiry Conference--being a Field Study employee and all--and though it's only been one day, attending Inquiry Conference has been a good experience.  It's helped me think about what kind of knowledge I could come away from my Field Study with, and what kind of things I might be able to present to people about the study I do.  A lot of people have field studies that require they ask questions of others.  So far, I haven't gotten around this aspect of my field study.  I honestly want to experience French culture for the purpose of finding out what kind of influence it would have on African American expatriates, but also just expatriates in general.  I'd love to interview people about music, and about their heritage and their history--especially if they're African-American.  But I don't know that I can count on finding expatriates who are interested in the music scene.  I'll be very curious to see if I kind find any french musicians who play jazz to know what they think about the history of the music they play.  But I just don't want to count on finding anyone, and honestly I'm more interested in the history anyway.  I'm interested in Paris, the culture of the city and the French culture in general, and really seeing where it all fits in to my understanding of the expatriate experience.  I feel like a lot of the reading I've been doing lately is giving me a really good idea of what it would have been like.  But I guess what I've been coming to lately is an understanding that no culture operates in a vacuum.  Of course I knew this before, but putting words to it makes it a lot easier to contextualize: we can't teach U.S. History the way we do, because it's ridiculous to think we became what we did all on our own.  We also can't keep teaching a white-washed U.S. History because it's simply not a true history.  I know that if I was really interested in studying black creative history I'd be in New Orleans, or Harlem or something.  I've honestly asked myself why I chose Paris.  But then I have to remember that I'm a multi-dimensional person, too.  And I have interests outside of black creative history.  French, France, writing especially.  And these are things I want to work on while I'm there studying what I'll be studying.

Which is where I'm coming to.  I want to write something.  I didn't want to admit it, because that puts a lot of expectations on me.  But I want to write something while I'm there--something creative, but true.  And why not Paris, honestly?  Why not go to the creative capitol of the world?  Why not listen to the best music ever made? Why not?  Why not?

When I think about writing, I really start to get excited about France.  Honestly, going out and interviewing people is going to keep me locked up inside, afraid.  But going out to experience things for the sake of writing will oddly enough get me talking.  So I need to stop feeling bullied by these anthropologist ethnographers and just be myself.

I love you anthropologists, by the way.  I'm just not one.

Proposal: Background & Significance; Literature Review

“So here we stand, on the edge of hell, in Harlem, and wonder what we will do, in the face of all that we remember.” – Langston Hughes

Location

            I’ll be studying in Paris and with the help of Anderson and Wells’ Paris Reflections will be able to walk through Paris with some understanding of where African Americans lived, worked, and socialized in Paris (Anderson and Wells).

History

America between the wars

            In 1918 about 1 million American troops had been deployed to Europe to aid the Allied forces in their fight against Germany in the Great War.  13% of those drafted were African American who served in segregated units.  American history dictates the Great War as a conflict started by the old world and ended by the new, with Americans as the heroes and saviors of a long, bloody and “total” war.

            Apart from the brief and fatal Spanish Influenza brought back to the United States in 1918 by troops who had served in Europe, the years just following the war are regarded in the United States as a time of great prosperity, or the “party” decade of American history.  This decade was coined “The Jazz Age”: the age of flappers, alcohol, pushing social boundaries, speakeasies, mob control, the Charleston; the age of plenty, of luxury, of free expression, and of scandal.  The young were in charge, changing the way Americans dressed, the way they consumed, the way they spoke, and the way they spent their time.  The music was loud, boisterous, got people moving; youth started buying race records on the corners, listening to jazz, and the blues; they went to the pictures every weekend, spent late nights dancing and drinking—involved in rampant law-breaking.  The war which many Americans had just returned from was largely ignored as an influence on the lifestyle many Americans turned to. (Britten and Mathless)

            In actuality, the 20s were an Age of Uncertainty, particularly for the facet of Americans who were racially marginalized.  In the early 1900s, African Americans began moving north into cities with greater employment opportunities.  The Great Migration changed the demographic of northern cities, and during America’s short involvement in the Great War, many African Americans filled those job openings left by white volunteers and draftees.  The summer race riots of 1919 which took place in Chicago, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington D.C., and Nebraska, among many other places, evidenced the great uncertainty about race relations in the United States after the war.  There are two primary reasons recognized for these riots, first that many white veterans returned to the States to find their jobs taken by black workers, or returned to homes much changed by black presence and felt a need to restore order; second, that many black veterans assumed equal treatment would be afforded them in homecoming celebrations, or assumed they would be treated with respect as veterans of the United States Army after having been treated with respect by white Frenchmen (Stovall 26-27).  Lashing out in uncertainty and hatred, white mobs killed and lynched men without trial, accused men of rapes, harassment and murders they did not commit, destroyed African American housing districts which left many dead or homeless, and burned down entire sections of cities (Gates 262-265).  The Chicago Race Riots alone left 38 dead and over 500 injured[1]; that summer 10 of those lynched in the south in 1919 were black veterans (Stovall 27).

            Having wrongly assumed that perhaps they, as veterans, had earned the respect of their fellow Americans, many African Americans who had served in Europe during the Great War returned to France as musicians, performers, writers, artists, and intellectuals, to a place where they felt appreciated and valued.  Thought the racial freedom many African Americans reported having experienced in Europe was not entirely the case (Schmeisser 109-110), the French ideal of an élite (Barlow and Nadeau 47-59) allowed these cultural contributors the chance to give of their talent without apparent racial discrimination (Whalan).

            Meanwhile, those who stayed behind were the predecessors to the civil rights movement that would take full effect thirty years later.  (“We return.  We return from fighting. We return fighting.” – W.E.B. DuBois)

France entre-deux-guerres

            France was not America entre-deux-guerres.  In many ways, France was aware of the anxiety that riddled the twenty years between the two wars.  By the war’s finish, everyone knew someone who had died in the war because 6000 men were killed every day of the duration of World War I; out of 38,000 communes in France, only one did not lose someone to the war.  Furthermore, 5 million acres of French farmland had been destroyed, and by the beginning of WWII the number of cities with populations over a million had doubled in France as it became harder to sustain a lifestyle in the country. (History of France)

            Before the war, Europe had had high hopes for its future, but instead “European civilization had managed to produce the most destructive, bloody war in human history. . . . This lost self-confidence lay at the heart of the Roaring Twenties in Paris, leading many thoughtful Parisians to look toward other traditions as a way of restoring their shattered faith.”  Lifestyles drastically changed, many of which influenced American culture as well.

The feminist movement reigned during the period, and a new fashion of women (called les garçons) cut their hair short and began wearing men’s clothes.  They discarded their corsets and started showing their legs, they smoked in public, and began working to fill the need caused by all the loss of men in France. (History of France)  After the trauma of war, “Paris seemed bent on having a good time; the war was over, and young people now had the freedom to experience life to the fullest. . . . One result was a new interest in Africa and blacks as a whole” (31).

Jazz and African Americans in France

Though “race music” as it might have been called by Americans, was introduced in Europe before the Great War, and records of bands which toured through Germany, France and Britain were found years later, it didn’t have much of an influence on Europe until after the First World War (Lotz).  However, because some black music got into Europe before the war, Lotz argues that its influence in Europe needs to be reassessed because it shaped how African American artists were received in Europe later.

            Most attribute the inextricable introduction of Jazz to France to the African American soldiers who served in France during the Great War.  Though American units were segregated, undoubtedly soldiers played the blues and jazz while they were in Europe.  Immediately following the war, there was a high demand for revues and black musicians in Paris to play Jazz for the French.  Such revues was how Josephine Baker came to Paris; her overnight success in Paris kept Baker in the city, singing, dancing, and performing in shows until she returned to New York for a short stay.  She was not received well (Read: the Reception of Jazz in America) and returned to Paris.  Other African American expatriates gathered in Montmartre, where their musical expertise was enjoyed by the French.  In truth, the French demanded black musicians for their clubs, preferring them to white musicians. “ ‘ If there was any racism it was our people that used to give preference to the colored musician,’” one French musician said; he performed in blackface so he would have the chance to play with a black band (Stovall 38-39).

            (Include: (Archer-Straw), (Jackson “Making Jazz French”) & Django Reinhart)

Influence on America

Alexandre Dumas (Martone),

Significance

            I’m interested in studying African American expatriates in Paris simply because when one learns about the “Jazz Age” of American history, not only is the French perspective of the War, and France’s influence on American society often ignored, but more important the African-American perspective is disregarded.  Little, if anything, is ever taught of the Summer Race Riots which took place after the First World War, or how the freedoms blacks experienced abroad played an influential part in the civil rights movement of the 1950s-70s.

            If we do mention Paris or France during the Jazz Age, it is always in reference to the Anglo-American expatriates: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.  Though worthy of mention, these white writers only represent a fraction of the American expatriates in Paris at the time, and are only a fraction of contributors to the American-Parisian culture that influenced America.  This is one of many examples of a “white-washed” history.  As the entire “Jazz” Age, it can be argued, was the gift of black America to the United States, and for that matter, to France, why the story of the history of Jazz is not told in an American History context is entirely beyond me (Beregot and Merlin).

            Though what I primarily want to study is how French culture influenced the black expatriate musicians in Paris and what they perhaps brought back to the United States because of their experience in France, ultimately, I think the significance of studying this facet of American culture is to treat it as main-stream American history, rather than marginalize it as “African-American History.”

African-American Expatriates

Short Visits

Langston Hughes

W.E.B. DuBois

Long Visits/Stays

Josephine Baker – Complete Record Works, 1926-27

Ada “Bricktop” Smith

Others

Claude McKay - Banjo

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[1] http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1032.html