Soundscapes of Liberation

In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore traces the popularization of African American music in postwar France, where it signaled new forms of power and protest. Moore surveys a wide range of musical genres, soundscapes, and media: the US military's wartime records and radio programs; the French record industry's catalogs of blues, jazz, and R&B recordings; the translations of jazz memoirs; a provincial choir specializing in spirituals; and US State Department-produced radio programs that broadcast jazz and gospel across the French empire. In each of these contexts, individual intermediaries such as educators, producers, writers, and radio deejays imbued African American music with new meaning, value, and political power. Their work resonated among diverse Francophone audiences and transformed the lives and labor of many African American musicians, who found financial and personal success as well as discrimination in France. By showing how the popularity of African American music was intertwined with contemporary structures of racism and imperialism, Moore demonstrates this music's centrality to postwar France and the convergence of decolonization, the expanding globalized economy, the Cold War, and worldwide liberation movements.

“Celeste Day Moore takes us on a dazzling and deeply researched tour through the soundscapes and multisensory experiences of the Francophone Black world. Soundscapes of Liberation is indispensable reading for scholars and students of the African Diaspora, liberation projects, and the circulation of music in the twentieth century.”, “Celeste Day Moore provides the best account of the process by which African American culture was popularized in postwar France at a time when France was negotiating its relationship to decolonization, American culture, and power writ large. This fascinating and detailed book made me think anew about things I thought I knew well.”, "What Moore describes is not a simple love affair between a music maligned at home and a country destined to embrace it. . . . Navigating broad territories, she moves from an era when African-American music could only be apprehended fragmentarily to the advent of mass broadcasting, long playing records, and the involvement of state powers. Although this history's outlines can feel familiar, it is approached in a fresh way.", "Thoroughly researched, erudite, and well written, this volume is required reading for those who study the African diaspora and African American music. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.", "Soundscapes of Liberation is a meticulously, deeply, and broadly, researched work. It is well-written and compelling."

Celeste Day Moore is Assistant Professor of History at Hamilton College.