How Django survived the Nazi occupation

Phil

https://youtu.be/VH40n5lchQo?si=ZDGjX7q4XMhK8kP1

lucky

I know something about this, I believe it’s a student project from a university I used to work at. I wasn’t involved as it predated my interest in gypsy jazz but I did speak to Alan Rice (one of the interviewees) about it. I haven’t seen the video for a long time but from memory it doesn’t really engage with the fact that the Hot Club was deeply involved in the resistance and was basically a front for British spies.

Russell Letson

There's a good bit of material about jazz in general and Django in particular during the occupation. The period was filled with ironies, contradictions, and disconnects between official Nazi policy and facts on the ground. Jazz, swing, and dance music remained popular despite the official policies--and not just among civilians in France, Belgium, and Denmark, but among German soldiers. As for Django's survival and behavior during the war, my impression is that it was thanks to his strange, near-childlike/ousider personality and his prodigious talent, and probably a good bit of luck. And he wasn't the only gypsy musician to survive the war--his brother Joseph and the Ferrets were active throughout. I suspect that the Nazi decision to use Paris as a kind of R&R city made it possible to go along to get along.

Good reading: Mike Zwerin's La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis (aka Swing under the Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom); Michael Dregni's Django; and the 59-page booklet accompanying the 4-CD set Swing tanzen verboten! (I suspect that information from these fed into the video.)

BTW, for fictional portraits of occupied Paris, I strongly recommend Alan Furst's "Night Soldiers" novels.

billyshakes

Good reading: Mike Zwerin's La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis (aka Swing under the Nazis: Jazz as a Metaphor for Freedom); Michael Dregni's Django; and the 59-page booklet accompanying the 4-CD set Swing tanzen verboten! (I suspect that information from these fed into the video.)

I'll add Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany by Michael H. Kater, which does deal with Django and QHCF at various points.

For general info on jazz in Germany, try The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culturer in Weimar Germany by Jonathan Wipplinger, which is available free to download at JSTOR here.