Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was a French jazz singer and dancer who came from America. She was the Jazz Age made flesh, a shooting star that burned across its sky. Hemingway said she was “the most sensational woman anybody ever saw or ever will.”
She was tall, coffee skin, ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to end all smiles. So said Picasso.
About 1500 men asked for her hand in marriage. One killed himself at her feet. Two others fought over her with swords among the graves of St Stephen’s in Budapest.
She came to Paris in 1925. She fell in love with the city and called it her country.
Her “Danse sauvage” that year made her famous: wearing little more than some feathers she danced the Charleston to jazz music. She danced wild and free, possessed by the music.
Even though she came from a place as ordinary as St Louis in the middle of America, the daughter of a washerwoman, because she was black the white men of France saw her as more African than American. She was “primitive” and “exotic”.
“White folk’s imaginations are really something when it comes to the Negro,” she said.
She played to this picture of her as a black savage with the “Danse sauvage” and later with her famous banana dance: all she wore were 16 bananas!
From dancing she branched into singing and acting. She travelled the world and wore the most beautiful clothes. She walked her leopard down the streets of Paris.
Now famous in Europe, she returned to America in 1935. But America was not ready for an “uppity coloured girl”, as her husband later put it. When she got back to France she gave up her American citizenship and became French.
In 1940 Paris fell to Hitler. Because she was so famous she could travel freely behind enemy lines with few questions asked. She wrote down enemy secrets for the French Resistance in invisible ink on her sheet music!
In 1942 she sang for the troops in North Africa, raising their spirits in a dark time.
She was not able to have children herself – she nearly died during childbirth – so she adopted 12 children from her world travels:
- Aiko (Korea)
- Luis (Colombia)
- Janot (Japan)
- Jari (Finland)
- Jean-Claude (Canada)
- Moses (French)
- Marianne (France)
- Noel (France)
- Brahim (Arab)
- Mara (Venezuela)
- Koffi (Ivory Coast)
- Stellina (Morocco)
They all lived together at her big, beautiful house in south-western France.
She was a big believer in the brotherhood of man. That is why she spoke at the civil rights march on Washington in 1963 and yet could not support the Black Power movement.
By the 1960s she was deeply in debt and lost her house. The princess of Monaco gave her another, smaller one to live in.
In her last years she sang at Carnegie Hall in New York – accepted at last by America – and made a comeback in Paris. She died in her sleep at age 68, almost 50 years to the day after she came to Paris.
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I had no idea she even had children.
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I applaud your work and point of views on various matters as I a travel your blog.
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Thanks. Enjoy!
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If you’re interested, I found this documentary about her on Youtube.
It goes in a bit further about her and perpetuating the stereotype…according to this documentary she was simply poking fun at it.
But here’s the link to the first part (it comes in six parts)
I hope you have time to watch it
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Wow, thanks!
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Move over Angelina Jolie!
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Such a beautiful woman. And what an amazing life she had!
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Does anybody know what became of the ‘rainbow’ children she adopted? I see Jean Claude became a writer…
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there was nothing ordinary about early 20th century St. Louis, which was then a top 5 city in population and a thriving hub for black cultural expression, especially in ragtime, blues, and to a lesser but still notable extent, jazz. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to claim St. Louis was the most important ragtime city, in the era when ragtime was at its peak. Folkloric contributions (based on real events) from St. Louis include Stagger Lee and Frankie & Johnny. Jospehine Baker grew up next to the busiest railway station in the world at that time, Union Station. This was the St. Louis of her youth
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Great dancer! She wasn’t much of an actress, but she shined in dance or song.
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Another thing to keep in mind: post-WWI Paris’s avant-garde scene was interested in Africa and the ‘primitive.’ Like other Western cities, there was pushback against the notion that European culture was the best. Many began to question Western civilization’s superiority after the destruction and violence of the First World War. So, Josephine Baker came to France at the right time. Africa, jazz, ‘primitive’ was in, as long as it wasn’t Africans coming from France’s Empire.
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Today’s Google Doodle in the US is for Josephine Baker’s 111th birthday!
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“So, Josephine Baker came to France at the right time. Africa, jazz, ‘primitive’ was in, as long as it wasn’t Africans coming from France’s Empire.”
That claim isn’t accurate. France did not practice the type of apartheid the US and south Africa did. The man in charge of antiaircraft defense of Paris in 1915, was the very black commandant Camille Mortenol from Martinique. In 1914 Blaise Diagne was the first African elected to the French parliament and the first to become a member of government in 1931 when he was named under secretary of state for the colonies.
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she has been my ideal i would love to have lived her life
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