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Making claims on echoes: Dranem, Cole Porter and the biguine between the Antilles, France and the US

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2014

Edwin Hill
Edwin Hill*
Affiliation:
Department of French and Italian, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, 3501 Trousdale Parkway, Taper Hall of Humanities 155 E, Los Angeles, California 90089-0359 E-mail: edwinhil@usc.edu
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Abstract

This paper considers the ways in which the biguine (or ‘beguine’) circulated as a French West Indian musical genre and as a signifier for colonial and island exoticism in non-biguine musical genres during the early to mid-20th century. I begin by suggesting the ways in which the colonial and transnational conditions of its performance have left a history of ideological tensions within popular and academic discussions about the biguine. I then suggest some of the specific ways in which the biguine's circulation functioned in the context of the interwar years and resonated with the discourse and dynamics of ‘Jazz Age Paris’, negrophilia and le tumulte noir. Finally, I offer a close reading of the ways in which French comedian-singer Dranem's ‘La Biguine’ and Cole Porter's ‘Begin the Beguine’ playfully represent the genre in French chanson coloniale and popular song. Rather than viewing the biguine's conditions of performance, or the re-appropriation of the biguine in name only, as the equivalent of the complete musical colonisation and erasure of the genre, I propose that we extend biguine discussion beyond its empirical musicological elements, and lay claim on the echoes of biguine discourse as they resonate through other genres.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , October 2014 , pp. 492 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Discography

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