Join our IES Abroad Paris BIA staff and faculty on Friday, April 23 at 11:00 a.m. Central Time as they discuss one Parisian neighborhood and its many and enduring ties with North and Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Paris would never be the Paris of today without the cultural influence and contributions of African and African-American visual artists, writers and musicians. By the 1910s, Montmartre had already become an effervescent center of the Avant-garde and Cubism, both of which drew on art forms from the African continent and diaspora. A few years later, a group of Black American soldiers introduced jazz to the City of Light, and Montmartre became known as the Harlem of the Seine. What would the Parisian cabarets, the Theatre des Champs-Elysées and the Folies Bergère, have been without the dancer and singer Josephine Baker and her Revue nègre?

And as for French literature, what would Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Apollinaire and Louis Aragon have been without the influence of Black cultural forms? Why did so many Black American artists, writers, musicians and singers such as Sydney Bechet, Lois Mailou Jones, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, settle in Paris? All had experienced racial prejudice in the US, and found in Paris a fuller measure of freedom and creativity. Today, moving from one Paris neighborhood can be as exciting as moving to another country. Learn about the Goutte d’Or, just to the east of Montmartre, and its many and enduring ties with North and Sub-Saharan Africa. In this colorful and popular district, life takes place in its streets, markets, and shops, and you are welcome to join in.