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From the History of Jazz in Europe towards a European History of Jazz: The International Federation of Hot Clubs (1935–6) and ‘Jazz Internationalism’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2023
Extract
‘Hot clubs’ proliferated all over Europe and the United States during the 1930s. For a brief period (1935–6), they joined forces in an International Federation of Hot Clubs (IFHC), the main purpose of which was to link together devotees in search of American hot jazz recordings at a time when they were difficult to find and buy in Europe, since that sub-genre was less popular and commercially successful than what was then called ‘straight’ jazz. The expression ‘hot jazz’ was coined by jazz musicians at the end of the 1920s and referred to a style based on performance and improvisation rather than on the composition and performance of written parts. A founder of the Hot Club de France (HCF) in 1932, the French jazz critic Hugues Panassié was the first to establish a hierarchy between these two styles:
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References
104 ‘Straight signifie […] jouer le texte musical tel qu’il a été écrit […] C’est la formule qu’emploient le plus souvent les grands orchestres de Paul Whiteman, Jack Hylton, Ray Starita, etc. […] C’est aussi […] celle qui représente le moins bien la véritable physionomie du jazz. Au contraire, le jazz hot, beaucoup moins connu en France, est la forme du vrai jazz. Le jazz hot consiste en une interprétation fantaisiste qui s’écarte entièrement de la ligne primitive du morceau.’ Hugues Panassié, Le jazz hot (Paris: Corrêa, 1934), 25Google Scholar. Author’s translation.
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