Scientific direction of Martin Guerpin and Manon Fabre
When jazz meets dance music and popular songs
Analyzing an evolution in popular music (1920s-1940s)
During the 1930s, prominent critics such as Hugues Panassié, Robert Goffin, and Marshall Stearns advocated definitions of jazz based on concepts of "authenticity" and "otherness" in relation to European music. According to these critics, "real" jazz was regarded as "black" music. Concurrently, the evolution of the distinction between "hot jazz" and "straight jazz" towards a distinction between "jazz music" and "dance music" (in magazines such as De Jazzwereld in the Netherlands, for instance) attests to a process of exclusion (by some specialized critics) of a portion of the repertoires from the field of jazz, and to a musical evolution of a segment of the jazz orchestras.
This approach and these distinctions have had a long-standing influence on the historiography of jazz (particularly of its early decades). Consequently, numerous repertoires which were labeled "jazz" during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s but which did not conform to the purist definitions of jazz have been overshadowed by jazz historiography, despite the fact they were the prevailing soundtrack for most of Europeans and Americans. This special issue of Epistrophy will examine a selection of these "non-purist" jazz repertoires, including those of Jack Hylton, Paul Whiteman, Ray Noble, Vincent Lopez, Claude Thornhill, Ray Ventura, Ambrose and his Orchestra, and František Alois Tichý Ultraphon Jazz Orchestra.
A salient feature of these ensembles is that, beginning in the mid-1920s, their jazz style exhibited a wide array of influences, including chanson, operetta, music hall repertoires, musical folklore, and classical music — genres which, reciprocally, were not led untouched by the growing popularity of jazz from the beginning of the 1920s on. This eclectic blend oden led to the evolution of their music into genres usually termed "popular", “dance” or "variety" music. These orchestras contributed decisively to the integration of jazz into the realm of entertainment, while concurrently functioning as a nexus for exchange and interaction between musical genres. In the late 1930s in France, this phenomenon of musical appropriation that emerged gave rise to a distinct musical genre known as "variétés." However, this category appears to differ from the "varieties" that emerged concurrently in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. A global comparative approach is therefore essential to understand how generic distinctions between "jazz," "variety," and "popular music" (or between "hot" and "commercial", to take another example) emerged and evolved in the 1930s and early 1940s.
The aforementioned orchestras also serve as an ideal case study for examining musicians’ and bandleaders’ practices as both crad and art. In jazz and/or dance orchestras, musicians had to perform written music and to arrange songs — two practices which have long remained on the margins of jazz studies. To ignore them is to overlook a significant portion of the jazz and popular music repertoires, which were nevertheless listened to on a daily and massive scale. What’s more, the study of dance and jazz musicianship as a profession offers a unique opportunity to examine the variety of pathways to professionalization (conservatory studies, amateur practices and tournaments, continuing education through the pedagogical sections of professional and union magazines, but also the specificities of career trajectories of female musicians and the way they are viewed by male musicians and critics, etc.). Rather than emphasizing the prominent figures of jazz and the conventional artists within its historiography, the approach adopted in this special issue of Epistrophy is aimed at gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the practices and career trajectories representative of most musicians (male and female) belonging to (and making) the jazz world from the 1920s to the 1940s.
The editors of this special issue therefore encourage articles concentrating on one of the following themes :
- The emergence and evolution of distinctions between categories such as "jazz," "swing," "variety," "popular music," "dance music," etc., in the discourse of musicians and in the general and specialized press ;
- The repertoires of "dance music," "typical music," or "variety" bands, the characteristics of these repertoires, and their performance by jazz/dance bands, as well as their relationship to the definitions of jazz in circulation during the 1920s- 1940s ;
- Writings (in the press or in methods) indicating or teaching ways of practicing, performing, or arranging in "hot," "straight," "swing" or other popular music styles.
- The career paths of musicians and bandleaders, as well as their shids between the world of jazz and that of popular music in general.
Proposals for articles, which should include an abstract of 200 words maximum and a biobibliography of 100 words maximum, should be submitted to Martin Guerpin (martin.guerpin@univ-evry.fr), Manon Fabre (manon.fabre2@uvsq.fr), and Epistrophy (epistrophy@epistrophy.fr) by April 14, 2025.
Provisional editorial calendar
- April 21, 2025 : reply to authors from Epistrophy’s editors and editorial board
- November 10, 2025 : submission of the full article (30,000 characters maximum, excluding notes and bibliography)
- December 19, 2025 : peer-reviewed articles returned to authors
- February 9, 2026 : final articles returned
- Spring/summer 2026 : publication of Epistrophy’s special issue