Jazz Resistance Fighters

Author: Serge Truffaut Illustrator: Christian Tiffet

A keen observer of American society for decades, Serge Truffaut is first and foremost a jazz enthusiast. A jazz fanatic, about whom he continues to write in the daily newspaper Le Devoir, even though he has officially retired from it after some 35 years of passionate work. A storyteller with an inimitable style, Truffaut offers here a unique perspective on jazz, through portraits of the great names who have nourished this music of sharing, where exchanges between musicians, from one group to another, from one listening filled with improvisations to another, make it an art that so well embraces the history in which it has unfolded. Jazz cannot be reduced to the few geniuses in which it is often confined, as Truffaut clearly demonstrates through the portraits of nearly forty musicians. And to clearly show the anchoring of this music in the space that saw its birth and development, Truffaut also sketches the key role of certain cities in the history of jazz: Kansas City, Detroit and other cities take on a color that we did not suspect. All with previously unpublished drawings by Christian Tiffet, which contribute to taking jazz out of an imagination saturated by photos that do not exhaust the richness of this musical tradition. EXCERPT: "In Los Angeles, jazz manifested itself later than in Chicago, New York, Detroit, Kansas City and Philadelphia. On the other hand, once that was done, once "born", it made its mark with brilliance. Apart from the strictly musical world, jazzmen were to introduce themselves into all the meanders of the film industry from the 1950s onwards. The city of angels was also the epicenter of an aesthetic revolution thanks to West Coast Jazz. That said, two musicians would have a significant influence on the evolution of jazz in the area: trombonist Kid Ory and composer-pianist Jelly Roll Morton, who had this in common: French was their first language. Well-versed in all the subtleties of “New Orleans” or “Dixieland,” as he was one of its innovators, Ory achieved great success with the first album of the genre recorded in Los Angeles.

ISBN: 9782897941154