Repertoires of Resistance: Musical Resources for the Reimagining of the Nation

Drawn from a larger study of how French citizens used musical performance to embolden and legitimize their resistance to the German Occupation, this paper analyzes the popular musical resources that citizens inherited from their forebears, looking for the ways in which these symbols had been imbued with national significance during the decades that preceded the Second World War. I begin by placing popular music within the context of wartime France, when jazz’s immense popularity began to eclipse that of traditional French chanson. Just as jazz fans celebrated what they considered to be a musical representation of freedom from restrictive social boundaries, however, conservative critics decried jazz as a degenerate art form that would ultimately corrupt the French race. These cultural leaders urged the nation to return to its own musical heritage, to embrace chansonniers like Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier who would protect and promulgate traditional French values. Reconstructing these debates and grounding them in the political upheaval that followed France’s defeat in 1940, I show how key sites of production rendered art songs and chanson the true paradigm of French musical tradition while resigning jazz and swing to the periphery of civic belonging. As collaborationist politicians and German occupiers attempted to uproot long-held notions of French nationalism and promote fascism, these meanings constrained Vichy’s efforts and created rich opportunities for citizens to defy Nazi ideology and invoke their republican heritage.