Some of These Days: Black Stars, Jazz Aesthetics, and Modernist Culture

With peerless talent and unrivalled international presence, few stars shone brighter in the heady firmament of the Jazz Age than Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. Electric, charismatic, and unforgettable, both ignited the modern imaginations of cosmopolitan centers across Europe. Unabashedly themselves, they inspired poets, architects, novelists, and filmmakers across London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna with their indomitable artistic energy. But Some of These Days extends beyond pure dual biography to recreate the rich community of artists who interacted with-and were influenced by-Baker and Robeson. James Donald highlights how the sense of excitement and artistic renewal ushered in with the 'New Negro Movement' reverberated far beyond Harlem. Throughout this chronicle, Donald underscores the relationship of African American aesthetics to the modernist movement that flourished from the 1920s until the end of World War II. Vivid portraits of artists like T. S. Eliot, HD, Carl Van Vechten, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Gabin, and Adolf Loos, among others, animate the study. Traversing countries and artforms, Some of These Days illustrates the immense cross-cultural collaboration of film, song, dance, and literature that coalesced to create modernist culture-where the new rhythms of the machine age were gleefully embraced, allowing art to consider the new possibilities of cosmopolitanism in a modern world. Engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, Some of These Days recovers not just the romance, excitement, and uncertainty of Baker and Robeson's storied rise to stardom but also the political and cultural legacy of the movement that they embodied.

About the Author :
James Donald is Professor of Film Studies at the University of New South Wales and Visiting Professor in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool. His previous books include Imagining the Modern City and Close Up, 1927-1933.

Review :
"Some of These Days is a deft and engrossing double helix: a cultural history of international modernism through interwoven chapters on its two greatest African American stars, Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. Tracing their unparalleled impact across a variety of fields, from the stage to the screen, in architecture as well as politics, Donald demonstrates that Baker and Robeson - with their outsized charisma, their artistic daring, and their peripatetic restlessness - were the 'barometers' of the new age."--Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism - Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism "From the Tiller Girls to Paul Robeson, from Josephine Baker to dancing and architecture, Some of These Days is a rich, captivating work that challenges us to rethink the relationship between race, modernity, and diaspora identities. More than a resource providing insight into and analysis of cultural politics in the jazz age, this text also prods us into making vital connections between our own, contemporary 'culture wars', and the unfurling landscape of racial politics during the first decades of the twentieth century."--Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey "Elegant and erudite, Some of These Days retells the story of modernism's relationship to blackness in ways that are illuminating and often surprising. While Baker and Robeson are ever present in this story, the main characters are really the moderns who drew from their performances to explore the new rhythms of the machine age and the possibilities of cosmopolitanism in a modern world. Crafted with style and sophistication, Some of These Days is an impressive, graceful achievement."--Shane Vogel, author of The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, and Performance