Soundscapes of Liberation: Radio, Jazz, and the U.S. Military in Postwar France, 1944–46

This paper considers how the introduction of new radio networks and technologies by US military officials in France transformed the soundscape of liberation. I begin with the D-Day landing in Normandy in June 1944, when US military troops and infrastructure filled the French countryside. Against this backdrop of immense racial, retributive, and sexual violence, the US military re-introduced jazz to French listeners. While this musical genre had had been redefined as French during the war, jazz was reasserted as a particularly American cultural form through performances by segregated military bands, the distribution of military-issued Victory Discs (V-Discs), and the widespread diffusion of radio programs on the American Forces Network (AFN). In this paper, I focus on the creation of US military radio networks, which transformed the sonic and racial experience of liberation, as well as the role of US military officials in reconstructing the postwar French radio. I examine the programs and music that dominated AFN broadcasts, which included locally-produced jazz programs and relayed programs like Hit Parade and Jubilee. I also look at the role of US military radio producers in creating new spaces for jazz programming on French-language programs like Ce Soir en France, which were then broadcast through the newly reconstructed French radio. Finally, I examine the response of French critics, musicians, and listeners to these programs in order to think through the ways in which this newly “imperial” US presence on French soil and on French airwaves had displaced a concurrent anxiety about the French imperial nation-state. Given that this particular juxtaposition was often articulated through and in response to African-American music, this paper suggests that jazz may have been uniquely capable to signify both imperial and emancipatory claims in the post-liberation landscape.