Josephine Baker

Ms. Baker when she appeared in Offenbach's La Créole.

When African-American entertainer Josephine Baker first arrived in Paris in 1925, her dancing to the ‘jazz hot’ of La Revue nègre was, famously, perceived as ‘primitive’. But her 1934 performances in Offenbach’s La Créole completed the construction – and tested the limits – of a complex redefinition of Baker as French. Substantially revised, the operetta in effect staged her own assimilation, a new black character serving as a foil for the ‘creole’ Josephine and marking her as ‘in-between’. If most observers saw Baker’s transformation as an affirmation of France’s civilising mission, the few dissenters paradoxically risked insisting on her difference in terms of an essentialised blackness. Recognising both personas as ‘performative’ relocates Baker’s agency. It helps move beyond fixed racial categories to dynamic cultural processes: ‘creolisation’.

Offenbach’s La Créole is included, in the context of Josephine Baker playing the “dusky Guadaloupean” called Dora, a role created by Anna Judic in 1875 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens.

It tells the story of “black faced” Miss Judic as Dora, arriving in France by ship and sorting out the amorous chaos between Antoinette and René and between René’s friend Frontignac and Dora herself. Along the way Dora gets to sing a lively chanson about the dames of Bordeaux and romances such as “Il vous souvient de moi, j’éspère.”

It was for Miss Baker that the producers of the Théâtre Marigny commissioned a re-write of La Créole from Albert Willemetz and Georges Delance. It premiered in 1934 and included various new roles, most importantly it brought Miss Baker on right away in act 1 – and not, like in the Offenbach original, in act 2.

The book by Andy Fry that includes a chapter called “Du jazz hot à La Créole” about Josephine Baker. There we read: “Wrapping original and revised texts, reception and biography together in the operetta’s plot, [the book] considers how the same tensions as characterized French reactions to ‘others’ and their. La Créole at once completed the construction, and tested the limits, of a complex redefinition of Baker as French. If most observers saw Baker’s transformation as an affirmation of France’s ‘civilizing mission,’ the few dissenters paradoxically risked insisting on her difference in terms of an essentialized blackness. A comparison with other musical treatments of a similar story (Carmen, Madama Butterfly) and contemporary Baker films (Princesse Tam-Tam, Zouzou) reveal the unhappy logic of their argument. Recognizing both ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ personas as witty performances relocates Baker’s agency. It may even help to move beyond fixed racial categories to dynamic cultural processes: ‘creolization.’ While Baker was highly skilled at mediating audience expectations, however, the Créole chapter concludes that she was never wholly able to escape them.”

Cambridge Opera Journal, Cambridge University Press (March 2004); Operetta Research Center article by Kevin Clarke (July 2019)