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1920s: Against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and glittering Jazz Age Paris, a story of heady romance..
Jazz Moon
What you need to know before your trail
On a sweltering summer’s night in 1925, people are dancing on the streets of Harlem. Jazz pours out of speakeasy doorways and people are dancing like they’ve never dance before.
Ben Charles and his wife, Angeline, are among the locals crammed into a basement club to hear jazz and drink bootleg liquor. Ben is an aspiring poet and when he meets the ambitious trumpet player , he convinces him to go to Paris to really see where real excitement lives
In Paris, blacks are welcomed as exotic celebrities, especially those from Harlem. Ben wanders from chic Parisian cafés to seedy opium dens, to seek the heart of jazz, the buzz of his next fix and ultimately to see where true fulfillment and inspiration lie.
Travel Guide
Harlem New York City
Harlem had been hit by a hurricane: it was raining cats and jazz. White folks called it race music. Old colored folks branded it the devil’s music because its saucy beats made men pump their hips in slow pirouettes and women lifted their skits above the knee with a sweltering look that said come and get it papa
Gliding out of glossy nightclubs; smoking lush and torrid out of basement speakeasies; in the streets louder than a growling subway train.
The place to go seems to be Lenox Avenue and Jungle Alley which is the stretch of 133rd street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues – where Duke Ellington brush stroked his jazz canvas….
Be sure to hit Bill’s Place – one of the original Harlem Jazz places which started in the days of Prohibition
Paris
“Paris. Bright miracle”
“But behind every bright thing creeps its shadows. The moon had it shwaodwa and Paris hers. They lurked in the back streets and back alleys, in oarks and in basements”
Harlem comes to Paris when the Chocolate Jubilee of 1926 ciemes to town and anchors at the Musichall des Champs Elysees. The music and the people take the citys music lovers by storm. Ben sinks further into Paris’s shadows
There is more music in Paris – Ben trudges through the snow in the Montmartre region, pas the Sacre coeur and the Place Pigalle and sees the bright lights of the Claire de Lune bar
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Jazz Moon
Author/Guide: Joe Okonkwo Destination: Harlem, Paris Departure Time: 1920s
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