ABSTRACT
In his fond recollections of the Nouveau Cirque (the New Circus) Jean Cocteau describes how he was witness there, when only 13, to a ‘theatrical event of historic proportions’, the first arrival of ‘rhythms from America’. He is referring to the musical review Les Heureux Nègres (The Happy Negroes, 1902), which brought the cakewalk to France-making ‘everything else turn pale and flee’—and which gave Parisians their first popular introduction to Afro-American musical performance.1
