ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the connection between jazz and the literary world of post-World War I Paris, to realize that musicians performed jazz in a wide range of venues-Cafés, cabarets, nightclubs, music halls, dance halls, and bars. People's living rooms even became places in which to hear jazz thanks to the growing popularity of the phonograph throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The story of jazz in Parisian Cafés shows that the real Paris of the 1920s was much more complicated than the nostalgic reminiscences of many authors and was often a rather confusing mixture of cultural influences from around the world. They were places of diversity and controversy as well as community; indeed the two concepts must go together. A community of conversation requires a diversity of opinion, and indeed the presence of multiple factions out of which new ideas often emerge.
