Negermusik

Negermusik ("Negro Music") was a pejorative term used by the Nazis during the Third Reich to signify musical styles and performances by African-Americans that were of the Jazz and Swing music genres. They viewed these musical styles in a racist fashion as inferior works belonging to an "inferior race" and therefore prohibited. The term, at that same time, was also applied to indigenous music styles of black Africans.

At the time of the Weimar Republic during 1927, Ernst Krenek's opera of Jonny spielt auf (Jonny Plays) contained jazz musical performances that caused protests among some right-wing ethnic-nationalist groups in Germany at the time. In 1930, the American musician Henry Cowell wrote in the Melos journal that jazz interpreted a mixture of African-American and Jewish elements, stating that:

"The fundamentals of jazz are the syncopation and rhythmic accents of the Negro. Their modernization is the work of New York Jews [...] So Jazz is Negro music seen through the eyes of the Jews."

Such views were readily picked up by the Nazis. Their criticisms have included "gratuitous use of syncopation" and "orgies of drums". More statements from the Nazis included such things as "artistic licentiousness" and "corruption seed in the musical expression" with "indecent dance forms". They went on to scrutinize all modern music of the 1930s as a "political weapon of the Jews". On 4 May 1930, Wilhelm Frick, the Reich's newly appointed Minister of the Interior and Education for Thuringia made a decree called "Against the Negro Culture — For Our German Heritage".

In 1932 the national government under Franz von Papen pandered to the Nazis by banning all public performances by black musicians. After Adolf Hitler gained "seizure of power" in 1933, the Reich's Music Chamber was also created in that same year. This was then followed by a full legal ban on this music on October 12, 1935 across all German national radio. This ban was spearheaded by the German Reich's radio conductor, Eugen Hadamovsky, who purportedly stated:

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