CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2)
By:
January 7, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
ZAZOUS
With their outrageous getups, cynical attitudes, and devotion to American jazz, the Parisian teenagers known as Zazous got under the skin of both Germans and collaborationists during the Nazi occupation of France.
Zazous were “grotesquely dressed dandies,” according to a 1943 British news account, whose “Clothes Make Germans Mad.” Men paired knee-length, zoot-suit-like jackets with short trousers, and string ties. Their hair was long at the back and stood in a quiff at the front. The women, according to L’Illustration in 1942, wore “cheap furs … turtle-necked sweaters and very short pleated skirts,” their long hair hanging “down the backs of their necks in spirals.” Striped stockings, heavy shoes, and furled umbrellas (said to be a symbol of allegiance to the British) completed the look. Everyone wore dark glasses and smoked.
Their name came from Johnny Hess’s catchy 1938 hit, “Je Suis Swing” (“I Am Swing”), in which he scatted, “Zazou, zazou, zazou, zazouzay,” the nonsense syllables paying homage to Cab Calloway’s 1933 song, “Zaz Zuh Zaz.” Used as a greeting, “Êtes-vous swing?” provided a quick barometer to one’s political, as well as musical leanings. “When the reply is in the affirmative,” reported a Canadian newspaper in 1942, “broad grins are exchanged and there’s nothing the Nazis can do about it.”
Hanging out in Latin Quarter cafes, they were “blase … and very visibly soured on the world.” They abhorred sports, but loved to jitterbug at the underground “dance lessons” that took place after the Vichy government banned dancing in public.
In short, Zazous were the antithesis of the clean-living, well-dressed, Aryan young people championed by both Vichy and Nazi propaganda. Jeunesse (the magazine of the JPF, the youth wing of the pro-Nazi French People’s Party) belittled the Zazous as “bony girls and awkward boys … made stupid by heredity,” whose “little get-togethers centered on judeo-n****r rhythms.” When they could, the JPF chased down and forcibly shaved the heads of captured Zazous.
The police also came for these flamboyant provocateurs. They raided cafes, bars, and other hangouts, made arrests, and sent Zazous to help bring in the harvest, and eventually to labor camps.
Modern scholars tend to view the Zazous as, in words of historian David Drake, “rebels not resisters.” But while rebellion wasn’t Resistance with a capital R, neither was it compliance. When the edict forcing Jews to wear a yellow star went into effect in June 1942, Zazous were among the non-Jewish Parisians who donned homemade yellow stars bearing slogans such as “SWING 42” or “ZAZOU.” The following year, a British journalist reported that a group of Zazous on an underground platform jostled an armed German soldier so hard that the British prisoner in his custody was able to escape.
Êtes-vous swing?
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI (Pete Seeger) | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (Mad Jenny) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on TBD | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Alex Brook Lynn on WHY WE FIGHT | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!