Partition piano et chant "Bim'Bamb'oula ! Fox-trot"

First edition of the French adaptation of this song for voice and piano, the front cover illustrated with a large two-colour composition signed by Paul Colin.

The song originated as a Viennese schlager in 1929, with music by Karl M. May and lyrics by Charles Amberg, published in Berlin by Karl Brüll. It was adapted into French the following year by André Mauprey and Louis Lemarchand for the revue Un Coup de folie, first performed at the Folies-Bergère in 1930.

A very fine copy.

 The song originated as a Viennese schlager in 1929, with music by Karl M. May and lyrics by Charles Amberg, published in Berlin by Karl Brüll. It was adapted into French the following year by André Mauprey and Louis Lemarchand for the revue Un Coup de folie, first performed at the Folies-Bergère in 1930. A fine copy, with the cover illustration fresh and sharply defined.

The number belongs to the repertoire of Folies-Bergère revues written by Louis Lemarchand under the direction of Paul Derval, whose La Folie du jour of 1926-1927 had provided Joséphine Baker with one of her greatest triumphs only a few years earlier. Paul Colin’s composition continues the visual language developed in his celebrated portfolio Le Tumulte Noir (1927). His meeting with Baker during La Revue nègre in 1925 had directed part of his graphic work towards the Afro-Parisian imagery of the interwar years. The title itself employs the term “bamboula”—originally denoting a drum and later a dance from Africa and the Caribbean, before being appropriated as a derogatory term within colonial discourse—while the chorus lyrics likewise reflect the fashion that historian Petrine Archer-Straw termed the Parisian négrophilie of the Roaring Twenties.

A superb piece of sheet music bringing together one of the foremost names in Art Deco poster design, the history of the Folies-Bergère revues, and the circulation of late-1920s popular entertainment between Vienna, Berlin and Paris.