Lecture with Author Travis Atria on the Life of Arthur Briggs

Come join us on Monday, April 20, at 5 p.m. in Building 8, Ira Holmes Classroom, for a lecture on the life of legendary jazz musician Arthur Briggs. Author Travis Atria will give a talk based on his book, “Better Days Will Come Again: The Life of Arthur Briggs, Jazz Genius of Harlem, Paris, and a Nazi Prison Camp.” “Better Days Will Come Again,” based on groundbreaking research including unprecedented access to Briggs’s oral memoir, is a crucial document of jazz history, a fast-paced epic, and an entirely original tale of survival. This is a College of Central Florida Department of Humanities and Social Sciences: An Introduction to Humanities event, sponsored by Bank of America.

Topics and concepts presented at this event are for discussion purposes only and are not intended to espouse, promote, advance, inculcate, or compel individuals to believe the topics or concepts presented therein. Nor do they constitute endorsement of such topics or concepts by the College of Central Florida, its board of trustees, or any of their officers, employees or agents.

Lecture Description

Arthur Briggs’s life was Homeric in scope. Born on the tiny island of Grenada, he set sail for Harlem during the Renaissance, then to Europe in the aftermath of World War I, where he was among the first pioneers to introduce jazz music to the world. During the legendary Jazz Age in Paris, Briggs’s trumpet provided the soundtrack while Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the rest of the Lost Generation got drunk. By the 1930s, Briggs was considered “the Louis Armstrong of Paris” and was the peer of the greatest names of his time, from Josephine Baker to Django Reinhardt. Even during the Great Depression, he was secure as “the greatest trumpeter in Europe.” He did not, however, heed warnings to leave Paris before it fell to the Nazis, and in 1940, he was arrested and sent to the prison camp at Saint-Denis. What happened at that camp and the role Briggs played in it is truly unforgettable.