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Journal ArticleDOI

Just a closer walk with thee: New Orleans-style jazz and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1950s Britain

01 Oct 2003-Popular Music (Cambridge University Press)-Vol. 22, Iss: 3, pp 261-281
TL;DR: In this article, a particular moment in the relation between popular music and social protest, focusing on the traditional (trad) jazz scene of the 1950s in Britain, is discussed.
Abstract: This article looks at a particular moment in the relation between popular music and social protest, focusing on the traditional (trad) jazz scene of the 1950s in Britain. The research has a number of aims. One is to reconsider a cultural form dismissed, even despised by critics. Another is to contribute to the political project of cultural studies, via the uncomplicated strategy of focusing on music that accompanies political activism. Here the article employs material from a number of personal interviews with activists, musicians, fans from the time, focusing on the political development of the New Orleans-style parade band in Britain, which is presented as a leftist marching music of the streets. The article also seeks to shift the balance slightly in the study of a social movement organisation (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, CND), from considering it in terms of its ‘official’ history towards its cultural contribution, even innovation. Finally, the article looks at neglected questions around Americanisation and jazz music, with particular reference to power and the past.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored the intellectual biography and diverse artistic, literary and cultural production of Jeff Nuttall, a significant, if underacknowledged, figure on the British underground scene in the Sixties, arguing that Nuttall played an important international role as a catalyst and co-ordinator of countercultural events and activities through his involvement with small press publications, as an early instigator of 'happenings' and 'performance art' in the UK, and as a correspondent, networker and commentator.
Abstract: This essay explores the intellectual biography and diverse artistic, literary and cultural production of Jeff Nuttall – a significant, if underacknowledged, figure on the British ‘underground’ scene in the Sixties. It argues that Nuttall played an important international role as a catalyst and co-ordinator of ‘countercultural’ events and activities through his involvement with small press publications, as an early instigator of ‘happenings’ and ‘performance art’ in the UK, and as a correspondent, networker and commentator. In particular, it addresses Nuttall’s understanding that ‘imagination’ and ‘affect’ could be allied with collective possibilities for emancipatory social change, as well as liberatory personal development. Finally, it briefly considers the currency of these ideas within the context of a new articulation of how a ‘politics of possibility’ may be informed by notions of embodied and transmitted affectivity.

23 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explored the connection between politics and music and proposed a framework to make sense of, and give due weight to, the place of music as organised sound in political thought and action.
Abstract: This article explores the connection between politics and music; in particular it asks how music might be incorporated into accounts of political thought and action. Despite the fact that political science has tended to neglect the place of music in politics, there are a number of writers, such as Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, who have taken a different course. For them, music is intimately linked, via its aesthetics, to ethical judgements and to social order. The article develops these latter claims and connects them to work of a similar kind in music studies to propose a framework which helps to make sense of, and give due weight to, the place of music – as organised sound – in political thought and action. Music, it is argued, should not be viewed just as a footnote to, or appendage of, political thought and action, but rather as an integral feature of them.

17 citations


Cites background from "Just a closer walk with thee: New O..."

  • ...(McKay 2003: 267) What this account hints at – and what McKay develops at length – is the idea that music can form a ‘bridge’ with political ideas, investing those ideas with emotional significance, rather as Bennett imagines....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
23 Feb 2007-parallax
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look at the marching bands of different socio-political and cultural contexts, primarily British, and explore questions of the construction or repositioning of urban space via music'how the sound of music can alter spaces'; participation, pleasure and the political body; subculture and identity.
Abstract: What happens in social movements when people actually move, how does the mobile moment of activism contribute to mobilisation? Are they marching or dancing? How is the space of action, the street itself, altered, re-sounded? The employment of street music in the very specific context of political protest remains a curiously under-researched aspect of cultural politics in social movements.... By looking at the marching bands of different socio- political and cultural contexts, primarily British, I aim to further current understanding of the idea and history of street music itself, as well as explore questions of the construction or repositioning of urban space via music'how the sound of music can alter spaces'; participation, pleasure and the political body; subculture and identity.

11 citations

Book Chapter
08 Jun 2000
TL;DR: The British Brass Band: Bands as mentioned in this paper is the most comprehensive and detailed study of the British brass band and its relationship with broader spheres of social and cultural history, including the bands of the Salvation Army.
Abstract: Description of The British Brass Band: The British Brass Band is based on an earlier volume, Bands, published by Open University Press (1991) as part of its Popular Music in Britain Series. It was hailed as the most detailed and scholarly treatment of its subject. For the present volume, the original chapters have been heavily revised and an additional three chapters added, together with new and extensive appendices, numerous illustrations, a bibliography, and a new introduction. The new material includes studies on brass band repertoire, performance practices, and the bands of the Salvation Army. The contributors are the pre-eminent authorities on the subject. The work as a whole can be taken as a study of both a unique (and often misunderstood) aspect of British music, and its interaction with broader spheres of social and cultural history. It is the most detailed and definitive study of the subject.

5 citations

References
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Book
01 Oct 2000
TL;DR: This article explored the ways in which contemporary Southern culture has been enthusiastically produced and reproduced in a British context and examined some of the South's most significant cultural exports in discussions that range across literature, music, film, television, theater, advertising, and tourism to focus on how and why Southern themes and icons have become deeply embedded in British cultural life.
Abstract: "We all knew the British were fascinated with the tragic, gothic American South. This remarkable book not only documents the degree of that fascination, but also demonstrates the deep interconnectedness of two cultures. Here is an irresistable new case study for those interested in the form and function of hybridity."--Jane Gaines, program in film and video, Duke University "The author's research on the way Southern themes and icons have slipped into everyday life across the Atlantic is impressive. There is no doubt that Circling Dixie will find a sophisticated audience both in the United States and in Europe."--Linda Wagner-Martin, author of "Favored Strangers": Gertrude Stein and Her Family For Europeans looking across the Atlantic, American culture is often the site of desire, fascination, and envy. In Britain, the rich culture of the American South has made a particularly strong impact. Helen Taylor explores the ways in which contemporary Southern culture has been enthusiastically produced and reproduced in a British context. Taylor examines some of the South's most significant cultural exports in discussions that range across literature, music, film, television, theater, advertising, and tourism to focus on how and why Southern themes and icons have become so deeply embedded in British cultural life. The enduring legacy of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind can be seen today in the popularity of sequels, revisions, and reworkings of the novel. The conversation between cultures is further explored in British responses to Alex Hayley's Roots, the British theater's special affection for Tennessee Williams's plays, and the marketing of New Orleans as a preferred destination for European tourists. The transformation of Southern culture--itself a hybrid of European, African, and American--as it circulates back across the Atlantic suggests not only new views of the history, racial politics, music, and art of both Britain and the American South, but also an enhanced understanding of the dynamic flow of culture itself. Helen Taylor is a professor and head of the School of English at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Scarlett's Women adn coeditor of Dixie Debates.

40 citations


"Just a closer walk with thee: New O..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...(Taylor 2001, p. 115) The significance of this critique is that Taylor herself presents a depoliticised sweet sadness: by looking only at the Trust in the 1990s rather than, say, also the musician’s projects of the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor misses the more complex situation, in which Colyer’s own…...

    [...]

  • ...…yer’s achievements have been acknowledged or supporters alongside (‘the second line’) was formally recognised by Paul McCartney, New also a black cultural expression of urban presOrleans City Council and the British Govern- ence and power, of reclaiming the streets. ment (Taylor 2001, pp. 111–12)....

    [...]

  • ...Taylor’s version of trad is represented by ‘a particular group of white Englishmen: middle class, financially comfortable, having repaid their mortgages and now with time on their hands’ (Taylor 2001, p. 113)....

    [...]

Book
01 Jan 1970

39 citations


"Just a closer walk with thee: New O..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Further, a number of autobiographies of key jazz musicians from the time are remarkable for the sheer lack of space given to their own authors’ political campaigning (see Lyttelton 1958; Melly 1965, for instance)....

    [...]

Book
01 Jun 1990
TL;DR: The background of black music 1800-1950: a jet ornament to society - black music in 19th-century Britain Afro-American symphony - popular black concert hall performers fearsome means of discord - early encounters with jazz London is the place - Caribbean music in the context of the empire as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Part 1 The background of black music 1800-1950: a jet ornament to society - black music in 19th-century Britain Afro-American symphony - popular black concert hall performers fearsome means of discord - early encounters with jazz London is the place - Caribbean music in the context of the empire. Part 2 From the fifties to the present: African connexions - London's hidden music scene young, gifted and black - Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean music Trinidad all stars - the steel pan movement in Britain Bhangra - fusion and professionalization, in a genre of South Asian dance music Qawwali in Bradford - traditional music in Muslim community.

39 citations


"Just a closer walk with thee: New O..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…115) The live jazz setting the tempo for the Aldermaston marches was invariably provided by some form of brass band, however loosely that might be defined on the day: marchers ‘stepped to the parade jazz of a New-Orleans-style marching band beneath the black flag of Anarchism’ (Oliver 1990, p. 81)....

    [...]

  • ...(Campbell 1983, p. 115) The live jazz setting the tempo for the Aldermaston marches was invariably provided by some form of brass band, however loosely that might be defined on the day: marchers ‘stepped to the parade jazz of a New-Orleans-style marching band beneath the black flag of Anarchism’ (Oliver 1990, p. 81)....

    [...]

  • ...(Oliver 1990, p. 81) This is neat, but lacks the essential tension of such factionalising discourses as the left and jazz alike....

    [...]

Journal Article
TL;DR: The bebop revolution was a major nodal point in the history of interchanges between mass culture and modernist art as mentioned in this paper. But this interchange was decidedly one-sided, as modernists eagerly appropriated materials and devices from a more passive mass culture, for the purposes of formal experimentation, parody, and shock - such as Dada's exploitation of the cabaret form, and Stravinsky's use of ragtime and the tango.
Abstract: inceptions sometime in the mid-nineteenth century But, for a long while, this interchange was decidedly one-sided, as modernists eagerly appropriated materials and devices from a more passive mass culture, for the purposes of formal experimentation, parody, and shock - such as Dada's exploitation of the cabaret form, and Stravinsky's use of ragtime and the tango (see Crow; Huyssen; and Gendron 1989-90) With the bebop revolution, and since, mass culture has been more the aggressor in this interchange Rock music, film, MTV, and advertisement have liberally scavenged from a whole storehouse of avant-garde devices and practices, though no form of mass culture seems to have crossed the boundary between "entertainment" and "art" as decisively or irreversibly as jazz This is the first of three papers that will deal with the bebop revolution, as a major nodal point in the history of interchanges between mass culture and modernist art In this paper, I reconstruct the discursive changes in the jazz community that immediately antedated the bebop revolution and made possible its reception as an avant-garde music2

34 citations

Book
21 Jun 1993
TL;DR: In this article, the connection between high literary culture and popular culture and argues for cultural anarchism as a form of creative resistance is explored. But it is not discussed in this paper.
Abstract: Explores the connection between high literary culture and popular culture and argues for cultural anarchism as a form of creative resistance.

31 citations