20th-Century Music, Politics and Nation
Music is always political, but sometimes even more than usual. In the mid-twentieth century, governments discovered the power of musical performers in shaping national public image. Classical music, jazz, and folk were each recruited to project power, forge alliances, and challenge colonial hierarchies, not only in the contest between the USA and USSR, but across a newly decolonising world. Including figures from Miriam Makeba to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Glenn Gould, this seminar explores how musicians bear national identity. As nationalism returns to the centre of global politics today, these issues have once again become urgent. This course introduces the principles of cultural diplomacy and explores a series of case studies ranging from the State Department Jazz Tours to the anti-apartheid concert stage.
Ansari, Emily Abrams, The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)
Beal, Amy C., New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006)
Bourdaghs, Michael K., Paola Iovene, and Kaley Mason, eds, Sound Alignments: Popular Music in Asia's Cold Wars (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021)
Crist, Stephen A., 'Jazz as Democracy? Dave Brubeck and Cold War Politics', Journal of Musicology, 26.2 (2009), 133–174
Fosler-Lussier, Danielle, Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015)
Hess, Carol A., Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
Mikkonen, Simo, and Pekka Suutari, eds, Music, Art and Diplomacy: East-West Cultural Interactions and the Cold War (Farnham: Routledge, 2016)
Saunders, Frances Stonor, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 1999)
Von Eschen, Penny M., Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)