Full Description
With the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, a third of the world's population came to live under communist regimes. Over the next forty years, the lives of most people in the non-communist world were also shaped in some way by communism and the Cold War waged against it. In the cases of many artists, intellectuals and workers, this involvement was wished and active. Yet, while the left-leaning tendencies of western artists have long been recognised, the extent and depth of musicians' involvement in communism specifically has been largely ignored, suppressed, or dismissed as youthful infatuation.
The present volume offers, for the first time, a representative overview of the relationship of music and communism outside the communist bloc. Ranging across multiple musical genres, five continents, and seven decades, the nineteen chapters address both prominent musicians who aligned themselves with communism, and the investments in music of a range of communist and radical Marxist organisations (including national Communist Parties, the Black Panther Party, and Maoist and Trotskyist groups in Britain, Germany and Nepal). In the book's first section, five musicians (Giacomo Manzoni, Ernie Lieberman, Konrad Boehmer, Chris Cutler and Georgina Born) offer their own, more personal perspectives upon their engagement with communism. The volume as a whole highlights two 'red strains' in particular: the irreducible differences of opinion between communists regarding key debates concerning music's role in society; and the multiple challenges faced by every engaged musician in reconciling political and artistic agendas.
Contents
1: ROBERT ADLINGTON: Communisms, Communist Musics
I. Musicians' perspectives
2: GIACOMO MANZONI: Towards Political and Musical Renewal: The Other Idea of Communism
3: ERNIE LIEBERMAN: Talking Union: The Folk Revival and the American Left
4: KONRAD BOEHMER: 'Non, je ne regrette rien'
5: CHRIS CUTLER (IN INTERVIEW WITH BENJAMIN PIEKUT): The Multiple Politics of Henry Cow
6: GEORGINA BORN: On Music and Politics: Henry Cow, Avant-gardism and Its Discontents
II. To 1960
7: ANNE C. SHREFFLER: 'Music Left and Right': A Tale of Two Histories of Progressive Music
8: BEN HARKER: 'Workers' Music': Communism and the British Folk Revival
9: FABIOLA ORQUERA: From the Andes to Paris: Atahualpa Yupanqui, the Communist Party and the Latin American Folksong Movement
10: ROBBIE LIEBERMAN: 'Put My Name Down': U.S. Communism and Peace Songs in the Early Cold War Years
11: ANTHONY ASHBOLT AND GLENN MITCHELL: Music, the Political Score and Communism in Australia: 1945-1968
12: BEN EARLE: 'In onore della Resistenza': Mario Zafred and Symphonic Neo-Realism
III. From 1960
13: GIANMARIO BORIO: Key Questions of Antagonist Music Making: A View From Italy
14: JOANNA BULLIVANT: Black, White and Red: Communism and Anti-Colonialism in Alan Bush's The Sugar Reapers
15: EAMONN KELLY: The Black Panther Party: Three Moments of Music
16: ERIC DROTT: Music, the Fête de l'Humanité, and Demographic Change in Post-War France
17: BEATE KUTSCHKE: New 'Old Leftist' Aesthetics in the West German Contemporary Music Scene: The Cantata Streik bei Mannesmann (1973)
18: JEREMY TRANMER: Rocking Against Racism: Trotskyism, Communism and Punk in Britain
19: ANNA STIRR: Class Love and the Unfinished Transformation of Social Hierarchy in Nepali Communist Songs
