Bücher von Kenneth J. Bindas

Examines the cultural and historical significance of swing and tells how and why it achieved its audience, unified its fans, defined its generation, and, after World War II, fell into decline. This book shows that swing manifested the kind of up-to-date allure that the populace craved. Swing sounded modern, happy, optimistic.

Order, planning, and reasonin the depths of the Great Depression, with the nation teetering on the brink of collapse, this was what was needed. And this, Kenneth J. Bindas suggests, was what the ideas and ideals of modernity offereda way to make sense of the chaos all around. In Modernity and the Great Depression, Bindas offers a new perspective on the provenance and power of modernist thought and practice in early twentieth-century America.In the midst of a terrible economic, social, and political crisis, modernism provided an alternative to the response of many traditional moralists and religious leaders. Promoting a faith based in reason, organization, and planning, modernists espoused a salvation that was not eternal but rather temporal, tangible, and, for a generation with so little to hold onto, eminently practicalone that found virtue in pleasure and private pursuits. After surveying the contested definitional terrain of modernism and modernity, Bindas tracks their course and influence through such government programs as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Youth Administration; in the massive American Expositions and World's Fairs that heralded progress and a better future; on the efforts of women interior decorators to update and enhance the comforts of the modern home; andthanks to the proliferation of electricity and radioon the popular and high-culture musical recordings and broadcasts that reinforced a shift away from traditional modes of performance and reception.In the transformation he describes, Bindas also locates the limits of modernisms influence, as later generations confronted the spiritual shortcomings of its ultra-rationalist and materialist paradigm.

These essays document the American experience as recorded in popular sound, relating topics concerning 20th century music to issues of politics, society and culture. The focus is to place music in societal perspective and encourage investigation of the issues behind popular tunes.