Swinging the Machine

by Dinerstein, Joel

• ISBN13: 9781558493834
• ISBN10: 1558493832
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr

Summary

In any age and any given society, cultural practices reflect the material circumstances of people's everyday lives. According to Joel Dinerstein, it was no different in America between the two World Wars -- an era sometimes known as the "machine age" -- when innovative forms of music and dance helped a newly urbanized population cope with the increased mechanization of modern life. Grand spectacles such as the Ziegfield Follies and the movies of Busby Berkeley captured the American ethos of mass production, with chorus girls as the cogs of these fast, flowing pleasure vehicles.

Yet it was African American culture, Dinerstein argues, that ultimately provided the means of aesthetic adaptation to the accelerated tempo of modernity. Drawing on a legacy of engagement with and resistance to technological change, with deep roots in West African dance and music, black artists developed new cultural forms that sought to humanize machines. In "The Ballad of John Henry, " the epic toast "Shine, " and countless blues songs, African Americans first addressed the challenge

Table of Contents

Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: Bodies and Machines	3	(309)
1 The Tempo of Life Is Out of Control. .. and Then Righted	29	(34)
2 The Jazz Train and American Musical Modernity	63	(42)
3 African American Modernism and the Techno-Dialogic: From John Henry to Duke Ellington	105	(32)
4 Swinging the Machines: Big Bands and Streamliner Trains	137	(45)
5 The Standardized White Girl in the Pleasure Machine: The Ziegfeld Follies and Busby Berkeley's 1930's Musicals	182	(39)
6 Tap Dancers Rap Back at the Machine	221	(29)
7 America's National Folk Dance: The Lindy Hop	250	(33)
8 The World of Tomorrow. .. in the Groove: Swinging the New York World's Fair, 1939-40	283	(29)
Conclusion: The Continuing Importance of Swinging the Machine	312	(13)
Notes	325	(76)
Index	401