Red Strains Music and Communism Outside the Communist Bloc

by Adlington, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780197265390
• ISBN10: 0197265391
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-06-01
• Publisher: British Academy

Summary

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, andMaoist 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 wholehighlights two 'red strains' in particular: the irreducible differences of opinion between communists regarding key debates concerning music's role in society; and the

Author Biography

Robert Adlington is Associate Professor in Music at the University of Nottingham. He has written books on the composers Harrison Birtwistle and Louis Andriessen, and has edited a volume of essays on avant-garde music and the 1960s.

Table of Contents

1. Communisms, Communist Musics, Robert Addlington
I. Musicians' perspectives
2. Towards Political and Musical Renewal: The Other Communism, Giacomo Manzoni
3. Towards Political and Musical Renewal: The Other Communism, Ernie Lieberman
4. 'Non, je ne regrette rien', Konrad Boehmer
5. The Multiple Politics of Henry Cow, CHRIS CUTLER (IN INTERVIEW WITH BENJAMIN PIEKUT)
6. On Music and Politics: Henry Cow, Avant-gardism, and Its Discontents, Georgaina Born
II. To 1960
7. 'Music Left and Right': A Tale of Two Histories of Progressive Music, ANNE C. SHREFFLER
8. 'Workers' Music': Communism and the British Folk Revival, BEN HARKER
9. From the Andes to Paris: Atahualpa Yupanqui, the Communist Party and the Latin American Folksong Movement, FABIOLA ORQUERA
10. 'Put My Name Down': U.S. Communism and Peace Songs in the Early Cold War Years, ROBBIE LIEBERMAN
11. Music, the Political Score and Communism in Australia: 1945-1968, ANTHONY ASHBOLT AND GLENN MITCHELL
12. 'In onore della Resistenza': Mario Zafred and Symphonic Neo-Realism, BEN EARLE
III. From 1960
13. Key Questions of Oppositional Music Making: A View From Italy, GIANMARIO BORIO
14. Communist Anti-Colonialism: Empire and Nationalism in Alan Bush's The Sugar Reapers, JOANNA BULLIVANT
15. The Black Panther Party: Three Moments of Music, EAMONN KELLY
16. Music, the Fete de l'Humanite, and Demographic Change in Post-war France, ERIC DROTT
17. New 'Old Leftist' Aesthetics in the West German Contemporary Music Scene: The Cantata Streik bei Mannesmann (1973), BEATE KUTSCHKE
18. Rocking Against Racism: Trotskyism, Communism and Punk in Britain, JEREMY TRANMER
19. Class Love and the Unfinished Transformation of Social Hierarchy in Nepali Communist Songs, ANNA STIRR