Time/Date
11-13-2009 2:00 PM
Abstract
Conventional historians often overlook the role of popular music in their interpretations of the past. They generally treat the subject as if it existed on the periphery of everyday life. Such an approach removes popular music from its social, cultural, and historical environment and places it within a vacuum where it predictably retains little meaning except as trivia. Without discounting the commercial nature of popular culture, this paper will argue that modern-day consumers utilize the tools that are available to them, including music, to express themselves in ways that often are denied in other social spheres. Consequently, historians have the opportunity to discover patterns of consumption that correspond to larger trends in society. In examining the evolution of popular music in the 1950s, for instance, one can detect outlooks that both sustain and challenge existing interpretations of the era, particularly as they pertain to issues of race, class, gender, and generation. Far from being irrelevant or trivial, record buyers in the post-World War II years have a great deal to tell us about the society in which they lived.
Could Fifty Million Record-Buyers Have Been Irrelevant? Understanding the Post-World War II Past through Popular Music
Conventional historians often overlook the role of popular music in their interpretations of the past. They generally treat the subject as if it existed on the periphery of everyday life. Such an approach removes popular music from its social, cultural, and historical environment and places it within a vacuum where it predictably retains little meaning except as trivia. Without discounting the commercial nature of popular culture, this paper will argue that modern-day consumers utilize the tools that are available to them, including music, to express themselves in ways that often are denied in other social spheres. Consequently, historians have the opportunity to discover patterns of consumption that correspond to larger trends in society. In examining the evolution of popular music in the 1950s, for instance, one can detect outlooks that both sustain and challenge existing interpretations of the era, particularly as they pertain to issues of race, class, gender, and generation. Far from being irrelevant or trivial, record buyers in the post-World War II years have a great deal to tell us about the society in which they lived.
Comments
Presented in the Second Plenary Session: Influence and Interpretation of Popular Music
Video footage of presentation