Sing Me a Song with Social Significance

Sing Me a Song with Social Significance

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Al Filreis presents the words to the song "Sing Me a Song with Social Significance," as a reading for the University of Pennsylvania English course "The Literature of the American 1950s." The song was written in 1937 for the musical revue "Pins and Needles," which was performed by the members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).


A Song of Social Significance

A Song of Social Significance

Author: Dorothy Epstein

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13:

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Dorothy Epstein grew up in one of New York City's immigrant communities during the early years of the 20th century. Taking advantage of the city's free public higher education, she graduated with honors from Hunter College and entered the workforce during the depths of the Great Depression. Radicalized by the combination of the depression, the rise of fascism and her experiences as a trade union activist, she spent all her adult life working for labor and human rights. A stroke of fate led her into the then burgeoning vitamin industry and a successful business career. During her so-called "retirement," she founded the highly successful Institute for Senior Action that has trained hundreds of seniors for leadership. Dorothy died in 2006 at age 92.


American History in Song

American History in Song

Author: Diane Holloway

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 9780595193318

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Songwriters dramatically captured the details of how Americans lived, thought and changed in the first half of the twentieth century. This book examines 1033 songs about WWI and WWII wars, presidents, Women’s Suffrage, Prohibition, the Great Depression, immigration, minority stereotypes, new modes of transportation, inventions, and the changing roles of men and women. America invited immigrants and went to war to ensure democracy but within its borders, lyrics display intolerant attitudes toward women, blacks, and ethnic groups. Songs covered labor strikes, communism, lynchings, women voting and working, love, sex, airships, radio, telephones, the lure of movies and new movie star role models, drugs, smoking, and the atom bomb.History books cannot match the humor, poignancy, poetry and thrill of lyrics in describing the essence of American life as we moved from a rural white male dominated society toward an urban democracy that finally included women and minorities.


Music of the Great Depression

Music of the Great Depression

Author: William H. Young

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2005-02-28

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0313027358

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Prior to the stock market crash of 1929 American music still possessed a distinct tendency towards elitism, as songwriters and composers sought to avoid the mass appeal that critics scorned. During the Depression, however, radio came to dominate the other musical media of the time, and a new era of truly popular music was born. Under the guidance of the great Duke Ellington and a number of other talented and charismatic performers, swing music unified the public consciousness like no other musical form before or since. At the same time the enduring legacies of Woody Guthrie in folk, Aaron Copeland in classical, and George and Ira Gershwin on Broadway stand as a testament to the great diversity of tastes and interests that subsisted throughout the Great Depression, and play a part still in our lives today. The lives of these and many other great musicians come alive in this insightful study of the works, artists, and circumstances that contributed to making and performing the music that helped America through one of its most difficult times. The American History through Music series examines the many different styles of music that have played a significant part in our nation's history. While volumes in this series show the multifaceted roles of music in our culture, they also use music as a lens through which readers may study American social history. The authors present in-depth analysis of American musical genres, significant musicians, technological innovations, and the many connections between music and the realms of art, politics, and daily life.


SongCite

SongCite

Author: William D. Goodfellow

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 1135681171

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First Published in 1999. This is the first supplement to the initial SongCite publication and serves as an index to recently published collections of popular songs. 201 music books have been included, with over 6,500 different compositions listed. The vast majority of the collections is comprised entirely of vocal music, although, on occasion, instrumental works have been included.


Our Musicals, Ourselves

Our Musicals, Ourselves

Author: John Bush Jones

Publisher: Brandeis University Press

Published: 2011-04-17

Total Pages: 650

ISBN-13: 1611682231

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Our Musicals, Ourselves is the first full-scale social history of the American musical theater from the imported Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas of the late nineteenth century to such recent musicals as The Producers and Urinetown. While many aficionados of the Broadway musical associate it with wonderful, diversionary shows like The Music Man or My Fair Lady, John Bush Jones instead selects musicals for their social relevance and the extent to which they engage, directly or metaphorically, contemporary politics and culture. Organized chronologically, with some liberties taken to keep together similarly themed musicals, Jones examines dozens of Broadway shows from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present that demonstrate numerous links between what played on Broadway and what played on newspapersÕ front pages across our nation. He reviews the productions, lyrics, staging, and casts from the lesser-known early musicals (the ÒgunboatÓ musicals of the Teddy Roosevelt era and the ÒCinderella showsÓ and Òleisure time musicalsÓ of the 1920s) and continues his analysis with better-known shows including Showboat, Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma, South Pacific, West Side Story, Cabaret, Hair, Company, A Chorus Line, and many others. While most examinations of the American musical focus on specific shows or emphasize the development of the musical as an art form, JonesÕs book uses musicals as a way of illuminating broader social and cultural themes of the times. With six appendixes detailing the long-running diversionary musicals and a foreword by Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof, JonesÕs comprehensive social history will appeal to both students and fans of Broadway.


American Radical

American Radical

Author: D. D. Guttenplan

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2012-05-08

Total Pages: 601

ISBN-13: 0810128314

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Popular Front columnist and New Deal propagandist, fearless opponent of McCarthyism and feared scourge of official liars, I. F. Stone (1907–1989)—magnetic, witty, indefatigable—left a permanent mark on our politics and culture. A college dropout, he was already an influential newsman by the age of twenty-five, enjoying extraordinary access to key figures in Washington and New York. Guttenplan finds the key to Stone’s achievements throughout his singular career—not just in the celebrated I. F. Stone’s Weekly—lay in the force and passion of his political commitments. Stone’s calm and forensic yet devastating reports on American politics and institutions sprang from a radical faith in the long-term prospects for American democracy. In an era when the old radical questions—about war, the economy, health care, and the right to dissent—are suddenly new again, Guttenplan’s lively, provocative book makes clear why so many of Stone’s pronouncements have acquired the force of prophecy.