America in the French Imaginary, 1789-1914
America in the French Imaginary, 1789-1914

Author: Diana R. Hallman

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2022-05-17

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1783277009

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Following the American Revolution, French observers often viewed the United States as a laboratory for the forging of new practices of liberté and égalité, in affinity with and divergence from France's own Revolutionary ideals and experiences. The volume examines French views through musical/theatrical portrayals of the American Revolution and Republic, soundscapes of the Statue of Liberty, and homages to the glorified figures of Washington, Franklin and Lafayette. Essays investigate paradoxical depictions of slavery in the United States and French Caribbean colonies of 'Amérique'. French critiques of American music and musicians, including the reception of Americanized or Creolized adaptations of European art traditions as well as American popular music and dance, are also presented. The subject of race features prominently in French interpretations of American music and identity. These interpretations see French constructions of the Indigenous American and African American "exotic" that intersect with tropes of noble, pastoral savagery, menacing barbarism, and the "civilizing" potency of French culture. The French reinterpretation of African American music and dance reveals both a revulsion of Black alterity and an attraction to the expressive freedom, and even subversiveness, of these "foreign" forms of music and dance. Contributions include essays by music, dance, theatre and opera scholars, and the volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of these disciplines.

Le Jazz
Le Jazz

Author: Matthew F. Jordan

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2022-08-15

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0252053877

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In Le Jazz, Matthew F. Jordan deftly blends textual analysis, critical theory, and cultural history in a wide-ranging and highly readable account of how jazz progressed from a foreign cultural innovation met with resistance by French traditionalists to a naturalized component of the country's identity. Jordan draws on sources including ephemeral critical writing in the press and twentieth-century French literature to trace the country's reception of jazz, from the Cakewalk dance craze and the music's significance as a harbinger of cultural recovery after World War II to its place within French ethnography and cultural hybridity. Countering the histories of jazz's celebratory reception in France, Jordan delves in to the reluctance of many French citizens to accept jazz with the same enthusiasm as the liberal humanists and cosmopolitan crowds of the 1930s. Jordan argues that some listeners and critics perceived jazz as a threat to traditional French culture, and only as France modernized its identity did jazz become compatible with notions of Frenchness. Le Jazz speaks to the power of enlivened debate about popular culture, art, and expression as the means for constructing a vibrant cultural identity, revealing crucial keys to understanding how the French have come to see themselves in the postwar world.

Actes
Actes

Author: Society of Dance History Scholars (U.S.). Annual Conference

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13:

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Music and its Virtues in Islamic and Judaic Writings
Music and its Virtues in Islamic and Judaic Writings

Author: Amnon Shiloah

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-05-31

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1000939235

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A fascinating aspect of the study of music in medieval Islamic and Judaic writings is the broad and interdisciplinary nature of the works and treatises in which it is covered. In addition, such works verbalize an art that was transmitted orally and took shape spontaneously, typically with improvisation during performance. As a result of this outlook the musical concept (or science) is often intertwined with practice (or history). This second collection by Amnon Shiloah brings together twenty-two studies exemplifying such multi-faceted viewpoints on the world of sounds and its virtue. The first studies concern the origin and originators of music and to how its essential constituents came into being; included here is the art of dance along with the controversial attitudes towards it. Next comes the symbolic, philosophical and metaphorical interpretation of music; one of the major ideas epitomizing this approach claimed that the pursuit of knowledge is the path to human perfection and happiness. There follow studies on the transmission of knowledge, along with some annotated key works dealing with therapeutic effects. The last articles focus on cultural traditions elaborated on European soil developing a particular style and musical practice, centred on the Iberian Peninsula, which was the scene of one of the most fascinating examples of cultural interchange.