After the Cold War: Continuing Cultural Imperialism and Cold War Nostalgia

In the past few years we have witnessed an intriguing rise in explorations of the Cold War in American popular culture. One recent example is the TV series Pan Am (trailer below), a show about the famous airline set in the 1960s in which one of the flight attendants is a CIA spy. Another is the 2005 movie Good Night, and Good Luck (also below). What might these cultural products and their popularity tell us about North American attitudes to the Cold War today?

 

Abstract submission

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Week 8 - The "Democracy" of Jazz

The recording below is taken from the studio LP production of a musical called "The Real Ambassadors," which was created by Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The musical directly addresses issues of race while also exploring the history of the jazz tours, as the Brubecks and Armstrong had experienced them. Listen to the first track in the line-up on this video, titled "The Real Ambassadors." What do the words and the characteristics of the music suggest about the Brubecks' and Armstrong's attitude toward the Cold War State Department tours?

Questions for Dr. Anne Shreffler

Please post a question here for Anne Shreffler. It might concern the reading for this week or last, her work on the Cold War and music, or musicology in general.
Please post it by Monday night, so we can vote on the best five in time for Thursday. I'll be in touch about how to vote.

Week 6 - The Cold War Politics of Tonality and Serialism

George Rochberg is an American composer who made the journey from serialism to tonal music. You can read a brief biography here.

In 1972 he abandoned his previous serial style and wrote a work that engaged with the language of tonality, the Third String Quartet, featuring stylistic allusions to Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and Bartók. You can listen to a recording of this quartet on the Naxos database (available via the library website: go to Naxos and search for Rochberg string quartet - this is the only one they have.)

What this video of Rochberg talking about this stylistic shift.

Listen carefully to what Rochberg has to say and the language he chooses. What do Rochberg's words reveal about the political and social implications of music-stylistic choices during the decades of the Cold War?

Week 5 - The Impact of New Media on Music in Cold War Propaganda

I encourage you to watch the film "Copland Portrait" (described in my article on Copland's cultural diplomacy activities) which you can find here. This is a USIA film and will help set you up for our presentation.

Secondly, spend some time listening to the music of Charles Ives this weekend and keep it in mind as you read the primary source article listed on the syllabus by Daryl Dayton, Music Advisor of the US Information Agency during the 1970s. (Questions below)

Here is a small sampling of Ives's works.

Charles Ives playing his own Concord Sonata, 3rd movement - "The Alcotts". (1911-15; revised 1947):

One of Ives's most well-known orchestral works is The Unanswered Question (1906). Listen out for three layers of music here: the strings represent "the Silence of the Druids—who Know, See and Hear  Nothing." The trumpet then asks "The Perennial Question of Existence" and the woodwinds seek "The Invisible Answer." Ultimately all that remains is the silence.

And finally, one of his many songs. This is "The Things Our Fathers Loved," (1905) which features his characteristic mixture of musical  nostalgia and harmonic complexity. Within this song are quotes from a number of old American songs, including "The Battle Cry of Freedom," "My Old Kentucky Home," "On the Banks of the Wabash," "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," and "In the Sweet By  and By."

Given this repertoire, which of the reasons that Dayton describes in his articles for promoting Charles Ives above all other American composers through the USIA strike you as most significant and worthy of discussion? How can we contextualize them within the USIA's broader goals? How do Dayton's goals differ from those of the Music Advisory Panel who advised the State Department during the 1950s?

Week 4 - CIA Involvement and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)

I have added two short primary sources to our OWL site, because they are too big to paste here. Please take a look at them both. They are:

1. An article by Tom Braden of the CIA published in the Saturday Evening Post after the revelations of CIA involvement in a host of private cultural organizations. (Braden on CIA expose.pdf)

2. An appendix from Wellens' book which lists the works performed at the Congress for Cultural Freedom's Paris festival in 1952. (Wellens appendix.pdf)

You need only answer one of the two sets of questions below - each refers to one of these sources.

1. Braden article: What kind of rhetoric and argumentation does Braden employ as a means to defend the secret funding of cultural organizations? What strategies does he use to appeal to the reader?

2. CCF repertoire list: What does this repertoire list tell us about the political and aesthetic message of the CCF's Paris Festival?