Academic literature on the topic 'Radicalism and music'
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Journal articles on the topic "Radicalism and music":
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Raditya, Michael HB. "Mengartikulasikan Relasi Musik dengan Radikalisme." Jurnal Studi Pemuda 5, no. 1 (August 9, 2018): 386. http://dx.doi.org/10.22146/studipemudaugm.37119.
Abstract:
This article deals with relation between music and radicalism. In fact, religion and politics are more related with radicalism. In art perspective, visual art was more related with radicalism rather than music position—especially in Indonesia. In Indonesia music had minor relation with radicalism. According this fact, i would like to explore about music with radicalism with link with several songs, genres, and moda of production—especially relate with definition of radicalisme was rooted movement. The result that i got so far is songs, genres, and mode of production relate with counter-culture. Through counter-culture, radicalism movement that used by music can be running with a different portion, inter alia: change old system to new system, and deal with daily activity as a counter. This result made me more brightly to articulate that pathern and logic of radicalism not only about practical measured, but relate with ideology things.
2
Brar, Dhanveer Singh. "‘James Brown’, ‘Jamesbrown’, James Brown: Black (music) from the getup." Popular Music 34, no. 3 (September 8, 2015): 471–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261143015000379.
Abstract:
AbstractThe following article addresses the question of the blackness and radicalism of James Brown's musical performances during what was arguably the peak of his career, between 1964 and 1971. Using analytical frameworks from the fields of black studies, performance studies and cultural theory, this article presents an argument for listening to Brown's music in terms of the modalities of rupture. The activity of rupture is tracked through the preface to his autobiography, the stage performance he developed in the early part of his career, and the experiments in rhythm he orchestrated with his band in 1964. The article culminates in a close listening of the 1971 record ‘Super Bad’ as the aesthetic height of a black radicalism Brown was producing through his music.
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Warnaby, John. "A New Left-Wing Radicalism in Contemporary German Music?" Tempo, no. 193 (July 1995): 18–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298200004277.
Abstract:
‘Communism is dead’, crowed a recent Prime Minister, little realizing that the shaky condition of capitalism would precipitate her downfall in short order. ‘Socialist art is a phenomenon of the past’, pronounced many post-modernist critics, who equated creative expressions of radical politics with a modernist aesthetic they had already consigned to their re-interpretation of history. Yet as the developed economies totter from one crisis to the next, interspersed with stock market upheavals or corruption scandals, and the ‘new world order’ fails to materialize, a new left-wing idealism is beginning to assert itself in the work of several German composers, and the growing number of discs of their music testifies to the existence of a substantial international audience for their output. It is a movement of considerable diversity, but also genuine sophistication, for it takes account of the limitation of modernism, and is not averse to encompassing expressions of radicalism from the ‘romantic’ era, where appropriate. Thus, it does not shun post-modernism, but incorporates those features which have not been sucked into the new world chaos, or into the prevalent nostalgia, usually associated with the banner of ‘pluralism’. Above all, the new radicalism reaffirms certain fundamental truths, respected by socialism, which have been overlooked both by postmodernists and proponents of the ‘new world order’. It also asserts the importance of artistic integrity at a time when consumerism is undermining creative values.
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O’Connell, John Morgan. "Review Essay: “Free Radical: Music, Violence and Radicalism”." Journal of Popular Music Studies 33, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 155–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2021.33.1.155.
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Cloonan, Martin. "What is Popular Music Studies? Some observations." British Journal of Music Education 22, no. 1 (March 2005): 77–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s026505170400600x.
Abstract:
Popular Music Studies (PMS) is now taught in over 20 higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and numerous others across the world. This article outlines the constituent parts of PMS in the UK and questions its status as a discipline in its own right. It concludes by arguing that, having established itself, PMS will need to deal with two key pressures in modern academic life – those of conducting research and widening participation. In the former instance, PMS might have to be pragmatic, in the latter lies potential for radicalism.
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Whittall, Arnold. "NICHOLAS MAW AND THE MUSIC OF MEMORY." Tempo 63, no. 250 (October 2009): 2–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298209000321.
Abstract:
Back in the early 1960s, followers of new music in Britain soon became aware that the future would not be entirely dictated by the innovative radicalism of Princeton or Darmstadt – or even by such iconoclastic Brits as Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. And anyone inclined to dismiss Nicholas Maw's Scenes and Arias, on its first version's Proms première in August 1962, as a nostalgic pseudo-Delian wallow, was put right by Anthony Payne's enthusiastic contextualization of Maw in this journal a couple of years later. In Payne's analysis, Scenes and Arias triumphantly avoided rambling romanticism, demonstrating a ‘post-expressionist language’ at ‘a new pitch of intensity’, as well as ‘the composer's exceptional feeling for the movement inherent in atonal harmony’.
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McManus, Laurie. "Feminist Revolutionary Music Criticism and Wagner Reception." 19th-Century Music 37, no. 3 (2014): 161–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2014.37.3.161.
Abstract:
Abstract Histories of progressive musical politics in mid-nineteenth-century Germany often center on the writings of Richard Wagner and Franz Brendel, relegating contributors such as the feminist and author Louise Otto (1819–95) to the periphery. However, Otto's lifelong engagement with music, including her two librettos, two essay collections on the arts, and numerous articles and feuilletons, demonstrates how one contemporary woman considered the progressive movements in music and in women's rights to be interrelated. A staunch advocate of Wagner, Otto contributed to numerous music journals, as well as her own women's journal, advising her female readers to engage with the music of the New German School. In the context of the middle-class women's movement, she saw music as a space for female advancement through both performance and the portrayals of women onstage. Her writings offer us a glimpse into the complex network of Wagner proponents who also supported women's rights, at the same time providing evidence for what some contemporary conservative critics saw as a concomitant social threat from both Wagnerian musical radicalism and the emancipated woman.
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Davies, Helen. "All rock and roll is homosocial: the representation of women in the British rock music press." Popular Music 20, no. 3 (October 2001): 301–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261143001001519.
Abstract:
The British rock music press prides itself on its liberalism and radicalism, yet the discourses employed in music journalism exclude women from serious discussion both as musicians and as fans. In particular, the notion of credibility, which is of vital importance to the ‘serious’ rock music press, is constructed in such a way that it is almost completely unattainable for women.The most important and influential part of the British music press was until recently its two weekly music papers, Melody Maker (MM) and the New Musical Express (NME), both published by IPC magazines. The NME, launched in 1949, contains reviews, concert information and interviews with performers and describes itself as ‘a unique blend of irreverent journalism and musical expertise’ (www.ipc.co.uk). MM, which started life in 1926 as a paper for jazz musicians, had similar content but a greater emphasis on rock, as opposed to pop, music. It was relaunched in 1999 as a glossy magazine, before ceasing publication or, as IPC put it, merging with the NME, in December 2000.
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Kosmecka, Agnieszka. "Polityczność muzyki — (nad)użycia." Studia nad Autorytaryzmem i Totalitaryzmem 42, no. 2 (January 18, 2021): 247–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.19195/2300-7249.42.2.12.
Abstract:
Niniejszy artykuł jest recenzją książki amerykańskiego muzykologa Jonathana Pieslaka pod tytułem Radicalism & Music. An Introduction to the Music Cultures of al-Qai’da, Racist Skinheads, Christian-Affilated Radicals, and Eco-Animal Rights Militants. Praca ukazała się w 2015 roku i stanowi ważne studium porównawcze kultur muzycznych czterech radykalnych grup: Al-Kaidy, rasistowskich skinheadów, chrześcijańskiego radykalizmu oraz ugrupowań walczących o prawa zwierząt i prawa ekologiczne. To ważna pozycja z perspektywy nie tylko muzykologicznej, lecz także politologicznej i społecznej. Obnaża bowiem status muzyki w ramach jasno określonych grup społecznych. Pieslak niezwykle klarownie określił taktykę metodologiczną; jego badania bazują przede wszystkim na pracy wewnątrz interesujących go społeczności. Wnioski zaprezentowane w książce oparł na wyczerpujących rozmach z członkami radykalnych grup, które definiowały i opisywały pre-ferencje oraz mody muzyczne panujące w ich obrębie. Dostrzeżony przez Pieslaka problem dotyczy potencjalności ludzkiej natury, to jest tego pierwiastka absolutnego, jednostkowego zła, który pragnie się zagłuszyć przez uczestnictwo w kulturze. Radykalizm jest zjawiskiem występującym w każdym miejscu na świecie, może pojawić się w niemal każdej społeczności. Nie jest więc cechą danej cywilizacji, co Pieslak słusznie dostrzega, analizując różne przykłady społeczno-politycznych skrajności. Książka Radicalism & Music. An Introduction to the Music Cultures of al-Qai’da, Racist Skin-heads, Christian-Affilated Radicals, and Eco-Animal Rights Militants stanowi studium procesów dehumanizacji, upodlenia i upokorzenia muzyki, która traci status sztuki wysokiej na rzecz skrajnej utylitarności. Muzyka służy bowiem reżimom i radykalizmom, których nie interesuje artyzm i piękno egzystencji, a jej skrajnie utylitarny wymiar. Amerykański badacz interesuje się przy tym kon-fliktami zbrojnymi prowadzonymi przez Stany Zjednoczone na Bliskim Wschodzie. Patrzy jednak na istotne problemy współczesnego Zachodu z wrażliwością muzyka-kompozytora, świadomego politycznego zaangażowania własnego kraju. Omawiana pozycja trafnie diagnozuje aktualne procesy dokonujące się w ramach współczesnych społeczeństw.
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Reuben, Federico. "Imaginary Musical Radicalism and the Entanglement of Music and Emancipatory Politics." Contemporary Music Review 34, no. 2-3 (May 4, 2015): 232–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2015.1094221.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Radicalism and music":
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Potts, Adam Simon. "From active to passive noise : rethinking the radicalism of Japanese noise music." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/2720.
Abstract:
In recent years noise has gained theoretical momentum as a concept used to consider the complexity of difference in both culture and art. Despite a great degree of variance between its authors, there is nevertheless a common insistence within noise theory that noise must be thought negatively. Particularly in accounts of Japanese noise music, noise is construed as oppositional to musicality and meaning traditionally understood. This thesis aims to reassess this claim with the argument that the true alterity of Japanese noise music cannot be reduced or essentialised to the categories of negativity and radicalism. It will be argued that the language of this music is predicated on a fundamental absence that makes any essential categorisation impossible. Drawing on twentieth-century continental philosophy, particularly the work of Maurice Blanchot, this thesis will develop an entangled relationship between two different, although fundamentally dependent, languages of noise. Chapter one will lay the theoretical groundwork for these languages by distinguishing between active noise and passive noise. If active noise names the language of negativity and radicalism through which we understand the materiality, sonority and performances of Japanese noise music, then passive noise names the way in which this language is problematised by Blanchot's challenge to atomistic and holistic thinking. Chapter two will demonstrate how an intentionless alterity, which constitutes passivity, accounts for a different idea of transgression than the kind frequently attributed to the erotic and sacrificial activities of Japanese noise music. Chapter three will continue this discussion by exploring Japanese noise music's relationship with death and impossibility. The conclusion will examine Blanchot's idea of community as a possible way of understanding the community centred around Japanese noise music. By way of summary, it will be argued that no unifying principle collectivises either the community or language of this music, because both are fundamentally predicated on an irreconcilable impossibility.
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Brar, Dhanveer Singh. "Blackness, radicalism, sound : black consciousness and black popular music in the U.S.A. (1955-1971)." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2013. http://research.gold.ac.uk/7806/.
Abstract:
The concern in this thesis is with the relationship between black music and black radicalism. This relationship is addressed through three case studies which centre on the co-emergence of the Black Consciousness movement and new forms of Black popular music in the United States between 1955 and 1971. The contention is that the relationship between the movement and the new popular music during this period is indicative of a general exchange between black music and black radicalism and can be analysed by paying attention to phonic substance. The relationship between these practices and traditions is primarily sonic, and it is as phonic substance that the blackness of black music and black radicalism emerges. The theorisation of blackness and phonic materiality is informed by a set of ongoing debates taking place within the field of Black studies. These debates address the structural and political meanings of blackness in the West and as such form the background to the research presented in the case studies on the Black Consciousness movement and Black popular music. Each of the case studies is made up of archival material ranging in format. The focus is always on how this material contributes to an analysis of the sonic form and content of the movement and the music. In this respect the archive is not a stable resource from which information is extracted but is always under construction and informing the arguments being made about the phonic materiality of black music and black radicalism.
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Kyser, Tiffany S. "Folked, Funked, Punked: How Feminist Performance Poetry Creates Havens for Activism and Change." Thesis, Connect to resource online, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2192.
Abstract:
Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010.Title from screen (viewed on July 19, 2010). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Karen Kovacik, Peggy Zeglin Brand, Ronda C. Henry. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-83).
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Lunn, Helen. "Hippies, radicals and sounds of silence : cultural dialectics at two South African universities, 1966-1976." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/2662.
Abstract:
This study explores the impact of the counter culture on students at two Anglophone universities in the 1960s and 70s. It focuses on the social and historical differences that predisposed English speaking youth to metropolitan based cultures. It explores this in the context of a lack of identity with the dominant culture of apartheid. The study examines the method of transmission, absorption, translation and incorporation of the counterculture and the New Left. The factors that highlighted the differences between South African students and their counterparts abroad are seen not only in their access to technology but also in the nature of their relationship to power both political and educational. The importance of understanding what bred different responses to similar stimuli assists in understanding the process in which the global became local.
It is argued here that the attraction of the counterculture lay in the broader cultural scope it gave to expressions of difference and resistance as a response to the rigid and continuous expansion of punitive measures by the apartheid government. The persistence through the 1960s of a liberal framework is examined in the context of a response to these measures as well as a failure to move beyond the racial foregrounding of the political system. The influences of events in the USA, UK and France in 1968 are seen in the context of their importance in South Africa as a catalyst to practical and theoretical change. The significance of individuals as translators of the discourses of the New Left is paralleled in examinations of South African musicians whose lyrics and compositions carried both the ideas of the counter culture as well as expressed responses and issues shared by their audiences.
The importance of the coalescing of both the New Left and the counterculture are evident in the early 1970s. Students adopted a Marxist framework within which to analyse South Africa, and the methods of the New Left in France in seeking alliances with workers. This practical approach was an example of the global becoming local and introduced those with access to privileged white education into a reexamination of the role of education in changing society. The counterculture expressed itself in the adoption of both cultural and educational methods of focusing on change as a response both to students relationship to power as well as to the emphasis of the 1960s on a broader more individually expressed ability to embrace change and new values.
The study concludes that the framework of the New Left when employed in redefining South African history was central to a process of both economic and cultural change within the country. The absence of a strongly expressed identity suggests the widespread appeal of the central values of the counterculture which emphasized distance and disaffiliation from the dominant culture. The opportunity offered by this position is seen as a response to the political expressions of a racially defined student body against a less obvious but significant change in the definition and role of tertiary education and cultural institutions.Theses (Ph.D)-University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, 2010.
Books on the topic "Radicalism and music":
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Levy, Alan Howard. Radical aesthetics and music criticism in America, 1930-1950. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991.
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Willis, Ellen. Beginning to see the light: Sex, hope, and rock-and-roll. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1992.
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Willis, Ellen. Beginning to see the light: Sex, hope, and rock-and-roll. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
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Reed, T. V. The art of protest: Culture and activism from the civil rights movement to the streets of Seattle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
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Reed, T. V. The art of protest: Culture and activism from the civil rights movement to the streets of Seattle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
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Wimsatt, William Upski. Bomb the suburbs. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2000.
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Wimsatt, William Upski. Bomb the suburbs. 2nd ed. Chicago: Subway and Elevated Press, 1994.
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Unger, Heinz Rudolf. Die Proletenpassion: Dokumentation einer Legende. Wien: Europaverlag, 1989.
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Doggett, Peter. There's a riot going on: Revolutionaries, rock stars and the rise and fall of '60s counter-culture. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007.
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Doggett, Peter. There's a riot going on: Revolutionaries, rock stars, and the rise and fall of the '60s. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007.
Book chapters on the topic "Radicalism and music":
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Case, George. "Wrote a Song for Everyone." In Takin' Care of Business, 21–31. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197548813.003.0003.
Abstract:
Led by John Fogerty, Creedence Clearwater Revival had a breakthrough when they recast rock music as an unpretentious voice of ordinary people, at a time when many acts were preaching psychedelic revolution: not everyone who enjoyed rock ‘n’ roll was necessarily an enemy of the Establishment. Through songs such as “Fortunate Son” and “Proud Mary,” the music’s vocabulary could now include stoicism, integrity, and class consciousness, along with rebellion, indulgence, and radicalism. The appearance of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steppenwolf, and others during the time that President Richard Nixon was invoking the American “silent majority” signified a looming schism within the rock audience
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Wells, Christi Jay. "“Counter-Bopaganda” and “Torn Riffs”." In Between Beats, 109–49. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197559277.003.0004.
Abstract:
This chapter focuses on the subculture of young African Americans who developed forms of social dancing to bebop music as recounted to the author in oral history interviews with self-identified bebop dancers and as documented by Russian modern dancer/choreographer Mura Dehn in her film The Spirit Moves and in her drafts for an unfinished study on jazz dance. Dehn’s work reveals fascinating creative adaptations to bebop’s accelerating tempos and complex melodic structures in new and expanded dances such as the applejack, Jersey bounce, and bop lindy. Through these developments, dancers engaged in intricate metric and hypermetric play with bebop music—which they refer to as dancing “off-time”—while also embodying bebop’s “cool” aesthetic and the emergent cynicism and radicalism that shaped postwar African American political culture. Their experiences, and Dehn’s work to document them, demand a re-examination of the discursive work performed by bebop’s reputation as a music innately hostile to social dancing, a label that has less to do with the music’s difficulty than with a desire to position bebop as “art” rather than “entertainment.” The chapter closes with a discussion of “the problem of Dizzy Gillespie” to highlight and explore the historiographic challenges that discussion of social dance poses to canonic narrative positionings of bebop. It suggests that bebop is better understood as part of a contiguous spectrum of Black popular culture that thrived alongside, rather than in opposition to, rhythm & blues and other popular music genres.
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Kruglanski, Arie W., David Webber, and Daniel Koehler. "EpilogueThe neo-Nazi Experience and the Psychology of Radicalization." In The Radical's Journey, 222–30. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190851095.003.0010.
Abstract:
Chapter 10 provides further comment on some of the important findings and implications of those findings. The chapter begins with a discussion of the 3N framework that guided the authors’ interpretations and informed the hypotheses tested in the earlier chapters. The authors discuss whether these insights speak to universals of the human condition or are unique to the German context and the historical experience with social nationalism. Further discussion is given to the role of emotions and music within the milieu, as well as to the hardships experienced within the extremist environment that breed disillusionment and disengagement from right-wing organizations. The chapter ends by exploring the implications of our findings for helping these individuals reintegrate into the mainstream society.
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Kruglanski, Arie W., David Webber, and Daniel Koehler. "Entry into the Extreme Right." In The Radical's Journey, 104–27. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190851095.003.0006.
Abstract:
Chapter 6 examines what motivated the interviewees to join extreme right-wing groups and organizations. Analyses revealed that the most common soon-to-be-extremist was someone who was socially frustrated, although there were no consistent culprits responsible for their distress. It turns out that individuals joined the extreme milieu because they viewed it as place where they could find significance and acceptance—where they could be seen as idealistic revolutionaries and belong to a group that gave them purpose. Analyses further revealed the social network component of radicalization, in that the vast majority of those interviewed were introduced to Far Right organizations through various social connections. Specific analysis is applied to understand how the social aspect of radicalization occurred and the role of the hate music scene in facilitating this process. Connections are drawn to previous work with both Far Right and other extremists that addressed those processes.
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Metz, Michael V. "Introduction." In Radicals in the Heartland, 3–8. University of Illinois Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252042416.003.0001.
Abstract:
As the sixties began, the UI campus was calm and conservative, with anticommunism in the air. By decade’s end the campus was in chaos, with riots, bombings, and cries of revolution. A free-speech movement grew in reaction to the Clabaugh Act, which banned communist speakers on campus. The unpopular Vietnam War drew the movement toward antiwar activities. The music, drugs, and freer sex of the decade contributed to a general antiestablishment fervor that culminated in strikes and riots by the end of the sixties.
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Willetts, David. "Vocational Higher Education." In A University Education. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198767268.003.0016.
Abstract:
A beautiful large stained-glass window dominates the end of the Great Hall of Birmingham University. My great-grandfather was one of the glaziers who made it—my family were Birmingham artisans, craftsmen, and engineers. His son, my grandfather, remembered being taken to the opening of Birmingham University in 1902—Joe Chamberlain, the founder of the university, believed that the workers who had built it should be invited, not just the academics. From a distance it looks like the stained-glass window in an ancient cathedral with figures of saints, but close up you see the radicalism of Joe Chamberlain’s vision. It is dedicated to the arts and sciences. Instead of saints and bishops the figures represent disciplines like geometry or music, but alongside them, equally prominent, are contemporary trades: there is an electroplater, a rather Michelangelesque miner, and a demure bookkeeper too. It is a celebration of the range of trades and professions of the early twentieth century, ‘as practised in the university and in the City’, said the local paper. England’s first university in one of its great bustling industrial cities was claiming a new role for the university based on its civic commitment. This great window embodies a very different idea of the university from the Oxbridge tradition. It is a vigorous statement in an argument that was raging within Government at the very time that Chamberlain was planning his new university. The question was whether public funds should go to help pay for higher education courses outside Oxbridge on a systematic basis and if so which courses at which institutions. (At this point what would become our Redbrick universities were typically university colleges teaching for the external degree of the University of London and funded locally, though with occasional public grants.) The question came to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1895, who replied: ‘As an old Oxford man myself I must confess to a feeling, which you may call a prejudice, that University education, in the full sense of the term, can hardly be obtained except at our old Universities.’ The Treasury consulted Oxford and Cambridge on what they should fund.
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"Contemporary Art Music and Dance in the 1960s:." In Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts, 165–88. University of Hawaii Press, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvvn71d.15.
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"8. Contemporary Art Music and Dance in the 1960s: Transcultural Idioms." In Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts, 165–88. University of Hawaii Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9780824842048-013.
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Norton, Jacqui. "The Diggers’ Festival, Organising a community festival with political connotations." In Focus On Festivals. Goodfellow Publishers, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.23912/978-1-910158-15-9-2631.
Abstract:
This chapter examines the organisation of a community festival from an ethnographic perspective drawn from the festival organiser’s viewpoint. It will provide some context on the reasons for founding the Diggers’ Festival and examine key issues and difficulties surrounding the launch and development of a small festival that relates to historical political activities in the market town of Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, UK. As we shall see, most current political festivals in the UK tend to be events launched to commemorate historical milestones that have a political resonance. The chapter will make specific reference to the festival’s funding, audiences and branding, concluding with recommendations on how to move the festival forward. During 2010 the author was asked by the Independent Socialists of Wellingborough (ISW) to organise an evening event to commemorate the 17th century radicals known as the Diggers. As an individual with socialist leanings, the author agreed to promote the first event, which was held during March 2011, and was launched and branded as the Wellingborough Diggers’ Festival. Even though it was in its infancy arguably only an evening event with two professional performers, Ian Saville, a magician who promotes himself as ‘Magic for Socialism’ (Saville, n.d.), and well-established local folk and Americana band The Old Speckled Men, booked, it was felt necessary to launch the festival name and the branding, with the aim being to produce a steady growth into the fourth or fifth years. It was essential to raise awareness of the identity and purpose of the festival amongst like-minded individuals, the local community and people from surrounding areas. The fourth festival grew from being organised solely by the author to having a committee of an additional five volunteers who coordinated an afternoon fringe event based in a town centre public house with three live music artists/bands, including punk/poet Attila the Stockbroker. A writer who had written historical fiction for teenagers, including one that takes its inspiration from Gerrard Winstan- ley and the Diggers, was invited as a guest speaker to present her work in the local library. The local museum hosted a week long display on the Diggers including a copy of the declaration and a copy of a field map dated 1838 identifying the location of the Bareshanks field (the site of the Wellingborough digger community). The programme for the evening event commenced with a local author Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Watchmen) as a key speaker, followed by performances by two professional live bands with ‘left’ tendencies. In addition to the general considerations of organising a festival, for instance audience, budget, funding, licensing, entertainment and promotion, coordinating a festival with such strong socialist values was going to be a challenge because of the political connotations.