‘The dancing front’: dance music, dancing, and the BBC in World War II

Popular Music ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINA BAADE

This paper offers a case history of the BBC's ambivalent engagement with dance music during the Second World War. It examines what ‘dance music’ meant to the BBC, musicians, and the public, and how they contested and performed those meanings in the context of new social dance practices and the growing popularity of what became known as ‘swing’ in Britain. Although broadcasting in effect disembodied music closely associated with the physical, the BBC was a primary way for people to access dance music which supported their bodily acts of leisure and regimentation. The BBC's study and regulation of dance music centred around two goals: pleasing important groups in national service and broadcasting morale-boosting music. The problem of whether these goals were congruent lay at the heart of the issue, for the youth active in national service emerged as the primary audience for the two genres – ‘swing’ and ‘sentimentality’ – about which the BBC felt most dubious.

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-199
Author(s):  
Regina M. Frey

At present, there is no societally relevant political newspaper in Germany that is based on a Christian worldview. The Rheinischer Merkur, founded in 1946 shortly after the end of the Second World War and shut down by the German Bishops’ Conference in 2010, was a newspaper of this kind. It went beyond the Christian milieu in the fulfilment of its mission in the public arena. The closure of the Rheinischer Merkur obscures even today the decisive role it played in the elaboration of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and the substantial quality of the paper. This essay sketches the history of the Rheinischer Merkur and its self-understanding, as well as its decline, locating these in the context of the journalistic autonomies and media-ethical tensions to which every journalistic medium is subject.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ku Daeyeol

This important new study by one of Korea’s leading historians focuses on the international relations of colonial Korea – from the Japanese rule of the peninsula and its foreign relations (1905–1945) to the ultimate liberation of the country at the end of the Second World War. In addition, it fills a significant gap – the ‘blank space’ – in Korean diplomatic history. Furthermore, it highlights several other fundamental aspects in the history of modern Korea, such as the historical perception of the policy-making process and the attitudes of both China and Britain which influenced US policy regarding Korea at the end of World War II.


2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Patricia Clarke

There have been several anecdotal accounts of the literary scene in Brisbane during World War II and numerous references in more general works. In 2000,Queensland Reviewpublished some reminiscences of writers Estelle Runcie Pinney, Don Munro, Val Vallis and David Rowbotham, under the title ‘Writing in Brisbane during the Second World War’. Some of the more important general works include Judith Wright's ‘Brisbane in Wartime’, Lynne Strahan's history ofMeanjinand Judith Armstrong's biographical work on the Christesens,The Christesen Romance. My interest in this subject arose from editing Judith Wright's autobiography,Half a Lifetime, published in 1999, and recently in editing, with her daughter, letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney which were mainly written in Brisbane in the later years of the war and the immediate postwar period. Initially my purpose was to gather information to elucidate people or events mentioned in these writings, but my interest widened to embrace more general information about the period. My research led me to the conclusion thatMeanjinand its editor Clem Christesen were catalysts for many of the literary activities in Brisbane during World War II, not just among resident Australians, but among troops temporarily stationed in Brisbane — particularly Americans, whom Christesen cultivated and published. This article records a few glimpses of literary life in Brisbane, and incidentally in the rest of the country, during a period described by Patrick Buckridge as never having been researched ‘in enough detail’.


2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-93
Author(s):  
Alexander Badenoch

Until recently, broadcasting in Europe has been seen by historians and broadcasters alike as intricately related to national territory. Starting immediately after the Second World War, when West German national territory was still uncertain, this article explores how the broadcasting space of the Federal Republic (FRG) shaped and was shaped by material, institutional, and discursive developments in European broadcasting spaces from the end of World War II until the early 1960s. In particular, it examines the border regimes defined by overlapping zones of circulation via broadcasting, including radio hardware, signals and cultural products such as music. It examines these spaces in part from the view of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the federation of (then) Western public service broadcasters in Europe. By reconstructing the history of broadcasting in the Federal Republic within the frame of attempts to regulate European broadcasting spaces, it aims to show how territorial spaces were transgressed, transformed, or reinforced by the emerging global conflict.


1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Danchev

Historical analogiesOn 2 August 1990, much to everyone's surprise, Hitler invaded Kuwait. The ensuing conflict was mired in history—as Francis Fukuyama might say—or at least in historical analogy. The ruling analogy was with the Second World War; more exactly, with the origins and nature of that war. George Bush's constant reference during the Second Gulf War was Martin Gilbert's Second World War, a monumental construction well described as ‘a bleak, desolate evocation of the horrors of war, a modern Waste Land, an unremitting catalogue of killing, atrocity and exiguous survival’. The paperback edition of this exacting volume weighs three pounds. The text runs to 747 pages. Understandably, the President stashed his copy on board Air Force One. ‘I'm reading a book’, he informed an audience in Burlington, Vermont, in October 1990, ‘and it's a book of history, a great, big, thick history of World War II, and there's a parallel between what Hitler did to Poland and what Saddam Hussein has done to Kuwait’. As Paul Fussell has reminded us, the wartime refrain was Remember Pearl Harbor. “ ‘No one ever shouted or sang Remember Poland’? Not until 1990, that is. Of course, Bush himself had served in that war, as he was not slow to remind the electorate: he flew fifty-eight missions as a pilot in the Pacific. For those who wondered what he knew of Poland, Gilbert's book—at once a chronicle of remembrance and an indictment—told him this:


2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Shanken

Breaking the Taboo: Architects and Advertising in Depression and War chronicles the fall of a professional interdiction in architecture, precipitated by the Second World War. For much of the history of their profession in the United States, architects——unlike builders and engineers, their main competition——faced censure from the American Institute of Architects if they advertised their services. Architects established models of professional behavior intended to hold them apart from the commercial realm. Andrew M. Shanken explores how the Great Depression and the Second World War strained this outdated model of practice, placing architects within consumer culture in more conspicuous ways, redefining the architect's role in society and making public relations an essential part of presenting the profession to the public. Only with the unification of the AIA after the war would architects conduct a modern public relations campaign, but the taboo had begun to erode in the 1930s and early 1940s, setting the stage for the emergence of the modern profession.


2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (44) ◽  
pp. 312-342
Author(s):  
Luiz Eduardo Panisset Travassos ◽  
Pablo Cristiano Alves Coelho ◽  
Bruno Durão Rodrigues ◽  
Larissa Duarte Araújo Pereira

O trabalho apresenta uma reflexão sobre a atual exploração turística do carste do norte da França, em locais remanescentes e pontos estratégicos utilizados no Teatro de Operações durante o desembarque Aliado nas praias da Baixa Normandia na Segunda Guerra Mundial. Por meio de fundamentação teórica e pesquisa de campo foi possível observar a paisagem cárstica e ponderar sobre o uso dos marcos históricos, cemitérios, museus e modificações na paisagem como suporte ao Turismo Histórico-Cultural. Observa-se que o cenário em questão visa promoção e valorização da história, bem como propõe o resgate da memória através do desenvolvimento turístico regional.Palavras-chave: Carste; Turismo; Baixa Normadia; Segunda Guerra Mundial; Dia D Abstract This work presents a discussion on the current tourist use of the karst from northern France in remaining places and strategic points used in the theater of operations during the Allied landings on the beaches of Lower Normandy in World War II. By means of theoretical basis and fieldwork it was possible to observe the karst landscape and consider its use as historic landmarks, cemeteries, museums and changes in the landscape as support for the historical and cultural tourism. One observes that the scenario is used as a way of enforcing and preserving history as well as proposes the rescue of memory through the development of regional tourism.Keywords: Karst; Tourism; Lower Normandy; Second World War; D-Day.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Andrzej Grzegorczyk

The Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem was the first camp set up by the Nazis to exterminate Jews during the Second World War. The history of Kulmhof has long been an area of interest for academics, but despite thorough research it remains one of the least-known places of its kind among the public. Studies of the role of archaeology in acquiring knowledge about the functioning of the camp have been particularly compelling. The excavations carried out intermittently over a thirty-year period (1986–2016), which constitute the subject of this article, have played a key role in the rise in public interest in the history of the camp.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-674
Author(s):  
Ilya A. Pomiguev ◽  
Eldar R. Salakhetdinov

The paper analyses the politics of memory of the World War II (WWII) in socialist Yugoslavia and compares the corresponding commemorative practices in the post-Yugoslav republics. The focus is on the design of holidays and memorial dates that reflect the symbolic and valuable attitudes of society, as well as the trajectory of nation-building. The formation of the state metanarrative in post-war Yugoslavia was closely related to the monopolisation of the leadership roles of the national liberation war by the communists, who united the six South Slavic nations in their struggle against the Nazi invaders. The state holidays and memorial days were derived from the history of resistance to foreign occupiers and internal enemies in order to legitimise and strengthen the triumph of the new socialist order. Alternative Yugoslavian non-communist movements, especially the Ustash and Chetniks who were potentially capable of competing in the symbolic field, were declared class enemies, reactionary elements, and quislings. As the processes of disintegration increased in socialist Yugoslavia, there were several attempts to revise its ideological attitudes and symbolic heritage of WWII. Nevertheless, as the study shows these attempts became, rather, a marginal phenomenon, and most post-Yugoslav states retained the commemorative, albeit de-ideologised, practices of the previous period.


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