Punk and the White Atlantic

Damaged ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 139-170
Author(s):  
Evan Rapport

Punk emerged as a fully formed and recognizable style in the mid-1970s in the United Kingdom, primarily in London, and in the United States, primarily in New York and Los Angeles. British punk musicians such as the Damned, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols during this period put together elements from American punk and its precedents, including elements that were previously heard in distinction from each other, such as the riff-based blues of the Stooges and back-to-basics rock and roll songs of the Ramones. Although this period is marked by a preoccupation with whether punk was “invented” in the US or UK, in fact, punk is a product of exchanges between musicians across the Atlantic, with much of the music continuing a long history of white people using a vocabulary of Black musical resources, including blues and reggae, to explore identity, class distinctions, and the nature of whiteness itself. These exchanges in punk are comparable to the so-called “British Invasion” of the prior decade. The discourse of making the mid-1970s UK a starting point for punk also appears to be an idea that American musicians were primarily invested in, and an idea that further dissociated punk from its basis in Black American music.

Author(s):  
Michael Pfeifer

The Making of American Catholicism: Regional Culture and the Catholic Experience argues that regional and transnational relationships have been central to the making of American Catholicism. The book traces the development of Catholic cultures in the South, the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast and their contribution to larger patterns of Catholicism in the United States. Exploring the history of Catholic cultures in New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, Los Angeles, and New York City, the book carefully explores the history of American Catholic cultures across regions and their relation to factors such as national origin, ethnicity, race, and gender. The chapters include close analysis of the historical experiences of Latinx and African American Catholics as well as European immigrant Catholics. Eschewing a national or nationalistic focus that might elide or neglect global connections or local complexity, the book offers an interpretation of the American Catholic experience that encompasses local, national, and transnational histories by emphasizing the diverse origins of Catholics in the United States, their long-standing ties to transnational communities of Catholic believers, and the role of region in shaping the contours of American Catholic religiosity. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book argues that regional American Catholic cultures and a larger American Catholicism developed as transnational Catholic laity and clergy ecclesiastically linked to and by Rome in a hierarchical, authoritarian, and communalistic “universal Church” creatively adapted their devotional and ideological practices in particular American regional contexts that emphasized notions of republicanism, religious liberty, individualistic capitalism, race, ethnicity, and gender.


1986 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-147
Author(s):  
J. Philip McAleer

Early Gothic Revival architecture in Canada, particularly from the period prior to the 1840s, when the influence of A. W. N. Pugin and the Ecclesiologists began to be felt, has been little studied. This paper reconstructs a lost monument-St. Mary's, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as erected 1820-1830-which may have been the first ambitious essay in the Gothic Revival style, especially as it apparently precedes by a few years the single and most famous monument of this time, the parish church of Notre-Dame in Montréal, itself often considered the starting point of the style in Canada. Although the exterior of St. Mary's was modest-essentially it was an exemplar of the rectangular box with "west" tower, definitively formulated by James Gibbs, and ubiquitous since the 1720s-with Gothic detailing replacing Baroque, the interior, known only from one watercolor and partly surviving today, is of greater interest. Divided into nave and aisles by piers of clustered shafts, the piers' form, plus plaster vaults and pointed arches, helped create an aura reminiscent of the Gothic period. The interior was dominated by the design of the sanctuary (now destroyed), where an unusual congregation of architectural forms suggests both the appearance of illusionistic architecture, with a possible connection to New York, and a further transformation of Baroque forms into their Gothic equivalents, with a possible connection to Québec City. Tenuous, circumstantial evidence will be provided to substantiate the plausibility of such sources. This paper also attempts to place St. Mary's in the context of the Gothic Revival in North America c. 1820-1830. As a result, it will be seen that its exterior, although without precedents in Canada, is typical of Gothic Revival churches of the period in the United States. By contrast, the interior design, especially of the sanctuary, suggests it was one of the more imaginative creations in either context. It therefore emerges as a more significant monument in the history of Canadian and North American architecture than heretofore suspected.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-5
Author(s):  
Katherine K. Preston

The history of music in nineteenth-century America, and the place of music within American culture of the period, is an area of scholarly inquiry that recently has received increased attention. It is also, as the varied articles collected in this issue illustrate, a complex topic and an area ripe for much additional research. The four articles deal with different aspects of nineteenth-century American music history and culture; in each, however, there are also areas of overlap and intersection. All four authors use as a starting point issues that have already been the subject of some scholarly attention, and examine these topics either more thoroughly or from a new theoretical or contextual point of view. The resulting aggregate should help readers to understand better a complicated and under-explored world, for all four articles highlight the complexity of musical life in America and explore some of the many ways that cultural life in the United States reflected and resonated with that of Europe. All four authors, furthermore, either hint at or explicitly mention areas that are ripe for further research.


Author(s):  
Katherine McFarland Bruce

Building on ideas introduced in the introduction, the author delves deeper into the history of Pride in Chapter One. Exploring the first Pride parades in major cities across the United States, the author examines archival newspaper reports and personal interviews with participants at these first events. In doing so, the author shows how the participants initiated the model of protest that characterizes Pride today by targeting cultural, rather than political change. With a focus on the parades of New York and Los Angeles in 1970, this chapter outlines the beginning of Pride as a moment of elation and celebration but also a significant historical moment of protest; by marching through the public streets, refusing the censor their gay identities, the participants challenged and destabilized the heteronormative cultural code. These initial marches thus acted as catalysts for more Pride celebrations, initiating the tradition of Pride.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-132
Author(s):  
Brian Stack ◽  
Peter Boag

When George Chauncey'sGay New Yorkappeared a quarter century ago, it did so with deserved fanfare. Reviewers celebrated it as “brilliant,” “magisterial,” “exceptional,” “monumental,” “light-years ahead,” “masterful,” “seminal,” “groundbreaking,” “absolutely marvelous,” a “new beginning,” and a “landmark study.” While reviews ofGay New Yorkappeared in the usual American history journals, many of these were uncommonly long, indicating the book's immediate importance. This importance was also felt beyond the discipline of history with reviews appearing in sociological, anthropological, environmental, American Studies, and even speech journals. The Association of American Geographers held a roundtable onGay New Yorkin 1995 in which a participant dubbed it, “one of the more important texts written by a nongeographer to be included in a canon of new social geography.” Beyond the academy, the popular press also expressed considerable interest in the book, with theNew York Times, theNew Yorker, theNew Republic, and theGay Community Newseach taking up the matter ofGay New Yorkin its pages. And beyond the bounds of the United States, scholarly publications in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom also commissioned reviews ofGay New York. A year after its American debut with Basic Books, the parent firm of HarperCollins released it in the United Kingdom, and then eight years later the noted historian Didier Eribon translated it into French for the Parisian publisher Fayard. Within its first few years of publication,Gay New Yorkalso collected a number of notable prizes, including theLos Angeles TimesBook Prize for history, the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the Lambda Literary Award for gay men's studies, and the Merle Curti Award from the OAH.


Author(s):  
Sean P. Holmes

Published to coincide with the centenary of the founding of the Actors' Equity Association in 1913, this book explores the history of actors' unionism in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the onset of the Great Depression. Drawing upon hitherto untapped archival resources in New York and Los Angeles, the book documents how American stage actors used trade unionism to construct for themselves an occupational identity that foregrounded both their artistry and their respectability. In the process, the book paints a vivid picture of life on the theatrical shop floor in an era in which economic, cultural, and technological changes were transforming the nature of acting as work. An engaging study that stands at a scholarly intersection where a number of disciplines converge, this book offers important insights into the nature of cultural production in the early twentieth century, the role of class in the construction of cultural hierarchy, and the special problems that unionization posed for workers in the commercial entertainment industry.


2004 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 157-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Etherington

The Zulu kingdom holds a special place in both popular culture and historical scholarship. Zulu—a famous name, easy to spell and pronounce—is as recognizably American as gangster rap. The website of the “Universal Zulu Nation” (www.hiphopcity.com/zulu_nation/) explains that as “strong believers in the culture of hiphop, we as Zulus … will strive to do our best to uplift ourselves first, then show others how to uplift themselves mentally, spiritually, physically, economically and socially.” The Zulu Nation lists chapters in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Virginia Beach, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Haven, Hartford, New Jersey, and Texas. Mardi Gras in New Orleans has featured a “Zulu Parade” since 1916. The United States Navy underscores its independence from Britain by using “Zulu time” instead of Greenwich Mean Time. Not to be outdone, the Russian Navy built “Zulu Class” submarines in the 1950s and Britain's Royal Navy built a “Tribal Class Destroyer,” HMS Zulu. The common factor linking black pride, Africa, and prowess in war is the Zulu kingdom, a southeast African state that first attained international fame in the 1820s under the conqueror Shaka, “the black Napoleon.” His genius is credited with innovations that reshaped the history of his region. “Rapidly expanding his empire, Shaka conquered all, becoming the undisputed ruler of the peoples between the Pongola and Tugela Rivers … In hand-to-hand combat the short stabbing spear introduced by Shaka, made the Zulus unbeatable.” In South Africa Shaka's fame continues to outshine all other historical figures, including Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger. A major theme park, “Shakaland,” commemorates his life and Zulu culture. A plan was unveiled in 1998 to erect a twenty-story high statue of the Zulu king in Durban Harbor that would surpass the ancient Colossus of Rhodes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Yamashita

In the 1970s, Japanese cooks began to appear in the kitchens of nouvelle cuisine chefs in France for further training, with scores more arriving in the next decades. Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Joël Robuchon, and other leading French chefs started visiting Japan to teach, cook, and sample Japanese cuisine, and ten of them eventually opened restaurants there. In the 1980s and 1990s, these chefs' frequent visits to Japan and the steady flow of Japanese stagiaires to French restaurants in Europe and the United States encouraged a series of changes that I am calling the “Japanese turn,” which found chefs at fine-dining establishments in Los Angeles, New York City, and later the San Francisco Bay Area using an ever-widening array of Japanese ingredients, employing Japanese culinary techniques, and adding Japanese dishes to their menus. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the wide acceptance of not only Japanese ingredients and techniques but also concepts like umami (savory tastiness) and shun (seasonality) suggest that Japanese cuisine is now well known to many American chefs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-779
Author(s):  
David Gutkin

H. Lawrence Freeman's “Negro Jazz Grand Opera,” Voodoo, was premiered in 1928 in Manhattan's Broadway district. Its reception bespoke competing, racially charged values that underpinned the idea of the “modern” in the 1920s. The white press critiqued the opera for its allegedly anxiety-ridden indebtedness to nineteenth-century European conventions, while the black press hailed it as the pathbreaking work of a “pioneer composer.” Taking the reception history of Voodoo as a starting point, this article shows how Freeman's lifelong project, the creation of what he would call “Negro Grand Opera,” mediated between disparate and sometimes apparently irreconcilable figurations of the modern that spanned the late nineteenth century through the interwar years: Wagnerism, uplift ideology, primitivism, and popular music (including, but not limited to, jazz). I focus on Freeman's inheritance of a worldview that could be called progressivist, evolutionist, or, to borrow a term from Wilson Moses, civilizationist. I then trace the complex relationship between this mode of imagining modernity and subsequent versions of modernism that Freeman engaged with during the first decades of the twentieth century. Through readings of Freeman's aesthetic manifestos and his stylistically syncretic musical corpus I show how ideas about race inflected the process by which the qualitatively modern slips out of joint with temporal modernity. The most substantial musical analysis examines leitmotivic transformations that play out across Freeman's jazz opera American Romance (1924–29): lions become subways; Mississippi becomes New York; and jazz, like modernity itself, keeps metamorphosing. A concluding section considers a broader set of questions concerning the historiography of modernism and modernity.


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