Introduction

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Music Community ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Radio Programs ◽  
Harry Belafonte

This introductory chapter traces the emergence of a rich folk music community in the 1950s. During the decade, folk music was part of the pervasive culture, as well as the emerging counterculture. Popular folk performers such as John Jacob Niles, Burl Ives, Josh White, Harry Belafonte, and the early Weavers easily entered the musical mainstream, while others existed more on the fringe but still attracted a loyal following. In addition to the commercial performers, there were also folk festivals, radio programs, record collectors, small record labels, and a host of organizations and venues. Indeed, folk music remained widespread and accessible, despite its often-perceived left-wing taint. Across the Atlantic a similar, although smaller, movement became visible. Moreover, they were increasingly connected: American folk music had a definite influence on the British scene.

Talking Italian blues: Roberto Leydi, Giovanna Marini and American Influence in the Italian folk revival, 1954–66

Popular Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-334
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Love
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Postwar Italy

AbstractThis article examines how Roberto Leydi and Giovanna Marini, two important figures of the Italian ‘folk revival’, negotiated diverse American cultural influences and adapted them to the political context of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that American musical traditions offered them valuable models even as many Italian intellectuals and artists grew more critical of US society and foreign policy. To explore this phenomenon in greater depth, I take as examples two particular moments of exchange. I first discuss American folklorist Alan Lomax's research in Italy and its impact on Leydi's career. I then examine how Marini employed American talking blues in order to reject US society in her first ballad, Vi parlo dell'America (I Speak to You of America) (1966). These two cases provide specific examples of how American influence worked in postwar Italy and the role of folk music in this process.

Popular Folk Music Comes of Age, 1955–1956

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
World Peace ◽  
International Understanding ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Harry Belafonte ◽  
The U.S

This chapter describes the folk music scene from 1955 to 1956. It discusses the formation of the Hillbilly-Folk Record Collectors' Club and launching of the quarterly Hillbilly-Folk Record Journal in early 1954, in Britain; how the skiffle provided a dramatic boost to the popularity of folk-style music in Britain; the sudden popularity of a different musical hybrid, calypso, in the U.S.; how folk music was linked with the developing countercultural movement—poetry, films, novels, comic books, jazz, comedy—spreading across the U.S. in the mid-1950s; the emergence of Harry Belafonte; and the rising popularity of international music in the U.S., spurred by people's search for international understanding and world peace during the harsh years of the Cold War.

Roots of the Revival

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald D. Cohen ◽  
Rachel Clare Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Greenwich Village ◽  
Transatlantic History ◽  
Transatlantic Exchange ◽  
History Of ◽  
Work Songs ◽  
Cultural Connections ◽  
Harry Belafonte

This book presents a transatlantic history of folk's midcentury resurgence that juxtaposes the related but distinct revivals that took place in the United States and Great Britain. After setting the stage with the work of music collectors in the nineteenth century, the book explores the so-called recovery of folk music practices and performers by Alan Lomax and others, including journeys to and within the British Isles that allowed artists and folk music advocates to absorb native forms and facilitate the music's transatlantic exchange. The book places the musical and cultural connections of the twin revivals within the decade's social and musical milieu and grapple with the performers' leftist political agendas and artistic challenges, including the fierce debates over “authenticity” in practice and repertoire that erupted when artists like Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio carried folk into the popular music mainstream. From work songs to skiffle, from the Weavers in Greenwich Village to Burl Ives on the BBC, the book offers a frank and wide-ranging consideration of a time, a movement, and a transformative period in American and British pop culture.

The Cul-de-Sac of Social Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan M. Wald
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
New York Intellectuals ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Irving Howe ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S

A history of Irving Howe and Dissent magazine is used to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the social democratic alternative that became the Left wing of the New York intellectuals during the 1950s. This is followed by an examination of the life and work of Harvey Swados, which also express the ambiguities that would render this tradition problematic during the era of new radicalization in the 1960s.

The Challenge of Minority Nationalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-509
Author(s):  
Johannes Heuman
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Middle East Conflict ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Nouvelles Associations

Abstract This article investigates how the French antiracist movement and its main organizations dealt with Zionism and the Middle East conflict from the liberation of France until the early 1970s. Their generally positive view of Israel and their concern for Arab interests at the end of the 1940s demonstrate these republican organizations' desire to recognize ethnic identities. During the 1950s an ideological split between left-wing antiracism and Zionism began to develop, and by the end of the 1960s a number of new antiracist associations questioned the very foundation of the Jewish state. Overall, the study argues that antiracist organizations' stances on and statements about Zionism and the Middle East conflict influenced Jewish-Arab relations during the postwar period and played an important role for both Jews and Arabs. Cet article examine comment le mouvement antiraciste français et ses principales organisations ont abordé le sionisme et le conflit au Moyen-Orient depuis la Libération jusqu'au début des années 1970. Leur opinion surtout positive d'Israël ainsi qu'un souci pour les intérêts arabes à la fin des années 1940 montrent un certain désir par ces organisations républicaines de reconnaître les identités ethniques. Pendant les années 1950, une fracture idéologique entre l'antiracisme de gauche et le sionisme commence à se développer, et dès la fin des années 1960 un activisme plus poussé a amené de nouvelles associations antiracistes à remettre en question les fondements mêmes de l'Etat juif. Dans l'ensemble, l'étude montre que les organisations antiracistes ont été impliquées dans l'élaboration des relations judéo-arabes après la guerre à travers leurs positions et déclarations sur le sionisme et le Moyen-Orient, des questions qui jouent un rôle important pour les Juifs et les Arabes.

scholarly journals Benito Milla: un Ulises desgraciado en el Río de la Plata. De Cuadernos Internacionales a Mundo Nuevo, del socialismo libertario al humanismo antibelicista

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 199-235
Author(s):  
Karina Jannello
Keyword(s):  
Rio De La Plata ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Río De La Plata ◽  
Cultural Management ◽  
La Plata ◽  
Reference Space ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Strong Expansion

The following article aims to recover the cultural management of the Spanish republican exiled in Montevideo Benito Milla between the 1950s and 1965s. Since his arrival in Montevideo, encouraged by his anarchist ideals, Milla sets up a reference space for the Uruguayan culture that is reconfiguring a humanist and anti-war left wing. Through its magazines Cuadernos Internacionales, Deslinde, Letras 62, Número (2ndep.) and Temas, but also through the editorials that he creates for the diffusion of the new talents of the Generation of 45: Deslinde and Alfa, Milla constitutes himself in a fundamental link to understand the strong expansion of Uruguayan culture in those years.

A Brief History of the Tarantella Revival

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Incoronata Inserra
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Video Production ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mainstream Culture

This chapter offers an overview of the post-1990s tarantella revitalization in Italy, particularly of the much-popularized pizzica subgenre from the Salento area, by looking at the local and national festival scene, as well as music and video production, while also exploring the increasing visibility of tarantella within Italian popular and mainstream culture. Moreover, it explores national and international scholarly debates regarding this revitalization phenomenon and situates these debates within the current scholarship on the Italian Southern Question. Finally, the chapter juxtaposes the current revival of Southern Italian folk music with the 1970s folk music revival in Italy, particularly in relation to its left-wing ideology and as a foray into changing revival dynamics at play within Italian folk revival context.

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