Cultural History Commons^™

Children Of The Grave: The Rise, Fall, And Experience Of Heavy Metal Music During The Latter Cold War From 1969-1991, Shelby Sibert

All Theses

The Cold War era saw the emergence of many different pop culture phenomena. Some were political, such as the Punk Rock and Hippie movements. Others were fashionable trends like Disco. However, Heavy Metal music is unique due to its opaque origins, skyrocketing popularity, and final disappearance after the end of the Cold War. Heavy Metal had a direct relationship with reflecting the fears and anxieties of the late Cold War period. It was a direct response to the Hippie activist counterculture rock n' roll of the 1960s, and it charters a new path of rock n' roll in the process. …

Lay It On The Line: The Life And Music Of Gladys Bentley, Bianki Torres, J.

Doctoral Dissertations

This work is a historical biography of Gladys Bentley and her blues music. She was a cross-dressing entertainer from the Harlem Renaissance and performed popular songs with added, sometimes improvised sexual innuendo. This study considers the performances of her recorded and written material as trans music, meaning, that black music provided a platform to determine racial, gendered, and sexual cultural expressions changing over time, however, always rooted in black vernacular culture. Using showbills, promotional material, studio recordings and short autobiography, this study follows Bentley’s career as “male impersonator” and the effects lesbian/gay (queer) culture had on her blues. Also, I …

Making Russian Music: Uncovering Pyotr Tchaikovsky’S Musical Ideas Through His Letters, Sydney Morrison

Student Research Submissions

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is arguably Russia's most famous composer. Although his music is widespread, his immediate impact on Russian music in the 19th century is often overlooked or unknown by audiences. This paper examines what compositional and musical ideas Tchaikovsky used in his pieces and how he expressed them through his letters. Because of the relationships he had with his correspondents, Tchaikovsky had the means to develop and learn his unique compositional style. The most significant correspondents were his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, his brother Modest, and fellow composer Mily Balakirev. They enabled him to express and develop his musical …

Jigs, Reels, And “Realness”: An Investigation Of Ideas Of Authenticity And Tradition In New England French Canadian Music, Lowell Ruck

Honors Projects

Franco-American culture is increasingly recognized as an integral part of the heritage of Maine and New England, and has attracted growing academic attention in recent years. But while many scholars and cultural promoters focus on the French language in their work on this subject, few studies have considered the position of traditional music in Franco-American communities in the 21^st century. This thesis examines French Canadian traditional music as it is played in New England and the ways in which musicians think about authenticity and tradition in their art. Using material from ethnographic interviews, it illuminates how musicians draw from …

Putting Cajuns On The Map: Music's Role In Popularizing Louisiana's Bayou Culture, Christine Broussard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern Louisiana witnessed a grassroots Cajun cultural revival whose most active years stretched across three decades in the latter half of the twentieth century. While important local and world events created conditions favorable to its development, actors and events within the Cajun musical sphere specifically, and the establishment and use of iconography within that sphere, played integral roles in sustaining the Cajun renaissance into the 1980s. Activist efforts that recast long-held negative tropes about Cajun culture ensured modern-day Cajuns had access not only to cultural traditions but to the same spaces created to help keep those traditions alive. While those …

Music And Communal Division During The French Wars Of Religion, Cameron G. Wade

Honors Theses

This Senior Honors Thesis explores the social and cultural impact of confessional musical composition and performance on the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). Because Huguenots and Catholics identified with and were widely identifiable by their respective musical styles, cultural divisions between each confession were emphasized by differences in music. This capacity of sacred and confessionally-influenced secular music to highlight and reinforce societal divides is evidenced by the interconfessional violence that accompanied the public performance of sacred music in cities as well as the pressures imposed on composers to create music which clearly aligned with their respective confessions. As the wars …

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

Uncovering Alice Bag: An Alternative Punk History, Emily Macune

Scripps Senior Theses

The intention of this thesis is to provide an alternative counter-narrative to the mainstream histories of punk that center white men. By focusing on the contributions of fem queer and POC punks, I aim to legitimize punk music as a form of resistance against systems of oppression that are oppositional to the commodified forms of mainstream punk. Using Alice Bag, as my central case study as a fem queer punk that is often left out of punk historical narratives, I contextualize her work through feminist, queer, and media studies lenses to bridge the gap between academia and forgotten personal experience.

Music In Unconventional Spaces: The Changing Music Scene Of Great Depression America, 1929-1938, Rachel Carey

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The world of the Great Depression was in massive transition as the economy crumbled and people sought an escape from their ordinary and troublesome lives. The expanding and remodeling cultural forms of this time worked to provide this diversion for all people. One of these forms in particular adapted to fulfill the need of the American people: music. While music was a popular form of culture throughout the American past, it went through a large transition beginning in the Gilded Age through the Great Depression in order to survive. With the beginning of the Great Depression, professional and amateur groups …

Gustave Vogt's Musical Album Of Autographs: A Scholarly Edition, Kristin Leitterman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gustave Vogt (1781–1870) was the most famous oboist in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century. Throughout his career he played with the best orchestras in Paris, toured Europe widely, and also taught the next generation of oboists at the Paris Conservatoire from 1802–1853. Although many of the details of his life have been lost to history, he did leave behind a record of the esteem in which he was held. This is preserved physically in the form of an album of short musical compositions honoring Vogt, collected between 1831 and 1859. The album has never been published, and is in the …

Love Sick The Musical - A Reflection Of My Undergraduate Studies, William Kelly

Senior Theses

No abstract available

Searching For Modeling Of Stravinsky's Petroushka In Poulenc's Rapsodie Nègre: Poulenc's Use Of Popular Forms And Techniques In His Earliest Work, Jeremy Rover

Senior Theses

Why does the view that French composer Francis Poulenc was a musical hack and a fraud continue to be discussed today? To get to the bottom of this, we need to look at the evidence available and find proof to back up these claims. In the predominant research on Poulenc, many scholars mention musical themes and quotations linked to other composers, but most of these claims aren’t backed up with specific examples or score studies. Therefore, in this paper I attempt to trace the “crime” to its source by showing Poulenc’s possible borrowing of harmonies, thematic material, styles, and rhythms …

Madrid Me Mata: Regional Identity Politics And Community Building Through The Music Of La Movida Madrileña, Winona A. Bechte

Scripps Senior Theses

Chapter 1: Formation and Early Beginnings of music in la Movida
-In the first chapter I am writing about how the early development of la Movida runs very much alongside political initiatives to stimulate cultural development in Madrid. Specifically I am writing about how popular songs and musicians at the time translated these messages of regional pride and identity that was being heavily stimulated by the government into a way that the general public could understand and support. Citing specific song lyrics and early bands of la Movida, I also track the years leading up to 1975 and how music …

Robert Nathaniel Dett And The Music Of The Harlem Renaissance, Daniel Weaver

History Theses

While the contributions of writers and poets to the period of American cultural history known as the Harlem Renaissance are relatively well defined and understood, assessing the contributions of musicians has been more problematic. The topic has been covered indirectly through works of American music history and African American history, but there have been comparatively few works linking music directly to the goals of the movement. Much of the insight into music’s place during this period derives from contemporary writers such as Alain Locke and James Weldon Johnson, both of whom featured discussions of music in their writings. Relatively unknown …

Imagining Sri Lanka, Derick Kirishan Ariyam

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Analyzes the works of three Sri Lankan expatriates, the writers, Shyam Selvadurai and Michael Ondaatje, and the artist, M.I.A., giving particular attention to Selvadurai's Funny Boy and Ondaatje's Running in the Family, Anil's Ghost, and The Cinnamon Peeler. Though all three have been charged as "inauthentic" due to their dislocated positions, uncovers the various productive and complicated ways Sri Lanka has been configured by those outside its shores.

The Symphony In America: Maurice Abravanel, And The Utah Symphony Orchestra: The Battle For Classical Music, Alex D. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Between 1947 and 1979 the Utah Symphony Orchestra was transformed from an obscure, part-time, amateur orchestra into one of the major symphony orchestras in America. By 1947 the orchestra, which had begun as a Works Progress Administration organization, was barely hanging on. The symphony struggled to remain financially solvent, performing only a few concerts per year. Thirty-two years later the Utah Symphony Orchestra was one of the most prestigious musical ensembles in the country— receiving rave reviews from critics around the world, touring extensively, and with more than a hundred albums to its credit. The remarkable growth of the Utah …

George Edward Percy Careless: His Contributions To The Musical Culture Of Utah And The Significance Of His Life And Works, Howard Hoggan Putnam

Theses and Dissertations

Through study of the conditions of the past one is often able to appreciate the present a great deal more. Particularly does this seem true when one looks into the early musical activities in our State of Utah. Most people are aware of the great amount of musical activities existing at the present time in Utah, but many fail to stop and realize the background of work and effort applied to bring these musical experiences before the public. Many fail to realize the pioneering work done by individuals to advance music to its present degree of performance. Names such as …

Eighty Years Of Music In St. George, Utah, 1861-1941, Reed Paul Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study has been to trace the development of music in St. George, Utah from its settlement in 1861 to 1941, an eighty-year period of much change. It has been an attempt, therefore, to show the musical heritage which this city now enjoys.

The Development Of Mexican Music, Edith M. K. Tibbets

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Perhaps no country at the present time has a richer unexplored fount of folk music than has Mexico. In fact. her rich store of musical culture, like a vast mine scarcely worked entitles her to a position among those peoples whose folk music has long been firmly established.

Finding the source material on the music of Mexico for the most part, fragmentary and scattered, the writer decided to do serious research in translating from the early Spanish writers, and in reading the chronicles of the travelers of that early period, as well as the historical writings and the legendary lore …