This publication is presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
University of Chicago Press
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club
Popular Music and the Avant-Garde
-
Bernard Gendron
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2002
About this book
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, popular music was considered nothing but vulgar entertainment. Today, jazz and rock music are seen as forms of art, and their practitioners are regularly accorded a status on par with the cultural and political elite. To take just one recent example, Bono, lead singer and lyricist of the rock band U2, got equal and sometimes higher billing than Pope John Paul II on their shared efforts in the Jubilee 2000 debt-relief project.
When and how did popular music earn so much cultural capital? To find out, Bernard Gendron investigates five key historical moments when popular music and avant-garde art transgressed the rigid boundaries separating high and low culture to form friendly alliances. He begins at the end of the nineteenth century in Paris's Montmartre district, where cabarets showcased popular music alongside poetry readings in spaces decorated with modernist art works. Two decades later, Parisian poets and musicians "slumming" in jazz clubs assimilated jazz's aesthetics in their performances and compositions. In the bebop revolution in mid-1940s America, jazz returned the compliment by absorbing modernist devices and postures, in effect transforming itself into an avant-garde art form. Mid-1960s rock music, under the leadership of the Beatles, went from being reviled as vulgar music to being acclaimed as a cutting-edge art form. Finally, Gendron takes us to the Mudd Club in the late 1970s, where New York punk and new wave rockers were setting the aesthetic agenda for a new generation of artists.
Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club should be on the shelves of anyone interested in the intersections between high and low culture, art and music, or history and aesthetics.
When and how did popular music earn so much cultural capital? To find out, Bernard Gendron investigates five key historical moments when popular music and avant-garde art transgressed the rigid boundaries separating high and low culture to form friendly alliances. He begins at the end of the nineteenth century in Paris's Montmartre district, where cabarets showcased popular music alongside poetry readings in spaces decorated with modernist art works. Two decades later, Parisian poets and musicians "slumming" in jazz clubs assimilated jazz's aesthetics in their performances and compositions. In the bebop revolution in mid-1940s America, jazz returned the compliment by absorbing modernist devices and postures, in effect transforming itself into an avant-garde art form. Mid-1960s rock music, under the leadership of the Beatles, went from being reviled as vulgar music to being acclaimed as a cutting-edge art form. Finally, Gendron takes us to the Mudd Club in the late 1970s, where New York punk and new wave rockers were setting the aesthetic agenda for a new generation of artists.
Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club should be on the shelves of anyone interested in the intersections between high and low culture, art and music, or history and aesthetics.
Author / Editor information
Bernard Gendron is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Technology and the Human Condition.
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
CONTENTS
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1 - POP INTO ART: FRENCH MODERNISM
- SECTION A: CABARET ARTISTRY (1840-1920)
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2 The Song of Montmartre
25 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3 The Black Cat Goes to the Cabaret Voltaire
57 - SECTION B: PARIS IN THE JAZZ AGE (1916-25)
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4 Jamming at le Boeuf
81 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5 Negrophilia
103 - ART INTO POP: AMERICAN POSTMODERNISM
- SECTION A: JAZZ AT WAR (1942-50)
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6 Moldy Figs and Modernists
117 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7 Bebop under Fire
143 - SECTION B: THE CULTURAL ACCREDITATION OF THE BEATLES (1963-68)
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
8 Gaining Respect
159 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
9 Accolades
189 - SECTION C: NEW YORK: FROM NEW WAVE TO NO WAVE (1971-81)
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
10 Punk before Punk
225 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
11 The First Wave
249 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
12 No Wave
275 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
13 At the Mudd Club
299 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Coda
317 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
NOTES
329 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
BIBLIOGRAPHY
357 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
INDEX
375
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 8, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9780226834573
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780226834573
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
