Politics and the popular in British Music Theatre of the Vietnam era

Adlington, Robert C. (2018) Politics and the popular in British Music Theatre of the Vietnam era. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143 (2). pp. 433-471. ISSN 0269-0403

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Abstract

British music theatre works of the 1960s and early 1970s largely avoided direct engagement with contemporary political topics. Intriguing in this light is Michael Hall’s recent proposition that Brecht’s music theatre set the terms for younger British composers’ experiments with the genre. Brecht proved a complicated model, however, because of composers’ anxieties about music’s capability to convey socio-political messages, and their reluctance to accord popular music a progressive function. The entanglement of Vietnam war activism and rock music forms the backdrop for analyses of two works that do address Vietnam directly – George Newson’s Arena and Anthony Gilbert’s The Scene-Machine (both 1971) – both of which also pass pointed comment on different popular music traditions. Both works highlight the difficulty in emulating Brecht’s model in an era when the concept of ‘the political’ was being significantly redefined, and the cultural gap between activist cadres and the wider population was unprecedentedly visible.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of the Royal Musical Association on 05 Oct 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02690403.2018.1507121
Uncontrolled Keywords:	music theatre, Vietnam war, protest, popular music, Brecht
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure M Music and Books on Music > M Music
Schools:	School of Music, Humanities and Media
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
Depositing User:	Sally Hughes
Date Deposited:	23 Nov 2017 09:43
Last Modified:	21 May 2019 10:30
URI:	http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/33967

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