Modernity and the Great Depression by Kenneth J. Bindas

Author:Kenneth J. Bindas [Bindas, Kenneth J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780700624003
Google: GIL9MAAACAAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2017-01-15T22:14:09+00:00

sounds for the modern age

music as celebration of modernity

5

Echoing the lyric from Sam Lewis and Victor Young’s 1932 song “Street of Dreams,” the generation experiencing the Great Depression believed that “yesterday’s gone, tomorrow is near.” Their belief that a new day was coming was both liberating and exhilarating, and they hoped to distance themselves from the failures of the past and create a new world order. In an era where everything seemed uncertain, many turned to music for what musician Alexander Richardson called “spiritual fortification.” The ideals of the past were broken and new dreams were vital to speak to and for the Depression-era generation “distracted by the worries and uncertainties of the times.” But even as they imagined the future, they pined for the “good old days” to root their optimism. They were cautious in their modernist enthusiasm, not wanting to discredit the entire past, but to pick and choose to celebrate some aspects while ignoring others. This blending of organized, planned, and scientifically efficient society with selected memories of the past defined their understanding of their time and place and allowed them to hope and believe that a new and better world lay within their grasp.1

Music played a central role in the acceptance and dissemination of modernity as herald of the future. The varieties of cultivated and vernacular music formed a bond with their listeners and brought people together to listen, dance, sing along, or even learn how to play an instrument. This collective behavior made music during the era of special significance, and when coupled with the modernist technology of radio, film, and records, music offered a sense of unity and brought people together. There were few songs that praised rational thought or scientific methodology, for in the popular realm songs remained focused on the time-honored themes of love, romance, and heartbreak. But these traditional themes were addressed in a manner that spoke to the modern generation by recalling an imagined past using specific phrases, references, and images transmitted via modernist technology of records, jukeboxes, or radios. Performers and bands altered and cultivated images and identities that spoke to and for this modern generation by adapting their sound, voice, or lyrics to new mediums. In the cultivated realm, the federal government created a program to provide “good” music to the masses, whereas composers, emerging out of the more dissonant sounds of the 1920s, began blending traditional American musical forms into their works to better speak to a larger and more diverse audience. In these ways, and in many others such as dance (modern or popular) or Broadway musicals, music provided the sounds that gave definition to the modernist America that was the 1930s.

Music and musicians had the potential to free people from their temporal situations and uplift them. In the difficult times of the Depression era, music played this crucial role, using both sound and lyric to release people from their day-to-day worries and provide some hope and cheer in the unity that came with their participation.

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