Alan Bush Modern Music And The Cold War

The first major study of British communist composer Alan Bush, providing new perspectives on music and politics during the Cold War.

The first major study of British communist composer Alan Bush, providing new perspectives on music and politics during the Cold War.

Music, Art and Diplomacy shows how a vibrant field of cultural exchange between East and West was taking place during the Cold War, which contrasts with the orthodox understanding of two divided and antithetical blocs. The series of case studies on cultural exchanges, focusing on the decades following the Second World War, cover episodes involving art, classical music, theatre, dance and film. Despite the fluctuating fortunes of diplomatic relations between East and West, there was a continuous circulation of cultural producers and products. Contributors explore the interaction of arts and politics, the role of the arts in diplomacy and the part the arts played in the development of the Cold War. Art has always shunned political borders, wavering between the guidance of individual and governmental patrons, and borderless expression. While this volume provides insight into how political players tried to harness the arts to serve their own political purposes, at the same time it is clear that the arts and artists exploited the Cold War framework to reach their own individual and professional objectives. Utilizing archives available only since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the volume provides a valuable socio-cultural approach to understanding the Cold War and cultural diplomacy.

At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the U.S. State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism. Penny Von Eschen escorts us across the globe, backstage and onstage, as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz luminaries spread their music and their ideas further than the State Department anticipated. Both in concert and after hours, through political statements and romantic liaisons, these musicians broke through the government's official narrative and gave their audiences an unprecedented vision of the black American experience. In the process, new collaborations developed between Americans and the formerly colonized peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East--collaborations that fostered greater racial pride and solidarity. Though intended as a color-blind promotion of democracy, this unique Cold War strategy unintentionally demonstrated the essential role of African Americans in U.S. national culture. Through the tales of these tours, Von Eschen captures the fascinating interplay between the efforts of the State Department and the progressive agendas of the artists themselves, as all struggled to redefine a more inclusive and integrated American nation on the world stage.

The end of global communism has erased from memory the prior influence of communist ideology outside of the communist bloc. Many western musicians were involved in communist movements and organisations which often had a decisive impact upon their music. This book recalls the meeting of music and communism in societies outside of a communist state.

At nearly every pivotal moment in international politics over the past twenty-five years–from the Reagan-Gorbachev summits, to the Iran-Contra scandal, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the decision to go to war in Iraq–if you dug deeply you would find a figure just behind the scenes influencing the action: that of Richard Perle. Largely eschewing senior cabinet appointments and other high-profile roles, the passionate, zealous Perle has been content to operate quietly—behavior which earned him the moniker of The Prince of Darkness. Nevertheless, his influence in Washington has helped to fuel an international disaster in Iraq and the growth of anti-Americanism worldwide. Alan Weisman, a former producer for 60 Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, and the CBS Evening News, is now shining a light on this major political figure. While Perle has not authorized this biography, he has submitted to interviews with Weisman, encouraged his friends to do so, and provided non-classified material. Such access has granted Weisman a deep and critical insight into Perle’s methods and mindset. Weisman explores how Perle derailed a nuclear arms agreement between the U.S. and the then Soviet Union; his controversial business dealings; Perle’s tenure as Chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board during the present Bush Administration; and his role leading up to the Iraqi War, including his dealings with Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi. From the collapse of the Soviet Union to the current saber-rattling over Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Perle has put his stamp on almost every decisive event in international politics. This is an insightful and incisive study of the highest quality, and one that everyone—not just policy experts—should read. From Prince of Darkness, What People Say about Richard Perle: “We used to have major problems when Richard would wander off the farm and be caught doing things that were not consistent with the policies that [Caspar] Weinberger and [George] Shultz were trying to implement.”—Colin Powell, Secretary of State, 2001-2005 “Richard can take a really bad idea and make it sound almost plausible and reasonable, even brilliant.”—Richard Burt, Assistant Secretary of State, 1983-1985 “I really don’t understand Perle. If you talk about the real neocons, there’s Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, and they’re very different. Paul Wolfowitz is an idealist, but he’s prepared to impose democracy by the sword. I don’t think Perle gives a [bleep] about democracy. Fundamentally, it’s all a means to an end.”—Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor, 1989-1993

Musicologist Pauline Fairclough explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavor. Newly opened archives from the Leninist and Stalinist eras have shed new light on Soviet concert life, demonstrating how the music of the past was used to help mold and deliver cultural policy, how “undesirable” repertoire was weeded out during the 1920s, and how Russian and non-Russian composers such as Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Bach, and Rachmaninov were “canonized” during different, distinct periods in Stalinist culture. Fairclough’s fascinating study of the ever-shifting Soviet musical-political landscape identifies 1937 as the start of a cultural Cold War, rather than occurring post-World War Two, as is often maintained, while documenting the efforts of musicians and bureaucrats during this period to keep musical channels open between Russia and the West.

Randall Swingler (1909-67) was arguably the most significant and the best-known radical English poet of his generation. A widely published poet, playwright, novelist, editor and critic, his work was set to music by almost all the major British composers of his time. This new biography draws on extensive sources, including the Security Services files, to present the most detailed account yet of this influential poet, lyricist and activist. A literary entrepreneur, Swingler was founder of radical paperback publishing company, Fore Publications, editor of Left Review and Our Time, and literary editor of the Daily Worker; later becoming a staff reporter, until the paper was banned in 1941. In the 1930s, he contributed several plays for Unity Theatre, including the Mass Declamation Spain, the Munich-play Crisis and the revues Sandbag Follies and Get Cracking. In 1936, MI5 opened a twenty-year long file on him prompted by a song he co-wrote with Alan Bush for a concert organized to mark the arrival of the 1934 Hunger March into London. During the Second World War, Swingler served in North Africa and Italy, and was awarded the Military Medal for his part in the battle of Lake Comacchio. His collections The Years of Anger (1946) and The God in the Cave (1950) contain arguably some of the greatest poems of the Italian campaign. After the War, Swingler was blacklisted by the BBC. Orwell attacked him in Polemic and included him in the list of names he offered the security services in 1949. Stephen Spender vilified him in The God that Failed. The book will challenge the Cold War assumptions that have excluded Swingler's life and work from standard histories of the period and should be of great interest to activists, scholars and those with an interest in the history of the literary and radical left.