Tin Pan Alley and the Philippines: American Songs of War and Love, 1898–1946: A Resource Guide by Thomas P. Walsh (review)

Abstract

Tin Pan Alley and the Philippines: American Songs of War and Love, 1898-1946: A Resource Guide. By Thomas P. Walsh. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013. [xxv, 411 p. ISBN 9780810886087 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 9780810886094 (e-book), $94.99.] Bibliographic references, indexes. Thomas Walsh has uncovered a vast forgotten repertoire of popular that serves as an exciting contribution to the growing scholarship on Tin Pan Alley and the intersections of U.S. imperialism, popular culture, and global popular music. This volume covers the period of U.S. colonial rule in the islands, from 1898 to 1946, and includes entries for approximately 1,400 whose lyrics or titles deal in some way with the Philippines. By grouping these together for the first time, Walsh provides scholars with a starting point from which to further explore the ways in which popular song served as a medium to negotiate, perform, and experience the logics and ideologies of U.S. imperialism. The bulk of Walsh's easy-to-use volume consists of individual song entries listed alphabetically by year. These include soldier written by American soldiers during the Philippine-American War and well-distributed Tin Pan Alley hits such as Ma Filipino Babe and Old Manila. One of Walsh's primary contributions is revealing the widespread engagement with this musical subject matter by uncovering a wealth of unpublished sent off for copyright at the Library of Congress that remained unseen and unheard. In addition to popular songs, Walsh also includes a small number of other media, such as recordings, musicals, and classical works. Very little of this repertoire has appeared in earlier discographies. Walsh generated his entries by combing through sheet music archives, examining records of copyrights, and by building a large private collection of Tin Pan Alley pieces. While the subtitle describes the volume as songs of war and love, the majority of these were written around times of formal warfare during the Spanish-American/Philippine-American Wars from 1898 to 1902 and World War II from 1941 to 1946. These eleven years take up 66 percent of the 363 pages of entries, and the earlier period alone comprises almost half the book. Song entries feature standard discographic information, but many also include descriptions of cover art, lyrics for in the public domain, and links to digitized recordings, online sheet music, or primary sources with information about the entry. His inclusion of such information provides scholars access to crucial resources beyond those that could be reasonably included in a printed guide. These links to Web sites hosted by universities and large archives will likely be accessible to scholars well into the future. In addition to this extra information, for about half of the pieces, Walsh offers brief biographies of composers, historically situates events referred to in the lyrics, or analyzes cover art iconography. Much of this is new research, and helps to provide context for lesser-known composers and esoteric subject matter. Walsh concludes with a two-page afterword about popular song and the Philippines from 1947 to 1950, and an eleven-page bibliography of books, articles, discographies, and Web sites on music and U.S. and Philippine popular culture. There are two indexes, one organized by song title, the other by composer, lyricist, and arranger. Walsh more than fulfills his modest goal of providing] a fresh perspective from which to view and analyze how American popular culture recorded its thoughts . …