Comic Songs Research Articles

Singing the English: Britain in the French Musical Lowbrow, 1870–1904 by Hannah L. Scott

Reviewed by: Singing the English: Britain in the French Musical Lowbrow, 1870–1904 by Hannah L. Scott Claire Moran Singing the English: Britain in the French Musical Lowbrow, 1870–1904. By Hannah L. Scott. London and New York: Routledge. 2022. ix+ 254 pp. £96. ISBN 978-0-367-81543-1. Scholarship in nineteenth-century French Studies has, in recent years, increasingly highlighted the need to address the complexity of everyday lived experience and unravel the myths which have shaped our perceptions of the period. Hannah L. Scott's remarkable study of British popular music in late nineteenth-century France offers a fascinating glimpse into French cultural life in an extraordinary period of the country's history. The focus on British music in a study concerned with France may, as Scott points out wryly in her Introduction, 'strike the reader with some surprise' (p. 2) since, as the influential French musical theorist François-Joseph Fétis put it, 'the English [are] on the lowest rung of the ladder of musical talent' (p. 2). However, through her engaging, well-documented, and well-illustrated study, Scott makes a compelling case for the influence of British lowbrow music in shaping modern France. Singing the English revalorizes the centrality of popular British music for 'exploring, negotiating and mediating national identity and the importance of Britain in Third Republican society, politics and culture' (p. 12). The book comprises an Introduction, four chapters, and an Epilogue, and also includes a comprehensive appendix of café-concert songs about the English. The Introduction offers a much-needed contextual overview, all the while citing the pervasiveness of representations of les Anglais in French culture, most notably in literature, and Scott calls attention to the many minor and central figures such as the chronically melancholic Lord Ewald of Villiers d'Isle-Adam's L'Ève future, the courageous yet angelic Miss Clifton in Hector Malot's Souvenirs d'un blessé, and the sadistic English femme fatale Clara in Mirbeau's Le Jardin des supplices. The first chapter focuses on comic songs from French popular theatres in which French performers pretended to be English and where 'Englishing up' was the trend. The second explores the phenomenon of the Salvation Army band and its noisy presence on the streets of Paris, while the third discusses the French reception of Celtic folk music and includes analyses of translations and arrangements of songs by Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and Thomas Moore. The last chapter discusses the place of music in French travel writing and emphasizes how 'music and sound become fundamental axes in the French mental conception of British character and culture' (p. 185). Singing the English captures the essence of Britishness through nineteenth-century French eyes. It is both entertaining and illuminating, offering glimpses into a French mindset via a host of intriguing texts and archival documents. Paul Bourget's 1889 description of the aural impression of a Salvation Army band is a case in point: 'suddenly, a blast of trumpets bursts out, accompanied by strange singing. […] [A] man begins a sort of yelled prayer; his head is thrown back, his mouth is twisted, his eyes are turned backwards in his head. He calls out "the Lord, the Lord…". An expression of despair or ecstasy can be seen upon every face' (p. 85). Scott navigates texts and documents such as these with ease and [End Page 141] skill, highlighting the linguistic specificities and visual imaginaire that they draw upon. Overall, her analysis of the popular songs, performances, and traditions that represented Britishness in nineteenth-century France offers important insights into the relationship between France and Britain. It is, as she argues in her Epilogue, a relationship which continues to be influenced by popular music, and she cites the dozens of songs by artists from Mick Jagger to Bertrand Cantat which attempted to 'influence, mock, critique and occasionally praise the outcome of the June 2016 referendum' (p. 227). Singing the English is an excellent book which, in its careful and rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, shows the importance of the nineteenth century in shaping modern life. Claire Moran Queen's University Belfast Copyright © 2023 Modern Humanities Research Association

Swede Home Chicago: The Wallin's Svenska Records Story, 1923–27

According to the liner notes of this project, Chicago has the highest Swedish population of any city after Stockholm. Chicago is also “home to the first record label founded by a Nordic immigrant to the United States.” Archeophone Records’ compilation Swede Home Chicago: The Wallin's Svenska Records Story, 1923–27 tells the story of former crofter Gustaf Waldemar Wallin, founder of Wallin's Svenska Records, a record company that came into being as a subsidiary of Wallin's Music Shop. This company issued 56 tracks between 1923 and 1927. Swede Home Chicago encompasses the entire catalog and includes two discs, featuring 28 tracks each, and a robust 76-page CD booklet. The booklet includes introductory material, performers’ biographies, track notes, lyrics and translations, endnotes, and production credits, as well as a rich plethora of archival photos relating to the Wallin family, the record company, the performers, and more.Without any prior knowledge of the folklife of Swedish American immigrants, one can still appreciate the thought and care put into this project. The context provided by the CD booklet is absolutely unmatched by that of any other project I have engaged with, and was the highlight of reviewing this project. As a folklorist focusing on music, with an eye trained on accessibility and transparency, this is particularly meaningful. For a multiplicity of reasons, one cannot and should not separate music from its historical context. The music itself cannot provide this context, especially when songs are being sung in a language one does not understand. Luckily, folklorists Jim Leary and Marcus Cederström, along with Archeophone Records’ Richard Martin, have crafted a fulfilling and multifaceted narrative that includes detailed lyric translations and is guaranteed to address any questions or concerns the listener might have.The music itself—56 tracks spread out over two discs—features piano, piano accordion, violin, and vocals covering the entire spectrum of human emotion and artistic preference and encompassing “earthy comic songs,” “pious hymns and patriotic anthems,” “venerable folk tunes [intermingled] with hot jazz,” and more. It is striking that this collection is so musically diverse despite coming from one company; it utilizes almost every possible sonic avenue within the given musical heritage to create a truly dynamic and entertaining catalog. In a further testament to the importance of these recordings at the time they first appeared, it is worth noting that the 28 10-inch shellac discs originally issued by Wallin's Svenska Records were recorded by Homer Rodeheaver and Orlando Marsh, two venerable giants of the recording industry.Swede Home Chicago is a set that anyone who is interested in music and music history should own. Speaking as a “many-sectored” folklorist, I feel there is great potential for this collection. It is both deeply entertaining and richly engaging. This project could be used in Scandinavian, migration, and music studies courses as an educational tool. Given that the CD booklet is crucial to the understanding of the project as a whole, future creators of similar projects might look to Swede Home Chicago for guidance on creating something that is appropriately contextual. However, this project should not be construed as being solely historical in scope and content. This collection has implications for folkloristics as well. I was particularly struck by the last few words on the back cover asserting that Swede Home Chicago “[illuminates] a vibrant bygone musical scene that expands our understanding of America's perpetual musical pluralism.” This concept is a lesson for folklore as a discipline, not just for those of us who focus on American music.Just as these discs run the gamut musically despite coming from a singular cultural background, American music encompasses thousands of traditions that should be recognized as equally important parts of the whole. The parsing out of these threads is endless but worthy work that yields meaningful discoveries about American folklife. I send my thanks to Jim Leary, Marcus Cederström, Richard Martin, Archeophone Records, the Mills Music Library and the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and all other institutions and people involved in this project—a dynamic and powerful step forward in viewing folklife through a musical lens.

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Virtual Citizenship and Revolutionary Transatlantic Republicanism in the Musical Lives of Exiled United Irishmen

Palaces of Pleasure: From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How the Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment, by Lee Jackson

Reviewed by: Palaces of Pleasure: From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How the Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment by Lee Jackson Peter Bailey (bio) Palaces of Pleasure: From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How the Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment, by Lee Jackson; pp. xii + 304. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019, $30.00. In this congenially informative study, Palaces of Pleasure: From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football, How the Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment, Lee Jackson tours the major sites, promoters, performers, and publics involved in the dramatic growth of Victorian entertainments. The music hall is the lynchpin account occupying the first third of the book; further chapters cover the commercialized dance scene, the pleasure garden, and the exhibition ground; concluding excursions to the seaside and football ground move beyond the book's main focus on London. The gin palace, a novel enhancement of the pub, foreshadows the music hall in the opulence of its amenities amid the cramped and dismal conditions of city life in the 1840s. Jackson captures the alluring ambience of its "gaslight and gilding," its efficient service and logistics likened by contemporaries to the new retail stores of the day (6). The same sources labeled gin palace proprietors as capitalists, a term and phenomenon Jackson seems to resist. Pubs were also the site of the traditional "free-and-easy," or local amateur entertainments that expanded into singing saloons to accommodate surging demand from the growing working-class population (33). Crucial for business were annual licenses for music and dancing and the sale of alcohol. These were contested by temperance and moral reform lobbies, who charged the halls with drunkenness and prostitution encouraged by licentious songs and performances. Jackson pays new attention to the magistracy in the ongoing struggle. The music hall, Jackson emphasizes, was "the century's greatest entertainment innovation" (33), and he re-examines the mythical figure of Charles Morton of the Canterbury Hall in suburban Lambeth as "Father of the Halls" (61). Morton's "ostentatious respectability" is credited with countering the music hall's dubious public image as the haunt of prostitutes and drunks, attracting working-class families, middle-class visitors and respectable females with more refined professional entertainment (58). Performers in a professionalizing work force played several halls across town a night in the "turns system," and the first national stars emerged (61). Competition from the new halls provoked fights over artistic trespass with the legitimate theater, as well as continuing charges of obscenity and a government enquiry in 1866. Jackson demonstrates how the halls' signature comic song exploited its sexualized double entendre to the delight of the crowd and exasperation of reformers. He also revisits notorious clashes between managements and [End Page 126] reformers, including the controversy over prostitution at the Empire in Leicester Square in 1894, which the young libertine Winston Churchill riotously joined. By then music halls were the prime site of a mass entertainment industry: they were purpose-built variety theaters, corporately financed and managed, truly palatial in size and appointments, and they attracted audiences in the thousands. Jackson stops short of any comparatively sustained study of the very institutions that contemporaries and historians branded as such whose "invention" is foregrounded in the book title. Jackson breaks new ground in examining the commercial dance scene, from genteel provincial assembly rooms to London's louche casinos and the notorious Argyll Rooms, to Blackpool's grand ballrooms for the working classes at the end of the century, though a mass dancing public was not realized until after the First World War. Pleasure gardens and their dancing platforms are followed by accounts of exhibition grounds of varying success that added entertainment to the more high-minded formula of London's Great Exhibition. Among the showmen entrepreneurs awarded heroic stature by Jackson, Imre Kiralfy is singled out for his White City, a vast exhibition site in 1890s suburban London, pronounced "the zenith, the ultimate in mass entertainment … amusement on an industrial scale, using industrial methods—from the tollgate to the mechanized rides" (247). Seaside towns became popular holiday sites as cheap and rapid transport by steamship and railway drew a new working-class public that was eager...

Раннефольклорные обрядовые жанры традиционной культуры хори-бурят

This article continues the study of the traditional musical culture of the Eastern Khori-Buryats, based on rare archival material of the audio collection of the famous orientalist Purbo Baldanovich Baldanzhapov (1921–1991). The research was started by the author in 2014 in the article “Materials of P. B. Baldanzhapov as a source for studying the song tradition of the Khori-Buryats”. The aim of this article is to represent the early folklore genres of the ceremonial traditional music of the Eastern Khori-Buryats. In the article the methods of genre and structural-typological analysis of folklore works recorded by P. B. Baldanzhapov were used. The study of the Khori-Buryat ritual song tradition, as a system, entailed the involvement of a structural and functional method, which allowed us to consider various aspects of the ritual and ritual complex of the eastern Khori-Buryats. The traditional musical culture of the Eastern Khori-Buryats can be divided into two genre groups (ceremonial and non-ceremonial). The ritual music of P.B. Baldanzhapov’s audio collection includes wedding songs (Uusyn duunuud), the ancient ritual dance Neryelge and accompanying songs (Neryelgyn or Neryeenei duunuud), the glorification of the horse by Morinoy solo, Buddhist Maani chants. The second group includes such genres of non-ritual sphere as uligers (Ulgernuud), historical songs (Tuuhyn duunuud) about Shilde Zangi, magtals to parents (Magtaalnuud), ring songs (Beheligey duunuud), comic songs (Shog duunuud). In this article, special attention is paid to the unique, but already lost genres of ritual music of Khori-Buryats – Neryelgyn duunuud, accompanying the ritual dance of Neryelge and the glorification of the horse (Morinoy solo), who won the race. The analysis of the semantics of poetic texts and musical intonations of Neryelgyn duunuud and Morinoy solo allows us to attribute these genres to the early folklore layer of the traditional musical culture of the Eastern Khori-Buryats and to reveal the semantic connection with the mythology and religion of the early nomads. Of course, in the future research it is necessary to continue studying the works of non-ritual traditional music of the Khori-Buryats from the collection of P.B. Baldanzhapov. The analyses of these samples of song folklore might allow to carry out the notation of Morinoy’s solo samples with their subsequent musical analysis and publication. One of the promising areas of research may be the reconstruction of these rare and unique genres of ritual music of the Khori-Buryats in the context of a comparative historical study of the cultural traditions of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples.

COVID-19 and the Traditional Culture of the Udmurts

The article discusses the spring rites and summer prayers of the Eastern (Trans-Kama) Udmurt and the Udmurts’ festivals (Bydzh’yn nunal, Akashka, Paskha, tulys kis’ton, Gurt/-en vös’, and Mör vös’) during the quarantine period related to COVID-19, as well as comic songs and chastushkas (ditties) on the topic of quarantine and self-isolation. It is the first attempt to describe and characterize the consequences of the global pandemic as reflected through the traditional culture of the Udmurt people. Materials used for the analysis were internet posts, data from informants, articles from district newspapers, and the observations of the authors. The presented materials allow us to speak about changes in the form of the Udmurt traditional ritual events and people’s ability to adapt to a crisis situation. Self-isolation has caused concern among many villagers because of the inability to hold festivals in real time and space. A study of internet posts has shown that the Udmurts willingly share their preparations for the festivals and send greetings to each other that reflect both joyful and sad emotions. Udmurt songs and chastushkas with humorous content uploaded on websites help them to overcome the difficult situation caused by the coronavirus.

Desperately Funny: Victorian Widows & the Comical Misfortunes of Husband Hunting

ABSTRACT The widow was a much-satirized figure throughout the Victorian era, but humour has rarely featured in studies concerned with the period’s attitudes towards women and death. Widows, whose behaviour and dress were subject to many a rule, found themselves the focus of a wealth of jests and jibes that simultaneously highlighted and attempted to mitigate and police widowed women’s exceptional position in Victorian society. This article considers some of the most common comical types of widows in Victorian popular culture in jokes, novels, comic songs and sketches. I argue that it is in the realm of laughter in general, and in the comical iterations of the widow in particular, that we find some of the period’s most revealing engagements with the contradictions and ambiguities of middle-class notions of womanhood, femininity and female sexuality. From unashamed cackles of hilarity to sniggers of discomfort and sneers of disapproval, humour allowed for an exploration of the moral conflicts borne out of the widow’s identity as a woman who had once fulfilled her duty as a wife but could transgress and threaten the relational confines of normative femininity and the nuclear family.

The Lithuanian Folk Couplets: On This Side of the Permissible Laughter and Beyond

The Lithuanian Folk Couplets: On This Side of the Permissible Laughter and Beyond

Смех в досвадебном фольклоре адыгов

The article is devoted to the study of the folklore of the pre-marriage period of the life of young people in the traditional Adyghe society. It is noted that, despite the importance of the functions and artistic merit of this stratum of the Adyghe national culture, it has not received wide coverage in the scientific literature, which determines the relevance and novelty of the chosen topic. The analysis involves works whose sphere of existence is public or family celebrations, parties with games and gatherings, other improvised or ritualized actions. It is noted that in the culture of the Adyghe’s there is a long tradition of meeting young men and women before the wedding for a fun pastime, dating, establishing personal relationships, and assigning social roles, which prepared marriage unions. It is shown that at such meetings, young people showed creativity: they participated in games, danced, sang, etc. The role of laughter culture in pre-marriage dialogue is emphasized. Examples of poetic and musical genres of a comic character are given: comic songs, musically intonated verses, and other folklore works that were performed by young people during meetings, for example, nightly gatherings, visits to the sick or wounded, and under other circumstances. It is shown that in the Adyghe pre-marriage folklore the laughter component is multifunctional: it introduces the spirit of freedom into communication, retains ancient magical functions, has a pronounced aesthetic organization.

Genre transformation in the musical folklore (“Shamil’s Prayer” case)

«Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Искусствоведение» — научно-теоретический рецензируемый журнал, обобщающий результаты исследований ученых всего мира в различных областях искусства, включая музыковедение, культурологию и художественное образование.

PERFORMING GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND JEWISHNESS IN THE SONGS OF WILLIAM FINN’S MUSICAL <em>FALSETTOLAND</em> (1990)

ABSTRACT For decades, the performance of Jewishness in the American musical theater balanced assimilation to a predominant Christian Anglo-Saxon society while retaining an ethno-religious identity. Much of the drama and humor in the performance of Jewishness on the American musical stage depended on that balance and how much to one side a performer, a plot, or a song weighted. This article demonstrates that William Finn’s songs for his musical Falsettoland replace this Jewish anxiety with gay characters experiencing a similar tension. They live patriarchal lives with heterosexual gender dynamics, while still in search of a homosexual identity in the age of AIDS. While this “new” anxiety comprises the serious portions of Falsettoland, Finn uses the characters’ Jewish identity to create comic songs. This article ultimately considers the implications that Finn’s construction and representation in song of Jewishness as essentially comedic had in the American musical during and after the 1980s.

Take Me Down to the Parodies City

From parody masses and tropes in the fifteenth century to comic operas and novelty songs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a strong performative and theoretical connection has always existed between comedy and music. Composers’ motivations for combining the two arts range from pure

The Ironic Musical Edge: Using Songs to Present and Question Myths

Professors never have enough time to cover everything they would like to teach. If the temptation in literature survey courses is to whittle the reading list down to a few canonical texts, the temptation in culture courses is to reduce “American Culture” or “Canadian Culture” to facts and figures, important dates in history, and so on. This paper argues that ironic songs can efficiently introduce important information about a country’s myths and sense of self, while simultaneously questioning those myths. After a discussion of syllabus agonies of choice, the paper discusses irony, then irony in music, before finishing with an examination of The Arrogant Worm’s comic song “Canada’s Really Big.”

Channelling Desires and Rebuilding Sensibilities: Modern Desires of Japanese Colonial Era Represented in Comic Songs of the 1930s

Channelling Desires and Rebuilding Sensibilities: Modern Desires of Japanese Colonial Era Represented in Comic Songs of the 1930s

Laughing at Carnival Mirrors: The Comic Songs of Vladimir Vysockij and Soviet Power

Much of Vladimir Vysotskiiʼs enormous popularity throughout the Soviet Union arose from his audienceʼs appreciation of his humorous songs. The current studyʼs primary focus is on the relationship between these songs and the Soviet State. It explores his use of satire and examines the connection between Vysotskiiʼs comic songs and Russian jokelore culture, examining how they construct Russian masculinity. It also contains an analysis of certain themes in Vysotskiiʼs works in order to discern the ways in which his satires are a response to Soviet totalitarianism and to what degree they consist of universal carnival themes.

Rome, Open for British Production: The lost world of ‘Britalian’ films, 1946-1954

It may be that the war has forced some of us British producers to be too insular in our outlook. We have failed to realise that Europe can provide an ideal location centre, not for completing parts...

Chaucerian Obscenity in the Court of Public Opinion

Chaucerian Obscenity in the Court of Public Opinion

Saxie Dowell: Saxophonist, Bandleader, War Hero

Saxie DowellSaxophonist, Bandleader, War Hero Terrence S. Tickle (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Saxie Dowell (here) got his nickname very early, playing one of the first saxophones in Raleigh from the age of twelve, often at his father’s drug store downtown. He went on to become one of the most famous composers of popular and comic songs of the Big Band era. Publicity photograph, courtesy of the author. [End Page 143] “Boob boop dittum dattum wattum, choo/And they swam and they swam all over the dam.” Today, many recognize these lines from “Three Little Fishies” in the “itty bitty pool,” and the equally popular “Playmates,” from cartoons and children’s programming, but the composer, Saxie Dowell, was once one of the most famous composers of popular and comic songs of the Big Band era. Horace Kirby “Saxie” Dowell was born on May 29, 1904, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he grew up singing duets with his mother in the church choir. He got his nickname very early, playing one of the first saxophones in Raleigh from the age of twelve, often at his father’s drug store downtown. He entered the University of North Carolina in 1922, where he became the saxophonist of the most popular band on campus, the Carolina Club Orchestra, led by James Hal Kemp from Charlotte. The band was no mere hobby for Hal Kemp and his band members. They were dedicated musicians who played on campus, in clubs across the state, and, during the summers, on transatlantic voyages. They were so busy, in fact, that Dowell was enrolled at UNC only for his first year. After that he became a full-time musician, although he continued to live at the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house. In those days, the rules on campus living were much more relaxed. The Carolina Club Orchestra made their first transatlantic booking in the summer of 1924 and their first recordings in England for London Columbia that year. The band was at the leading edge of hot jazz styling at the time and had several bookings among the younger British royalty, including the Prince of Wales, the future King George. They hit the big time when sailing back to the United States on the RMS Berengaria, where the Prince sat in with the band on drums. When the Prince of Wales declared Kemp’s group his favorite band, the news services immediately wired the comment to the American papers. By the time the band arrived in New York the booking requests for the band were so great that Kemp’s brother, T. D., quit his job at Westinghouse and started the Kemp Agency, which later booked talents like Rudy Vallee, Ginger Rogers, and Al Jolson.1 The year after his transatlantic summer tour with the Carolina Club Orchestra, Kemp organized a smaller seven-piece ensemble, which became the forerunner of his nationally known orchestra, with Dowell and several new North Carolina talents. All of the new members joined as freshmen in 1925 and all were destined for national fame. There was Edgar “Skinnay” Ennis from Salisbury, who played drums but became more famous as a vocalist on Kemp recordings like “Got a Date with an Angel.” Ennis would leave the Kemp band in 1937 to start his own band and act as musical director for Bob Hope. Bandmate John Scott Trotter attended high school with Kemp in Charlotte and played with him in the orchestra at the Hawthorne Lane Methodist Church. Trotter was Kemp’s primary arranger, and the talent that moved the band away from the twenties collegiate sound and toward the more sophisticated big band sound of the 1930s. He left the band in [End Page 144] 1936 to become the musical director for Bing Crosby, starting with Crosby’s movie Pennies from Heaven. Trotter would continue to work in the movies and as music director of the “Kraft Music Hall” radio show. Ben Williams, a truly talented sax player from Concord, North Carolina, rounded out the band.2 Click for larger view View full resolution Hal Kemp (conducting) and His Orchestra became one of the most popular in the country. Saxie Dowell...

“Two Souls, Two Thoughts, Two Unreconciled Strivings”: The Sound of Double Consciousness in Roland Hayes’s Early Career

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. W. E. B. Du Bois There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion. Ralph Waldo Emerson The Gods will not descend without song. Common West African aphorism Tenor Roland Hayes was one of a small handful of black singers to bring spirituals before the American public in the early twentieth century, declaring that the music of slaves--and therefore, to an extent, the music of Africa--was worthy of display in America's halls of honor. Breaking down the that had kept black singers and black confined to the black community in the United States' post-emancipation years, however, proved challenging on a number of levels. Even within the black community, there were some who wanted to distance themselves from African-inspired music that reminded them too painfully of the days of slavery. White America, moreover, did not usually smile upon such offerings, and some resisted forcefully the idea that black Americans or their music had any place on the concert stage. Despite such challenges, Hayes helped open the stage to black American artists who were dedicated to shattering the blackface minstrel tradition. He insisted on incorporating spirituals into his performances, and, fairly early in his career, recognized and celebrated the black timbres and enunciations that he found in his voice. Before my time, he remarked, singers had too often been in the habit of burlesquing the spirituals with rolling eyes and heaving breast and shuffling feet, on the blasphemous assumption that they were singing comic songs (Helm 1969, 188-189). (1) Music and art critic Alain Locke wrote that because of Hayes, barriers raised for generations against Negro musicians fell like the Walls of Jericho; international acclaim forced American recognition and a great musical personality clinched it. ... Roland Hayes vindicated Negro musicianship ([1936] 1969, 123). A young American studying music in Berlin put it somewhat more succinctly: Goddamn it, he said, greeting Hayes after a performance and reaching out to shake his hand, [P]ut it there! This is the first time I have seen the Germans admit that good art can come out of America (quoted in Helm 1969, 212). Simultaneously, however, Hayes felt pressure to conform to the standards of white America, and to some degree he internalized white America's expectations. He judged his own success as a musician using the measures established by Europeans and white Americans. This mindset reverberated through his music, especially early in his career, as Hayes tried to pattern his singing after European masters. Indeed, before his first big concert in Boston, Hayes often chose to present only music of European origins. When not performing, Hayes called on members of his race to earn their rights by working harder and by making their goals correspond more closely to what whites expected of them rather than pushing for equal opportunities. As he broke down racial and vindicat[ed] Negro musicianship, Hayes was, on some level, aware of the great importance of the culture of the black community. Participating in African-American group music and dance formed some of his earliest memories and shaped significantly Hayes's childhood identity, although he would only later come to understand the complex contributions of Africa to his own cultural background. As he tried to reconcile his pride in his African heritage with the assimilationist goal of blending in, Roland Hayes was undoubtedly afflicted by conflicting values. …

Baby Incubators and the Prosthetic Womb

Baby Incubators and the Prosthetic Womb Nadja Durbach (bio) In the final years of Victoria's reign, the incubator-baby show was all the rage. Making their British debut at the Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl's Court in the summer of 1897, baby incubators quickly became a craze, appearing at a variety of popular entertainment venues (Silverman 129-31; Baker 86-106; Barr). According to the Era, they were visited by many members of the royal family as well as by "thousands of interested spectators" ("As the [End Page 23] season advances..." 19). Their popularity prompted the formation of at least two joint stock companies for the purpose of exhibiting the genuine article and encouraged many "unscrupulous imitators" to tour their fake contraptions around fairs and resorts (Schenkein and Coney; "Wanted to Purchase" 27; Board of Trade). But in the United Kingdom at least, this popular interest in baby incubators did not last long. By the first years of the new century, the novelty had worn off, the Baby Incubators Syndicate and the Eureka Incubators Syndicate had both dissolved, and showmen were desperately trying to rid themselves of these cumbersome prosthetic wombs. Enthusiasm for displays of baby incubators came in part from anxieties around the declining birth rate. The baby incubator had been devised in France in the 1870s, a period that witnessed rapid depopulation (Silverman 127-8; Baker 45). By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain was experiencing a similar problem: in 1871 there had been 34.7 births per thousand; by 1901 this figure had fallen to 28.5. This was partly due to an escalation in premature births, which rose forty per cent between 1886 and 1896 (Ballantyne 1200; "Use of Incubators" 1491). "It may not be possible exactly to define their value to the State and community," argued the British obstetrician J.W. Ballantyne, but there existed a "pressing need to conserve the lives of [premature] infants," for "economic as well as sentimental" reasons (1200). The incubator was extolled as key to this process, for within their "glass cases," "immature specimens" of human life could now be reared to maturity ("Immature Infants"). An article in a popular periodical explicitly described the baby incubator as a "hot-house," suggesting that infants could be cultivated like orchids (Smith 772). Another, noting that these devices derived from poultry incubators, facetiously queried, "Do they hatch children, nowadays, like eggs?" ("Incubators for Infants"). An 1898 comic song played on these nationalistic fears of depopulation with its lyric "I hope to breed a nation by the means of incubation" ("The Infant Incubator"). Although the sinister nature of breeding or hatching children seems to have fallen on deaf ears, these artificial wombs were not entirely without controversy. Their public display generated a variety of concerns, some explicitly about substitution. Ballantyne described the arrival of the infant prematurely "expelled from the uterus" as both a shock to its bodily systems and a form of culture shock: "He is like some dweller in the hot plains of India who has been transported in a moment of time on some 'magic carpet of Tangu' to the chill summits of the 'frosty Caucasus'" (1196). While it was impractical to keep what an article in the Lancet similarly termed these "unwelcome little strangers" in an artificial version of amniotic fluid for fear of aspiration, incubators were kept moist and warm and as aseptic as possible in an attempt to reproduce the comfort and safety of the uterine environment ("Immature Infants"). They were ventilated by holes, which one reporter described as "orifices," thus furthering the suggestion that the incubator was in fact a stand-in for the maternal body that had ceased to perform its reproductive duties ("Incubators for Infants"). [End Page 24] Press coverage of these artificial wombs championed their accomplishments and in the process downplayed the importance of the female body to fetal development. By the 1890s, there was a wide variety of models available, many of which were celebrated for their portability, accuracy, and simplicity. The baby incubator, asserted the British Medical Journal, could now "be used without any special skilled knowledge" ("Reports and Analyses and Descriptions" 348; Baker 66-85). Similarly, the Lancet...