The accepted canon of war poetry usually includes only those underlining patriotic or nationalistic views. This study opens up the view of war poetry with the inclusion of such material as Nazi poetry and song, and the poetry of the atomic bomb.

From “Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)?” to a list of all song titles containing the word “werewolf,” Rock Music in American Popular Culture II: More Rock ’n’Roll Resources continues where 1995’s Volume I left off. Using references and illustrations drawn from contemporary lyrics and supported by historical and sociological research on popular cultural subjects, this collection of insightful essays and reviews assesses the involvement of musical imagery in personal issues, in social and political matters, and in key socialization activities. From marriage and sex to public schools and youth culture, readers discover how popular culture can be used to explore American values. As Authors B. Lee Cooper and Wayne S. Haney prove that integrated popular culture is the product of commercial interaction with public interest and values rather than a random phenomena, they entertainingly and knowledgeably cover such topics as: answer songs--interchanges involving social events and lyrical commentaries as explored in response recordings horror films--translations and transformations of literary images and motion picture figures into popular song characters and tales public schools--images of formal educational practices and informal learning processes in popular song lyrics sex--suggestive tales and censorship challenges within the popular music realm war--examinations of persistent military and home front themes featured in wartime recordings Rock Music in American Popular Culture II: More Rock ‘n’Roll Resources is nontechnical, written in a clear and concise fashion, and explores each topic thoroughly, with ample discographic and bibliographic resources provided for additional research. Arranged alphabetically for quick and easy reference to specific topics, the book is equally enjoyable to read straight through. Rock music fans, teachers, popular culture professors, music instructors, public librarians, sound recording archivists, sociologists, social critics, and journalists can all learn something, as the book shows them the cross-pollination of music and social life in the United States.

Music, Words and Nationalism: National Anthems and Songs in the Modern Era considers the concept of nationalism from 1780 to 2020 through anthems and national songs as symbolic and representative elements of the national identity of individuals, peoples, or collectivities. The volume shows that both the words and music of these works reveal a great deal about the defining features of a nation, its political and cultural history, and its self-perception. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach that provides a better understanding of the role of national anthems and songs in the expression of national identities and nationalistic goals. From this perspective, the relationship between hymns and political contexts, their own symbolic content (both literary and musical) and the role of specific hymns in the construction of national sentiments are surveyed.

Audio Drama and Modernism traces the development of political and modernist sound drama during the first 40 years of the 20th Century. It demonstrates how pioneers in the phonograph age made significant, innovative contributions to sound fiction before, during, and after the Great War. In stunning detail, Tim Crook examines prominent British modernist radio writers and auteurs, revealing how they negotiated their agitational contemporaneity against the forces of Institutional containment and dramatic censorship. The book tells the story of key figures such as Russell Hunting, who after being jailed for making ‘sound pornography’ in the USA, travelled to Britain to pioneer sound comedy and montage in the pre-Radio age; Reginald Berkeley who wrote the first full-length anti-war play for the BBC in 1925; and D.G. Bridson, Olive Shapley and Joan Littlewood who all struggled to give a Marxist voice to the working classes on British radio.

Scripting Empire recovers the literary and cultural history of West Indian and West African writing at the BBC in order to rethink the critical mid-century decades of shrinking British sovereignty, late modernism, and mass migration to the metropole. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, a remarkable group of black Atlantic artists and intellectuals became producers, editors, and freelancers at the corporation, including Una Marson, Langston Hughes, Louise Bennett, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, Amos Tutuola, V.S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, Cyprian Ekwensi, Stuart Hall, and C.L.R. James. Operating at the interface of a range of literary and broadcast genres, this loose network of African Caribbean writers and thinkers prompt a reassessment of the aesthetic, formal, and political fallout of decolonization between the outbreak of World War II and the first airings of post-colonial independence. Scripting Empire works comparatively across dozens of different programmes spanning the General Overseas Service, Home Service, Light Programme, and Third Programme. Drawing upon a transnational archive of materials including scripts, correspondence, periodicals, visual records, and sound recordings, it seeks to re-position the cultural contribution of West Indians and West Africans within a more pervasive and porous account of radio transmission, the legacy of which extends well beyond broadcasting.

A collection of essays examining the roles played by music in American and European society during the Second World War. Global conflicts of the twentieth century fundamentally transformed not only national boundaries, power relations, and global economies, but also the arts and culture of every nation involved. An important, unacknowledged aspect of these conflicts is that they have unique musical soundtracks. Music in World War II explores how music and sound took on radically different dimensions in the United States and Europe before, during, and after World War II. Additionally, the collection examines the impact of radio and film as the disseminators of the war’s musical soundtrack. Contributors contend that the European and American soundtrack of World War II was largely one of escapism rather than the lofty, solemn, heroic, and celebratory mode of “war music” in the past. Furthermore, they explore the variety of experiences of populations forced from their homes and interned in civilian and POW camps in Europe and the United States, examining how music in these environments played a crucial role in maintaining ties to an idealized “home” and constructing politicized notions of national and ethnic identity. This fascinating, well-constructed volume of essays builds understanding of the role and importance of music during periods of conflict and highlights the unique aspects of music during World War II. “A collection that offers deeply informed, interdisciplinary, and original views on a myriad of musical practices in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States during the period.” —Gayle Magee, co-editor of Over Here, Over There: Transatlantic Conversations on the Music of World War I

The period immediately following the end of the First World War witnessed an outpouring of artistic and literary creativity, as those that had lived through the war years sought to communicate their experiences and opinions. In Germany this manifested itself broadly into two camps, one condemning the war outright; the other condemning the defeat. Of the former, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front remains the archetypal example of an anti-war novel, and one that has become synonymous with the Great War. Yet the tremendous and enduring popularity of Remarque’s work has to some extent eclipsed a plethora of other German anti-war writers, such as Hans Chlumberg, Ernst Johannsen and Adrienne Thomas. In order to provide a more rounded view of German anti-war literature, this volume offers a selection of essays published by Brian Murdoch over the past twenty years. Beginning with a newly written introduction, providing the context for the volume and surveying recent developments in the subject, the essays that follow range broadly over the German anti-war literary tradition, telling us much about the shifting and contested nature of the war. The volume also touches upon subjects such as responsibility, victimhood, the problem of historical hiatus in the production and reception of novels, drama, poetry, film and other literature written during the war, in the Weimar Republic, and in the Third Reich. The collection also underlines the potential dangers of using novels as historical sources even when they look like diaries. One essay was previously unpublished, two have been augmented, and three are translated into English for the first time. Taken together they offer a fascinating insight into the cultural memory and literary legacy of the First World War and German anti-war texts.

Rock Music in American Popular Culture III: More Rock ’n’Roll Resources explores the fascinating world of rock music and examines how this medium functions as an expression of cultural and social identity. This nostalgic guide explores the meanings and messages behind some of the most popular rock ’n’roll songs that captured the American spirit, mirrored society, and reflected events in our history. Arranged by themes, Rock Music in American Popular Culture III examines a variety of social and cultural topics with related songs, such as: sex and censorship--“Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel and “Night Moves” by Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band holiday songs--“Rockin’Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee and “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole death--“Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las and “The Unknown Soldier” by The Doors foolish behavior--“When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge and “What Kind of Fool” by Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb jobs and the workplace--“Don’t Stand So Close to Me” by The Police and “Dirty Laundry” by Don Henley military involvements--“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” by the Andrews Sisters and “War” by Edwin Starr novelty recordings--“The Purple People Eater” by Sheb Wooley and “Eat It” by Weird Al Yankovic letters and postal images--“P. S. I Love You” by The Beatles and “Return to Sender” by Elvis Presely In addition, a discography and a bibliography after each section give further examples of the themes and resources being discussed, as do extensive lists of print references at the end of the text.

Carols floating across no-man's-land on Christmas Eve 1914; solemn choruses, marches, and popular songs responding to the call of propaganda ministries and war charities; opera, keyboard suites, ragtime, and concertos for the left hand—all provided testimony to the unique power of music to chronicle the Great War and to memorialize its battles and fallen heroes in the first post-Armistice decade. In this striking book, Glenn Watkins investigates these variable roles of music primarily from the angle of the Entente nations' perceived threat of German hegemony in matters of intellectual and artistic accomplishment—a principal concern not only for Europe but also for the United States, whose late entrance into the fray prompted a renewed interest in defining America as an emergent world power as well as a fledgling musical culture. He shows that each nation gave "proof through the night"—ringing evidence during the dark hours of the war—not only of its nationalist resolve in the singing of national airs but also of its power to recall home and hearth on distant battlefields and to reflect upon loss long after the guns had been silenced. Watkins's eloquent narrative argues that twentieth-century Modernism was not launched full force with the advent of the Great War but rather was challenged by a new set of alternatives to the prewar avant-garde. His central focus on music as a cultural marker during the First World War of necessity exposes its relationship to the other arts, national institutions, and international politics. From wartime scores by Debussy and Stravinsky to telling retrospective works by Berg, Ravel, and Britten; from "La Marseillaise" to "The Star-Spangled Banner," from "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" to "Over There," music reflected society's profoundest doubts and aspirations. By turns it challenged or supported the legitimacy of war, chronicled misgivings in miniature and grandiose formats alike, and inevitably expressed its sorrow at the final price exacted by the Great War. Proof through the Night concludes with a consideration of the post-Armistice period when, on the classical music front, memory and distance forged a musical response that was frequently more powerful than in wartime.

What did popular song mean to people across the world during the First World War? For the first time, song repertoires and musical industries from countries on both sides in the Great War as well as from neutral countries are analysed in one exciting volume. Experts from around the world, and with very different approaches, bring to life the entertainment of a century ago, to show the role it played in the lives of our ancestors. The reader will meet the penniless lyricist, the theatre chain owner, the cross-dressing singer, fado composer, stage Scotsman or rhyming soldier, whether they come from Serbia, Britain, the USA, Germany, France, Portugal or elsewhere, in this fascinating exploration of showbiz before the generalization of the gramophone. Singing was a vector for patriotic support for the war, and sometimes for anti-war activism, but it was much more than that, and expressed and constructed debates, anxieties, social identities and changes in gender roles. This work, accompanied by many links to online recordings, will allow the reader to glimpse the complex role of popular song in people’s lives in a period of total war.