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Swinging the Machine - Modernity, Technology and African American Culture Between the World Wars (Paperback)
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Swinging the Machine - Modernity, Technology and African American Culture Between the World Wars (Paperback)
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An innovative study of the influence of black popular culture on
modern American life; In any age and any given society, cultural
practices reflect the material circumstances of people's everyday
lives. According to Joel Dinerstein, it was no different in America
between the two World Wars - an era sometimes known as the
""machine age"" - when innovative forms of music and dance helped a
newly urbanized population cope with the increased mechanization of
modern life. Grand spectacles such as the Ziegfield Follies and the
movies of Busby Berkeley captured the American ethos of mass
production, with chorus girls as the cogs of these fast, flowing
pleasure vehicles. Yet it was African American culture, Dinerstein
argues, that ultimately provided the means of aesthetic adaptation
to the accelerated tempo of modernity. Drawing on a legacy of
engagement with and resistance to technological change, with deep
roots in West African dance and music, black artists developed new
cultural forms that sought to humanize machines. In ""The Ballad of
John Henry,"" the epic toast ""Shine,"" and countless blues songs,
African Americans first addressed the challenge of
industrialization. Jazz musicians drew on the symbol of the train
within this tradition to create a set of train-derived aural motifs
and rhythms, harnessing mechanical power to cultural forms. Tap
dance and the lindy hop brought machine aesthetics to the human
body, while the new rhythm section of big band swing mimicked the
industrial soundscape of northern cities. In Dinerstein's view, the
capacity of these artistic innovations to replicate the inherent
qualities of the machine - speed, power, repetition, flow,
precision - helps explain both their enormous popularity and social
function in American life.
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