Victory through Harmony: An Analysis
Christina Baade’s focus in Victory Through Harmony is an analysis of how the BBC’s (British Broadcasting Corporation) wartime broadcasting of popular music and jazz helped redefine notions of war, gender, class, and nationality. The immediate goals of the BBC and the British government in this endeavor were to maintain civilian and military morale, increase industrial production, and foster a sense of Anglo-American cooperation. Peripheral effects of the BBC’s broadcasting experiments include jazz and pop gaining cultural legitimacy, and the development of market demographic research in broadcasting. However, broadcasting pop and jazz music also had unexpected consequences that exposed developing anxieties …show more content…
For example, the BBC’s goals during the interwar period were to culturally uplift British society through exposure to carefully selected classical programs designed to be listened to in solitude, and with the listener’s full attention. The tastes of the working class leaned heavily toward dance music and jazz, and the BBC’s snubbing of those genres in the pre-war period reflects a misunderstanding of their audience. However, the temporary reindustrializing of the home front and the creation of the Forces Radio, meant that both the kinds of music and the expectations of BBC broadcasters had to drastically change. Broadcasts, especially on the Forces Radio, had to be designed to accommodate large groups of listeners whose primary attention was directed elsewhere, such as in a munitions factory or in a military camp, and desired programs to distract, not educate . The BBC’s Special Collection, a sector of its extensive Written Documents Archive, provided Baade with the Wartime Radio Diary of Cecil Madden, the broadcaster in charge of overseas entertainment. Cecil’s diary reveals the differences in home versus overseas programming, in that the forces radio offered “dance music, theatre organ, Variety, light music, and sporting broadcasts.” These kinds of broadcasts did not require excessive attention for …show more content…
This tertiary discussion, although interesting, seems shoehorned in amongst the primary subject matter, and could be more thoroughly explored in a different, comprehensive work. Sentimental love songs, such as Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” and “Yours”, were consistently popular both at home and on the front, and yet the BBC Dance Music Policy Committee issued a ban on male “crooners” and overly “slushy” ballads sung by women. Baade’s inclusion of musical analyses of genre-exemplifying pieces aid in her communication of what technically constitutes a “slush song”, and why those elements provoked intense backlash amongst small, but powerful parts of the BBC. The cultural insecurity behind this ban, Baade argues, is that crooners represented improper wartime gender roles. Crooning women, according to the BBC, were representative of “the good time girl, who was deplored for promiscuity, selfishness, and irresponsibility.” Crooning men, however were an even worse antithesis to the kind of hegemonic masculinity desired during wartime, which prized physical toughness, courage, and the protection of women and children. The ban on sentimentality intimately connects to the fear of Americanization, as many of the most popular slush songs were American. The mixed public
Christina Baade’s focus in Victory Through Harmony is an analysis of how the BBC’s (British Broadcasting Corporation) wartime broadcasting of popular music and jazz helped redefine notions of war, gender, class, and nationality. The immediate goals of the BBC and the British government in this endeavor were to maintain civilian and military morale, increase industrial production, and foster a sense of Anglo-American cooperation. Peripheral effects of the BBC’s broadcasting experiments include jazz and pop gaining cultural legitimacy, and the development of market demographic research in broadcasting. However, broadcasting pop and jazz music also had unexpected consequences that exposed developing anxieties …show more content…
For example, the BBC’s goals during the interwar period were to culturally uplift British society through exposure to carefully selected classical programs designed to be listened to in solitude, and with the listener’s full attention. The tastes of the working class leaned heavily toward dance music and jazz, and the BBC’s snubbing of those genres in the pre-war period reflects a misunderstanding of their audience. However, the temporary reindustrializing of the home front and the creation of the Forces Radio, meant that both the kinds of music and the expectations of BBC broadcasters had to drastically change. Broadcasts, especially on the Forces Radio, had to be designed to accommodate large groups of listeners whose primary attention was directed elsewhere, such as in a munitions factory or in a military camp, and desired programs to distract, not educate . The BBC’s Special Collection, a sector of its extensive Written Documents Archive, provided Baade with the Wartime Radio Diary of Cecil Madden, the broadcaster in charge of overseas entertainment. Cecil’s diary reveals the differences in home versus overseas programming, in that the forces radio offered “dance music, theatre organ, Variety, light music, and sporting broadcasts.” These kinds of broadcasts did not require excessive attention for …show more content…
This tertiary discussion, although interesting, seems shoehorned in amongst the primary subject matter, and could be more thoroughly explored in a different, comprehensive work. Sentimental love songs, such as Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” and “Yours”, were consistently popular both at home and on the front, and yet the BBC Dance Music Policy Committee issued a ban on male “crooners” and overly “slushy” ballads sung by women. Baade’s inclusion of musical analyses of genre-exemplifying pieces aid in her communication of what technically constitutes a “slush song”, and why those elements provoked intense backlash amongst small, but powerful parts of the BBC. The cultural insecurity behind this ban, Baade argues, is that crooners represented improper wartime gender roles. Crooning women, according to the BBC, were representative of “the good time girl, who was deplored for promiscuity, selfishness, and irresponsibility.” Crooning men, however were an even worse antithesis to the kind of hegemonic masculinity desired during wartime, which prized physical toughness, courage, and the protection of women and children. The ban on sentimentality intimately connects to the fear of Americanization, as many of the most popular slush songs were American. The mixed public