Conference Agenda

British dance bands provided music for social dancing after the First World War, but rapidly developed beyond this core accompaniment function as ‘acts’ in their own right, becoming foremost providers of popular music in variety theatre, on record and in broadcasts. Their repertoire was vast and varied, and numbers often had transient popularity. However, the song ‘Tea for Two’ (Youmans/Caesar, 1924), introduced to Britain in the show No, No, Nanette at the Palace Theatre in London in 1925, maintained a constant presence due to the show’s repeated revival on film, but also its links with quintessential Britishness. This song provides a useful basis for a longitudinal, comparative study of arrangement and performance.

British dance bands relied upon maintaining dialectical tensions – conceptually, stylistically, and culturally – to remain in a mainstream position which was crucial to their success. An important aspect of this was accommodating competing British and American influences. While the former was encouraged by institutions such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Musicians’ Union, often accompanied by strong articulations of anti-American feeling, dance band musicians and fans were often interested in explorations of the latter in terms of jazz and ‘hot’ content. However, Britishness, in terms of presentation, repertoire and performance style, was also key to the appeal of British dance band music in America (and worldwide). In the Second World War, the complex, multi-layered propaganda function of dance band music developed nationalism into patriotism, while also resourcing and encouraging the adoption of American ‘big band’ models by British groups.

Exemplifying these rich transatlantic tensions, this paper examines a range of approaches to ‘Tea for Two’ by British dance bands, from the use and adaptation of ‘stock’ orchestrations to bespoke ‘special arrangements’ for specific bands. Particular consideration will be given to a recently discovered, unrecorded and probably unperformed manuscript of an arrangement of ‘Tea for Two’ written for leading British bandleader Jack Hylton by noted African American arranger Fletcher Henderson, an example of transatlantic connection and exchange between musicians which occurred in spite of the reiteration of cultural and aesthetic differences based on nationality and race.

Amid the dizzying growth and increasing diversity of early twentieth-century Chicago, an international dance fad landed in late 1912. During the tango “craze” of 1913, dancers across Europe and North America embraced the South American dance form and indelibly shaped its aesthetics. However, due to the complex social dynamics, rapidly changing demographics, and hyper-local contexts of the “city of neighborhoods,” different communities responded to the tango with attitudes that ranged from zealous embrace to complete rejection. By examining the responses of white native-born elites, Catholic Polish immigrants, and middle-class Black families, this paper explores how prevailing structures of power and the pressures of respectability influenced these perspectives. While white, native-born elites embraced sanitized, European versions of the tango as a symbol of their cosmopolitan sophistication, immigrants and Black communities faced pressure to avoid it due to associations with the indecent comportment found in working-class dance halls.

This presentation highlights the privilege and social capital that allowed certain groups to engage with the tango more freely, while marginalized and contingent communities faced greater scrutiny when engaging with the dance form. Religious and social reformers alike condemned the tango, which particularly shaped its reception in immigrant European communities. Similarly, Black elites and publications such as the Chicago Defender discouraged its adoption among Black audiences, viewing it as vulgar. Elsewhere, however, Black dancers engaged with the tango in dance contests and theatrical performances in the many theaters that dotted the Stroll, the arts and culture hub of the growing Black Belt on the South Side. Thus the tango serves as a lens through which societal norms, racial dynamics, and aspirations for social mobility intersect.

I extend work on the international reach of the tango by Florencia Garramuño, Marta Savigliano, and Robert Farris Thompson by drawing it into dialogue with demographic histories of the American Midwest. By examining the local iteration of a global trend, I aim to advocate for the regional, demonstrating how the global movement of music and dance forms can shape the daily lives and experiences of individuals in the context of Chicago’s famous network of neighborhoods.

“All of the youth shall witness the day that Babylon shall fall!” So cries reggae drummer Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace, sampled between a barrage of breakbeats in DJ Splash’s 1995 jungle track “Babylon”, a title drawn from the Rastafari term for the decadent West. Originating in London in the early 1990s, jungle is an electronic dance music genre characterized by a 155-180 BPM tempo, densities of polyrhythm and syncopation, and a cut-and-mix approach to sampled drum breaks from American soul records. Created by second-generation Jamaican Londoners and their neighbors, jungle’s Jamaican roots are conspicuous through its reggae samples, production techniques borrowed from dub music, and booming basslines echoing through DIY sound systems on London council estates.

While it has been established that jungle, as “the first… truly indigenous Black British music,” (Reynolds) aided in the cultural integration of Jamaicans to Britain (Melville), this paper contextualizes jungle in a historical continuum of Jamaican sonic, religious, and political practices which “indigenized” its participants to England through production methods and listening contexts. By interweaving Sylvia Wynter’s theory of “indigenization” as an active process, Paul Gilroy’s conception of the Black Atlantic diasporic network, and Stuart Hall’s theories of race and class in postwar England, this paper argues that jungle’s early scenes enacted performances of sovereignty in the face of British racism and austerity. In doing so, this paper provides a template for examining localized music forms as tools for sociopolitical disruption.

Over the years, jungle has evolved into a myriad of subgenres which vary in their adherence to earlier aesthetic and political logics. Complications arise when these evolutions are stripped of their local contexts and thrust into the globalized dance music market. Jungle’s current global scope has now seen the genre played at underground and corporate shows alike. Producers from the early London scene have received mainstream accolades, and a few have even been knighted by the British Crown. This paper argues that aesthetic changes to jungle are a direct consequence of this larger economic transformation, and considers how early jungle’s implicit aesthetic and political logics can disrupt current capitalist incursions into underground music scenes.

Cantopop (Cantonese Popular Music) encounters a drastic turn at the New Millennium, with Electronic Cantopop emerging as a pioneering role of introducing electronic dance music in East Asia. This subgenre in Cantopop resonates with Y2K culture in terms of collective uncertainty towards the new century; it also reveals anxiety towards the undetermined futurities in Hong Kong and Taiwan due to several sociopolitical changes in late 1990s. In this paper, I examine the use of Electronic Cantopop not only as a genre produced by Hong Kong artists, but also as a unique connotation of Taiwaneseness in grassroot dance clubs in Taiwan at the New Millennium.

Focusing on the ecstatic yet apocalyptic musical features of Electronic Cantopop among audiences in Hong Kong and Taiwan, I argue that Electronic Cantopop acts as a metaphor of collective anxiety towards turmoiled political futures in East Asia, which may offer derivative discourses on the critical studies of East-Asian temporality, futurity and queer time. By analyzing the musical features of artists from Electronic Cantopop, including songs, music videos and live performances of Leon Lai, Sammi Cheng and Kelly Chen, I seek to discover their musical differences from earlier Cantopop or Mandopop at the same era. I would also discuss how the aesthetics of Electronic Cantopop demonstrates the structure of feelings in Y2K culture, such as the felt of hedonism and apocalypse, in the context of East Asia. Aside from connecting Cantopop to the global scale of Y2K culture, I elaborate how Electronic Cantopop reflects the sociopolitical precarity of Hong Kong after the Handover in 1997. Lastly, I investigate how Electronic Cantopop received wide reception in Taiwan grassroot dance clubs that serves as dance music of Taiwaneseness. Using archival works and ethnographic writing as the main methodologies in this part of research, I unveil the demonstration of Taiwaneseness within Electronic Cantopop, the cultural affinity between Hong Kong and Taiwan at the New Millennium, as well as how these narratives create political and theoretical potentials that may respond to current cultural-political scenarios in Hong Kong and Taiwan.