The Politics of Voice in Duke Ellington’s Beggar’s Holiday (1946)
Duke Ellington and John Latouche made a number of pointed references to “highbrow” and “lowbrow” art in their 1947 musical Beggar’s Holiday. I argue that this dichotomy did more than classify; it also politicized the consumption and composition of art. Drawing upon the writings of such critics as Cl...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2013-06-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/3280 |
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| Summary: | Duke Ellington and John Latouche made a number of pointed references to “highbrow” and “lowbrow” art in their 1947 musical Beggar’s Holiday. I argue that this dichotomy did more than classify; it also politicized the consumption and composition of art. Drawing upon the writings of such critics as Clement Greenberg, Dwight MacDonald, and Archibald MacLeish, my paper revives a 1940s aesthetic discourse that imposed strong divisions between highbrow and lowbrow art. By analyzing a number of recordings of Beggar’s Holiday’s opening song, “In Between,” I demonstrate that Ellington and Latouche simultaneously invoked and undermined this aesthetic dichotomy to make an intervention into post-World War II left-wing political debates. |
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| ISSN: | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |