Bombs Bursting in Air

Music and the State

Mat Callahan

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496859211
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: North American History

Contributions by Franz Andres Morrissey, Mat Callahan, Suzanne G. Cusick, James E. Dillard, Steven Garabedian, Jim Rogers, Elissa Stroman, Britta Sweers, and Dick Weissman

What exactly is American music? Is blackface minstrelsy American music? Is Hawaiian music? Is "The Star-Spangled Banner," written by an Englishman, American music? And what exactly is "Rockin' in the Free World"? Why does the Voice of America use jazz music to promote America? These and many other questions are discussed in Bombs Bursting in Air: Music and the State.

The relationship between music and the state has been the topic of controversy for at least 2,500 years. The oft-quoted passage from Plato's Republic, "the musical modes are never changed without changes in the most basic of the City's laws," not only underscores the importance of music in general but warns of music's ability to affect how society is governed. The state must therefore employ music to serve its ends while at the same time guarding against the lawlessness and subversion music is capable of introducing.

Bombs Bursting in Air gathers contributions from historians and musicologists to explore the role of music in the history of the United States. The essayists exhume music that has been forgotten or deliberately buried while drawing comparison with what has been promoted as "American music" by the academy, the music industry, and journalism, as well as by the US State Department.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface. An Ancient Question
• Introduction. How Many Arms Has the State?
• Chapter 1. A Sonic Palimpsest: Replacement as a Method of Suppression
• Chapter 2. “The Roads to Perdition”: Lawrence Gellert and Black Songs of Protest in the Cultural Front and Cold War
• Chapter 3. Curating Music: What Is Perpetuated and Why
• Chapter 4. The Etude Magazine and Cultivating the American Musical Canon
• Chapter 5. Making a Racket: Inventing the Modern Music Business
• Chapter 6. The American Federation of Musicians: Becoming Invisible
• Chapter 7. All That Jazz: CIA, Voice of America, and Jazz Diplomacy in the Early Cold War Years, 1955–1965
• Chapter 8. Music as Torture / Music as Weapon
• Chapter 9. Maintaining a Racket: How the Contemporary Music Business Keeps On Keepin’ On
• Chapter 10. “The Way We Put an End to War”: Song and War
• Chapter 11. “It Don’t Make Sense”: Willie Dixon, the Blues, War, and Peace
• Chapter 12. Compared to What? Representing and Misrepresenting American Music
• Summary Reflections. On Responsibility, Academia, and Asking Questions
• About the Contributors
• Index