Author: Ben Sheehan

Nation was a fluid thought in 1920s France. Perhaps even in the whole world. The great war was a recent memory, and at the same time as desire for a unified national identity was at its peak, large numbers of people were displaced, for reasons of politics, from the result of the war, from circumstances […]

Research requires focus. Being able to read a paragraph, then another, and another, and then retain the information. This has proved to be, putting it mildly, difficult. My mind is elsewhere. On top of that it seems the internet isn’t the most stable space for information that we would like to think it is. While […]

Ultimately early French jazz came not out of an appreciation and respect for diversity of culture, but from a place of profiteering, using a false, exoticized farce of ‘tribal’ cultures for the purpose of shocking audiences, and in turn profiting of this contrived vision of the other. Looking to the writings of French music critics […]

Picasso was always more interested in popular music rather than traditional classical music, an interest which led him to composers like Satie and de Falla, and ultimately led to him designing cubist sets and costumes, designs which in turn influenced the audiences perception of the music, and even the content of the musical works themselves. […]

You can’t talk about the debates over national musical identity in 1920’s France without looking at the rise in French nationalism, as well as nationalism throughout Europe during this time period. In the present day we are seeing a similar trend in nationalistic urges globally, with nationalist demagogues, such as Modi in India, Duerte in […]