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 of life, to nations other than their own. We see this with many Russians taking up residence in France, in large part due to the civil war, as well as Americans, both staying post war, and visiting with the wealth from their un-war-spoilt homeland. Due to this we see the oddity of those who might traditionally be seen as Russians, to be, arguably, creating french music, as well as Americans coming in and influencing the sounds of the day, in large parts thanks to jazz. No one singular French identity was able to arise, but instead what can best be described as resembling a musical debate on identity. What sounds are french, what is foreign. Why, who might we even consider a ‘French’ composer. The whole world was in a state of unprecedented change, and a nation was reeling, trying to understand who, or what, they were.<\/p>\n
We see this too in the popular music of the time, with venues experimenting with the style and content of their performances, the rise of the cabaret artistique, and the mingling of the classes within venues; something hitherto unprecedented. These venues became a breeding ground for composers of the time, with the likes of Satie and Vyspa having their origins in cabarets. In turn composers turned and took, lifting elements of the popular to mingle with their more ‘high class’ compositions, much as the audience mixed, the classes together like never before in recent French memory. This mingling of classes, of ideas, of people form all over the world, left a question on the mind of many of the writers and composers of the time. What is France? Who is France? What will France become? Through their music they offered a number of visions on French identity, past present and future, a set of visions which ultimately encapsulate that their was no one vision, their was no one identity at the time, but instead a shared longing for identity that a nation, fresh out of conflict and devastation, was faced with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3602,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3602"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}