Atelier 12 : Musique et cultures anglophones
Responsables de l’atelier
David Bousquet
Université de Bourgogne
david.bousquet@u-bourgogne.fr
Guillaume Clément
Université de Rennes
prof.guillaume.clement@gmail.com
Julie Michot
Université de Lorraine
julie.michot@univ-lorraine.fr
Rose Barrett
Université de Lorraine
catherine-rose.barrett@univ-lorraine.fr
Break on through to the Finnish side – Dynamics of cultural transfer in the development of Finnish rock
Finnish rock exploded in the 60s and 70s with a surge in song translation and the emergence of avant-garde scenes in prog rock, fusion jazz, psychedelic and folk rock, as well as the growth of Suomirock out of the popular iskelmä and humppa genres. These developments owe much to the significant influx of anglophone music and cultural influences into Finland, but the flow appears predominantly one-directional as very few Finnish rock artists were exported back over the border. Although commercial and linguistic power dynamics played their part in funneling anglophone influences into Finland and impeding Finnish artists from breaking through to outside audiences, a closer look at how anglophone music and the English language were received and utilized by Finnish artists reveals a complex web of poetic and emotional factors – both individual and collective – that were equally influential. Overlapping cultural resonance and exoticism might explain some 70s trends, such as the penchant for adapting American country and traditional songs in Finnish, but the response to Finnish rock abroad focused more on otherness than resonance. In Suomirock, one-directional flow was caused not by failure to break through to foreign audiences but by not seeking to break through at all; icons like Juice Leskinen (often referred to as the Finnish Bob Dylan) were very receptive to anglophone linguistic and stylistic influences, then reappropriated them in rock music that targeted Finnish audiences, while also producing more poetically driven adaptations (Leskinen’s translation of Dylan’s “Changing of the Guards” is a fitting example). Commercial potential was a concern for record labels who encouraged groups to adopt English, but some artists’ linguistic and stylistic influences were more linked to belongingness within a wider musical community using English as a vehicular poetic language. This was especially true for niche genres like prog rock and jazz fusion with strong international fanbases and a history of cross-border artistic collaboration, and not coincidentally, the few Finnish musicians to receive international recognition during the 70s (Tasavallan Presidentti, Wigwam, Pekka Pohjola) fall within this category. These emerging and coexisting phenomena in Finland’s early rock scene make the country a fascinating case study in the dynamics of cultural transfer and the permeability of commercial, linguistic, and stylistic borders.
Biographie
Rose Barrett is a doctoral student at the University of Lorraine. After obtaining diplomas in early music and historical performance practice in the US, Italy, and France, as well as working as a freelance translator, she turned to cross-disciplinary cultural studies and poetics in translation, building on her multilingual experience and her lifelong passion for rock music to explore the relationships between language, music, and cultural identities.
David Bousquet
Université de Bourgogne
david.bousquet@u-bourgogne.fr
“Movement of Jah People”: Literal and metaphorical borders in Jamaican popular music
Reggae and its associated subgenres are often portrayed as Jamaica’s national music, notably in popular literature and the media. This framing of reggae within rigid national borders is primarily due to political reasons as, around the time of independence, the emerging postcolonial elite attempted to contain popular music’s anti-establishment ethos and accommodate it to the new national narrative. Popular music was also used to promote Jamaica as a tourist destination in a context of rampant poverty. Reggae is often seen as Jamaica’s national treasure and constitutes a major resource for the country, both symbolically and materially.
A closer look at the genesis of the music, however, reveals that transnational patterns of mobility and migration have always been central to the way it is produced and consumed. Reggae is the product of local, regional and international influences and owes its uniqueness as much to its Afro-Caribbean roots as to African American musical styles or to business ties with expatriate Caribbeans in the UK. This diasporic dimension of the music has increased through all the subsequent stages of its development, with international connections extending much beyond the historically established Jamaican communities in the UK, the US and Canada.
As musicians, producers and fans are constantly on the move, borders logically feature as a prominent theme in reggae lyrics. They are sometimes discussed in their materiality, for instance in songs where musicians address the visa restrictions they face when travelling for tours. But boundaries are also approached in more symbolic ways, to challenge or reinforce the rigid social distinctions that permeate Jamaica and other sites where reggae is produced and consumed. This paper will propose an overview of the different understandings of the concept of border in modern Jamaican popular music, analysing it as an apt representative of transnational musical subcultures in the globalised world.
Biographie
David Bousquet is a senior lecturer at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France, and a member of the Text, Image, Language research centre (Centre Interlangues – TIL). He specialises in the study of Caribbean literature, poetry and popular culture with a particular emphasis on musical traditions and reggae. His research on song lyrics and performance poems focuses on the tension between orality and writing from the perspective of postcolonial and cultural studies.
Karla Cotteau
Université d’Angers
k.cotteau@univ-angers.fr
“I Wish Taylor Swift was in Love with a Climate Scientist”: Music, Politics, and a Question of Borders
In past conferences, there has been an exploration of political aspects of song lyrics. Studying Taylor Swift will afford the possibility of continuing that discussion. In light of this year’s theme, it will be interesting, first, to explore Swift’s international fan-base. Kathleen Riddle argues that having different periods throughout an artist’s career tends to draw in more fans: “When there’s such a span of different ways the fan can identify with a celebrity, it’s more likely that the fan will recognize themselves in the celebrity because there is such a multitude of locations of identification” (CBC Radio). Similarly, Brian Donovan highlights how Swift is able to “cover and jump across so many genres from country, to rock, to dance, folk. […] And as a result […] she creates such a wide umbrella, that there are many different entry points to becoming a Swiftie” (Kansas City Star). Thus, the diversity of her musical career, in which she has crossed the boundaries of musical genres, has led in part to her immense international popularity.
Secondly, I will study Swift’s political stances and how she has voiced them both musically and in public comments. For example, on 8 October 2018 on Instagram, Swift posted:
I’m writing this post about the upcoming midterm elections […], in which I’ll be voting in the state of Tennessee. In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now. I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country […]. (Taylorswift.)
Consequently, Taylor Swift has become increasingly influential in US politics. Music, of course, has a long history of being used for political ends. Where, though, is the boundary between artistic expression and political proselytizing? A theoretical framework from Anthony Burgess’s speech “Can Art Be Immoral?” and the discussion at the start of Burgess’s Mozart and the Wolf Gang will be useful here.
Biographie
Karla Cotteau holds a Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Texas Tech University (Lubbock, USA), a Master of Arts in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College (Santa Fe, USA), and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Angers (Angers, France) under the direction of Emmanuel Vernadakis. Her PhD dissertation is entitled “Art, Religion, and Sex: A Study of Words, Music, and Repetition in Anthony Burgess’s Short Fiction.” She has published articles about Anthony Burgess’s short fiction in several scientific journals, and since 2017, she has served as co-editor for the short stories published in Nouvelles Envolées: Recueil des nouvelles estudiantines en français et en anglais, winners of the short story competition organized by the Catholic University of the West and the University of Angers. She currently teaches Business English at the University of Angers.
Gilles Couderc
Université de Caen Normandie
gilles.couderc@unicaen.fr
Traverser les frontières et ses périls : The Mikado de Gilbert & Sullivan et Curlew River de Benjamin Britten
Qui y a-t-il de commun entre The Mikado, « Savoy opera » de l’équipe W. S. Gilbert et Arthur Sullivan (1885) et Curlew River, première des Paraboles pour l’église de Benjamin Britten (1964) sinon un sujet « japonais » qui reflète d’une part la fascination des Britanniques pour ce lointain empire et celui de Britten pour le Nō après sa découverte du Japon en 1956. Si le livret de Gilbert présente un Japon de pacotille pour mieux se livrer à une satire des Britanniques et la musique de Sullivan quelques rares inflexions japonaises, l’œuvre de Britten, au contraire, emprunte son récit au Nō et incorpore des éléments musicaux du genre comme du Gagaku, tout en christianisant son œuvre, en partie pour éviter la comparaison avec les « japoniaiseries » du Mikado.
Aujourd’hui impossible de présenter The Mikado tel qu’il a été créé, et les deux œuvres sont victimes de la critique, accusées de détournement, d’appropriation culturelle et de présentation déformée de l’Autre. Cette communication vise à présenter les périls qu’entraine la traversée des frontières et qui pose in fine la question d’autorité et d’auctorialité.
Biographie
Agrégé d’anglais, Gilles Couderc est l’auteur d’une thèse sur les opéras de Benjamin Britten, Des héros au singulier, les héros des opéras de Benjamin Britten (Université de Paris III, 1999) ainsi que nombreux articles sur les opéras et les œuvres de Britten et de Ralph Vaughan Williams, comme “Fantastique et images du mal dans The Turn of the Screw in Opéra et fantastique, Hervé Lacombe & Timothée Picard (ed.) Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011. Maître de conférences à l’université de Caen Normandie, il a organisé de nombreux colloques sur les livrets d’opéra inspirés par le monde anglophone et publié plusieurs numéros de la revue LISA/LISA e-journal consacrés à ces livrets. Il continue ses recherches sur le rapport texte et musique, notamment chez les musiciens et poètes anglais des XIXe et XXe siècles, sur les figures de musiciens en littérature ainsi que sur la participation de la musique à l’identité britannique. Il a notamment codirigé le numéro de la Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique intitulé Musique, nation et identité : la renaissance de la musique anglaise, 1880-1980, www.cercles.com/rfcb/, Vol. XVII-4.
Romain Garbaye
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
romain.garbaye@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
Musical Scenes and Social Class: Debating Punk and Metal (Edited by Romain Garbaye and Gérôme Guibert, forthcoming Palgrave (USA) 2024)
The edited volume « Musical Scenes and Social Class : Debating Punk and Metal » is intended as an exploration of what seems to be one key dimension of the historical relation between punk and metal : the nexus between the two scenes, on one side, and social class, on the other. Early analysts of both punk and metal have shown their continuing popularity for segments of the public who were often considered in the 1970s and 1980s as “losers of globalization”, or marginalized young men, despite the high level of fragmentation of these scenes, the diversity of their audiences’ social backgrounds, and their constant evolution and re-invention through the course of their 50 year-long history (see for instance Worley, 2017 and Coulter, 2019, and Edwards et al., 2018 on punk ; Weinstein, 2011, Guibert and Guibert, 2015 ; Brown, 2016, on metal). Fundamentally, punk and metal are the two sub-genres of rock music that have been the most frequently and explicitly associated with the esthetics and ethics of aggressivity, anger, rebellion, darkness, alienation, solitude, addiction, and depression, with these affects being often intricately linked in a variety of combinations – all in all, then, with the expression of negativity in rock music. This, of course, does not preclude more positive perceptions of either punk or metal, in terms of self-emancipation and community participation (see some of our chapters presented below). This volume aims to stimulate and contribute to debates on the relations between negativity and aggressivity in rock music, on one side, and the “working class”, and more widely social class and economic and cultural change, on the other, through both contemporary and historical approaches focused on Britain and France.
Biographie
Romain Garbaye est Professeur de civilisation britannique à l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, spécialiste des migrations internationales, de la diversité culturelle et des musiques populaires dans la période contemporaine.
Catherine Girodet
Université de Reims
catherine.girodet@univ-reims.fr
PJ Harvey’s Album Let England Shake (2011): Englishness across Borders
In the early years of her thirty two-year career on the independent rock scene, British singer-songwriter Pi Harvey conjured up a song-world primarily focused on the psychic edge and containing hardly any cohesive cultural framework.
However, with her 2011 album Let England Shake, Harvey effects a sudden leap from imaginary worlds to the world, a peculiarly English world. Taking 20th century Anglo-European war history as its subject, Let England Shake conveys battlefield carnage through soldiers’ personal narratives. Much like a self-appointed war songwriter, Harvey crafts songs which resonate with the collective memory of the two World Wars and the Gallipoli campaign, whilst making war experience relatable through the testimonial mode.
As heralded in the album title, Let England Shake is replete with Englishness, witness its pastoral evocations of rural England as an imaginary respite from battlefield horror and its intertextual tapestry (e.g., English war poetry and WWI trench songs).
However, for all its overt English historical and aesthetic anchoring, Let England Shake also delineates an intermingled and hybrid cultural space where boundaries are porous. This is especially visible in the album’s cross-cultural musical quotes which hybridise Let England Shake with reggae, North American novelty songs, Russian folk and Kurdish samples.
Positing that Harvey uses Englishness as an emotional template for the universal experience of war trauma and longing for the homeland, the purpose of this paper is to probe Let England Shake as a paradoxical contact zone between cultures, a transcultural text conducive to interconnectedness and universality.
Biographie
Dr Catherine Girodet is a Senior Lecturer in Anglophone studies at Reims University (France) and is affiliated to the CIRLEP Research Centre (EA 4299). She is an active member of the “Cultures Populaires” research group of CIRLEP and an editorial board member of its international academic journal Imaginaires. Dr Girodet’s research focuses on Gothic and grotesque aesthetics in rock music, and on interartistic and intercultural flux in popular culture. Her methodological approach draws upon cultural studies, Gothic studies, popular music studies, and literary theory. In June 2023, she co-organised a one-day international symposium entitled “Probing the Borderland between Popular Music and Literature” at Reims University (France).
Eve Lebreton
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
eve.lebreton@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
“A denial”: the cross-over as a motif in Kurt Cobain’s work
Thirty years after his passing, the frontman of the band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain (1967-1994), is still remembered as a key actor – if not the key actor -of the mainstream popularity of « grunge » rock music in the early 1990s -famously, with the release of the band’s second album Nevermind in September 1991. This achievement is generally remembered as a surprise marketing success – and indeed, to this day, the record has sold more than thirty million copies worldwide.
Yet, a closer examination of Kurt Cobain’s early career as an aspiring musician reveals that this success should probably be better understood as the result of a well thought-out strategy that had been years in the making. In fact, Cobain’s very public stance against ‘selling out’ -betraying one’s fan base for another audience, or compromising one’s musical identity by trying to appeal to mainstream audiences- is as fierce as was his dedication to achieving critical and commercial success.
From the lifelong trauma of his parents’ divorce, which caused him to switch families and hometowns, to his passive-aggressive way of dealing with a much sought-after fame during his formative years as a young punk rocker, his lyrics reflect the conflict between the selfcommiseration of the outsider, the one standing this side of a border – and the urgency, not to reach the other shore, but to walk the bridge, to use one of his much commented and biographically prevalent motif. Unlike his band Nirvana, which owes its cultural status to coming through the other side, Cobain as an individual never ceased to cross back and forth, whether it meant constantly contradicting himself in the media, recanting his work or recycling old patterns, ultimately standing by this ‘in-between’ until it became him, as exemplified in his suicide note.
This paper will delve into the key primary sources for the study of Cobain’s short-lived career – the lyrics of Nirvana songs – in order to show that behind the career moves, crossing over was the cornerstone around which Cobain built his literary world and his philosophy as an artist.
Biographie
Ève Lebreton is a holder of the Agrégation of English language and a receiver of a Master of Arts in philosophy of science from Paris Sorbonne University. An English teacher for the past thirteen years, she has now taken up doctoral studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University. Stemming from her lifelong creative work as a bilingual writer in contemporary fiction, her dissertation explores the ways Kurt Cobain’s body of work falls within the realm of literary authorship.
Julie Michot
Université de Lorraine
julie.michot@univ-lorraine.fr
Une frontière immuable ? L’identité culturelle gibraltarienne au prisme des chansons locales
La culture de la population de Gibraltar est en grande partie conditionnée par la frontière terrestre qui sépare le Rocher de l’Espagne. Cette frontière plus ou moins hermétique est souvent vue comme une entrave par les habitants de la colonie britannique ; mais, en marquant concrètement la différence entre les deux territoires, elle a aussi une fonction symbolique indéniable. Bien que la musique gibraltarienne ne soit pas un phénomène de grande ampleur, les chansons typiquement locales qui existent sont, en toute logique, fortement influencées par la situation géopolitique de l’enclave. Déjà à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Mozart composait « Ode à Calpe » pour rendre gloire au Rocher et à la résistance des Britanniques sur les armées espagnoles et françaises lors du Grand Siège. Plus récemment, au début du XXe siècle, des Gibraltariens partis tenter leur chance en Argentine ont composé « Llévame donde nací » pour dire leur attachement à leur terre natale et leur difficulté à vivre loin d’elle ; purement sentimentale au départ, cette chanson a acquis une dimension politique certaine et, bien que ses paroles soient en espagnol, elle a aujourd’hui beaucoup plus de poids que « The Rock on Which I Stand », censée être l’hymne national officiel de Gibraltar. Les chansons gibraltariennes peuvent effectivement avoir un caractère artificiel ou forcé : l’hymne « Our Rock, Our Home, Our Pride », né au moment de la fermeture totale de la frontière par Franco, a été composé dans la précipitation, comme pour riposter contre la politique espagnole. Mais si la langue anglaise est parfois brandie comme une arme, les chansons chantées en espagnol par les Gibraltariens n’ont jamais constitué une identification au pays frontalier : par le passé, ces derniers ont souvent détourné des airs traditionnels espagnols dans le but de critiquer leurs voisins et le régime politique sous lequel ils vivaient.
Cette communication tentera de montrer que toutes ces chansons reflètent les contradictions des Gibraltariens et de leurs sentiments nationaux. Fiers d’être britanniques mais méfiants à l’égard de Londres, opposés à une souveraineté espagnole mais parlant la langue de leurs voisins au quotidien, ils souhaiteraient voir disparaître les revendications territoriales de Madrid (et donc les problèmes récurrents à la frontière) sans pouvoir se détacher de leur mentalité d’insulaires ni se résoudre à voir tomber la barrière physique présente sur l’isthme, qui est sans doute pour eux moins oppressante que rassurante.
Biographie
Julie Michot est Maître de Conférences HDR en Anglais à l’Université de Lorraine (Nancy). Ses domaines d’enseignement et de recherche sont la civilisation anglophone. Elle a publié deux monographies sur le cinéma hollywoodien classique et est l’auteur d’une thèse de doctorat sur l’identité gibraltarienne.
Julie Momméja
Université de Lorraine
julie.mommeja@gmail.com
De la Barbary Coast au Trips Festival : réinventions de la frontière
En janvier 1966 a lieu à San Francisco le Trips Festival. Réunissant des groupes du San Francisco Sound tels les Grateful Dead, Big Brother & the Holding Company ou encore Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey et sa bande de Merry Pranksters, le festival apparaît comme le premier événement musical et artistique d’une longue liste qui va durablement transformer San Francisco en épicentre de la contre-culture psychédélique et hippie (Roszak 1969).
En effet, pendant trois soirs, l’événement rassemble 10 000 personnes sous le dôme du Longshoremen’s Hall, rappelant ceux, géodésiques, de Buckminster Fuller, designer futuriste cher aux membres de la contre-culture (Wolfe 1968). L’un des co-organisateurs du festival n’est autre que Stewart Brand, alors membre des Merry Pranksters de Kesey et qui deux ans plus tard publiera le premier numéro du Whole Earth Catalog (Brand 1968). Grâce à Brand et à d’autres artistes multimedia, la technologie se retrouve placée au centre de l’évènement, visible au travers des installations DIY présentes dans la salle, avec deux scènes permettant le montage et démontage des différentes scénographies, des jeux de lumières stroboscopiques, d’images et de sons.
En insistant sur la participation active du public, les organisateurs du Trips Festival contribuent à un changement de perspectives au travers d’une union privilégiée entre musique et technologie mais aussi entre artistes et spectateurs qui ne forment plus qu’un seul et même groupe, refusant les barrières et hiérarchies qui les séparaient habituellement (Turner 2006).
Se basant sur plusieurs années de recherche menée dans la Baie de San Francisco autour de la contre-culture et ses acteurs (entretiens, observation participante lors des événements organisés pour le cinquantième anniversaire du festival), cette présentation propose d’analyser le Trips Festival comme un véritable moment charnière dans l’histoire de la contre-culture (Momméja 2021). Premièrement, parce qu’il fait de la technologie un langage artistique à part entière, mais aussi parce que les communautés créatives qu’il réunit se trouvent au coeur de la révolution /3 1culturelle et sociale en train de se jouer à San Francisco : une nouvelle frontière, non plus celle, géographique et historique, de la Barbary Coast, mais psychédélique et technologique, en cours de création.
Bibliographie
Asbury, Herbert. 1933. The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Brand, Stewart. 1968. Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools.
Florida, Richard. 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Gair, Christopher. 2007. The American Counterculture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Markoff, John. 2005. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. New York: Viking.
Momméja, Julie. 2021. “Du Whole Earth Catalog à La Long Now Foundation Dans La Baie de San Francisco : Co-Évolution Sur La ‘Frontière ‘ Créative (1955-2020).” Paris: Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle. http://www.theses.fr/s100516.
Richardson, Peter. 2015. No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Roszak, Theodore. 1969. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Turner, Fred. 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wolfe, Tom. 1968. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Picador.
Biographie
Julie Momméja is an Associate Professor in US Studies and Media Studies at the Université de Lorraine. She received her PhD from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, where she wrote her dissertation « From the Whole Earth Catalog to the Long Now Foundation in the San Francisco Bay Area: coevolution on the creative ‘Frontier’ (1955-2020) ». A visiting researcher at UC Berkeley from 2014 to 2017 and research fellow at the Long Now Foundation since 2015, Julie Momméja focuses on pioneers and thinkers within the San Francisco Bay Area counterculture and cyberculture spheres. From the authors of the Beat Generation to DIY hackers, she studies the emergence of technology as a social tool on a creative territory rooted in utopian and libertarian ideologies. Her research also explores bonds, connections and fusions between offline and virtual communities within a context of Braudelian longue durée and human-machine coevolution favored by the specificity of the local Californian and Bay Area mindset.
Pierre-François Peirano
Université de Toulon
pf_peirano@yahoo.fr
L’influence des Etats-Unis sur la musique de Sergeï Rachmaninov
Après avoir fui une Russie en proie à la révolution, Sergeï Rachmaninov (1873-1943) décida, en 1918, de s’établir aux Etats-Unis, pays où il avait déjà donné plusieurs récitals[1] et où il allait désormais passer la majorité du reste de son existence. Objet d’une célébrité aussi soudaine qu’inattendue, Rachmaninov avait des opinions mitigées sur la société américaine, mais l’intérêt qu’il éprouvait pour les musiques en vogue à l’époque – comme, par exemple,
le rythme du foxtrot – mérite une attention soutenue, alors que les frontières entre les milieux artistiques russe et américain étaient encore largement poreuses.
En effet, l’hypothèse selon laquelle les musiques américaines ont influé sur ses propres compositions peut être soulevée et, outre l’étude des oeuvres composées après 1918, sa riche correspondance se révélera fort utile en ce sens. Ces sonorités et ce rythme différents, souvent proches de la syncope, trouvent leur meilleure incarnation dans le Quatrième concerto pour piano, op. 40, plusieurs fois remanié entre 1925 et 1941 et très fraîchement accueilli par la critique américaine à son époque, et les Trois Chansons russes, op. 41, qui connurent un accueil bien plus chaleureux. En cela, Rachmaninov marchait aussi dans les pas de compositeurs précédents, dont le plus connu demeure le Tchèque Antonín Dvořák. Des oeuvres jouées pour la première fois par des orchestres américains, en particulier, l’Orchestre de Philadelphie, dirigé par le chef Eugene Ormandy, ami de Rachmaninov, feront également l’objet d’une étude particulière, car elles montrent indirectement les liens souvent intimes tissés entre les musiciens américains et le compositeur russe.
Cependant, il convient également de se demander si cette influence n’a pas été réciproque, comme en témoignent son admiration pour George Gershwin et les ressemblances entre les oeuvres des deux compositeurs, sans oublier les multiples utilisations ultérieures des oeuvres de Rachmaninov dans les films produits par Hollywood – en particulier, le très célèbre Deuxième concerto pour piano, op. 18.
Biographie
Pierre-François Peirano est Maître de Conférences en civilisation des Etats-Unis à l’Université de Toulon. Il a consacré sa thèse aux représentations inspirées par l’expédition Lewis et Clark et ses recherches portent sur la Jeune République américaine (XVIIIe et XIXe siècles), en lien avec l’histoire des idées et l’écriture de l’histoire. Il a dirigé l’ouvrage sur La Construction de l’Ouest américain dans le cinéma hollywoodien, aux éditions Ellipses (2017).
Joël Richard
Université Bordeaux Montaigne
Joel.Richard@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr
Crossing shores and borders: Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (1707) by G.F. Handel and its London metamorphoses.
“Il Trionfo del Tempo, or the three lives of Beauty” could be the subtitle of the work by Handel that I will study. This presentation will follow the journey of this Italian Beauty from its creation in Rome in 1707 then, twice, its re-creations in London in 1737 and 1757, a journey across borders, beyond mountains and seas – its journey and its insular acclimatization, on the shores of the Thames, so far away from the Palazzo della Cancelleria, where its voice was first heard in 1707. This will be a musical voyage, attentive to the gradual shift of the words and notes of a composition which always appeared too soon, too rapidly or too late: too soon in 1707, since it was eclipsed by its own composer as soon as 1708, with La Resurrezione, a far more ambitious musical project; too rapidly in 1737, in the midst of an endless opera season; too late in 1757, when it was finally “resurrected” after the failures of Theodora and Jephtha. I will study the cross-border metamorphoses of a transcultural work and the “missed” destiny of a composition whose successive versions might be less interesting than the musical arc that they trace across borders, from one country to the next, one language to the next, one “sound” to the next. These three versions might be viewed as the piers of a bridge thrown between the two shores of a musical Europe which, although a cosmopolitan territory criss-crossed by artist during the whole 18th century, kept cherishing its national specificities – something like a form of “cultural insulation”.
Biographie
Joël RICHARD est Maître de Conférences en civilisation et littérature britannique à l’Université Bordeaux Montaigne. Il est l’auteur d’une thèse portant sur les rapports entre politique, religion et esthétique musicale au 18ème siècle, plus précisément sur les oratorios en langue anglaise de George Frederic Handel. Outre des articles sur les oratorios de Handel, il a publié des articles sur les opéras comiques de Gilbert et Sullivan (« Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (1877): Mock Pirates and Musical Piracy. », Pierre Degott (ed), revue MUSICORUM (revuemusicorum.com), n°20, 2018) et le portrait dans la peinture britannique du 18ème siècle (« Captain Coram, the Foundling Hospital, Hogarth and Handel: the sight and sound of charity. » https://journals.openedition.org/interfaces, 2024)
Eric Tabuteau
Université d’Orléans
eric.tabuteau@univ-orleans.fr
Les fabricants de guitare américains délocalisent-ils leur production au Mexique par nécessité ou par ambition ?
Trois des plus grands fabricants de guitare américains (Martin en 1989, Fender en 1991, Taylor en 2000) ont choisi de délocaliser une partie de leur production de l’autre côté de la frontière, au Mexique. De nombreux commentateurs ont fait remarquer que leur décision relevait d’une stratégie de conquête de nouveaux marchés afin de ne pas être éliminés par des concurrents plus compétitifs, notamment asiatiques : en profitant des moindres coûts de production mexicains, les entreprises américaines pouvaient espérer être en mesure de proposer des instruments dans une gamme de prix inférieure et donc de capter de nouvelles clientèles plus modestes (américaines ou non), attirées par la réputation des marques mais aussi séduites par un prix de vente davantage en adéquation avec leur pouvoir d’achat. Toutefois, cette stratégie n’était pas sans risques, plusieurs spécialistes faisant valoir que ces marques de prestige s’exposaient à voir la qualité de leurs instruments décliner et leur réputation se ternir. Mais cela a-t-il été le cas ? Le passage de la frontière a-t-il signifié pour ces trois majors de la production de guitares acoustiques et électriques états-uniennes une perte de notoriété ou ont-elles au contraire bénéficié de cet appui transfrontalier ? La collaboration mise en place s’est-elle limitée à un gain quantitatif ou, contre toute attente, la coopération avec des acteurs mexicains a-t-elle aussi engendré des bénéfices qualitatifs ? On s’efforcera dans cette communication de mettre en lumière que la stratégie de développement transfrontalier mise en place par Martin, Fender et Taylor va bien au-delà d’un simple calcul de rentabilité à court ou moyen terme.
Biographie
Eric Tabuteau est professeur de civilisation nord-américaine à l’Université d’Orléans. Il a auparavant été assistant de français à Dumbarton (Ecosse), volontaire du service national au titre de l’aide technique à l’Ile de la Réunion, lecteur de français à l’Université d’Aberdeen (Ecosse), professeur certifié d’anglais à l’Université de la Réunion, maître de conférences d’anglais à l’Université de Franche-Comté, à l’Université Stendhal – Grenoble 3 puis à l’Université Jean Moulin – Lyon 3. Il a aussi été directeur adjoint du Service enseignement supérieur, recherche et innovation de l’Ambassade de France à Londres. Il a co-dirigé plusieurs ouvrages consacrés à la littérature du Commonwealth ou à la civilisation de l’Amérique du Nord.
Jeremy Tranmer
Université de Lorraine
jeremy.tranmer@univ-lorraine.fr
Crossing the border between music and parliamentary politics: Red Wedge and the Labour Party, 1985-1990.
Popular music and parliamentary politics are usually deemed to be two separate areas with a clear border separating them. Songs may contain political references, but they cannot be seen political texts set to music. Moreover, songs can be used by politicians or political parties as part of election campaigns, but the authors/performers of the songs in question hardly ever become personally involved in such campaigns.
In the context of the United Kingdom, only Red Wedge has attempted to straddle this border. Red Wedge was a movement of musicians created in 1985 to encourage young people to vote for the Labour Party. Although it was financed by trade unions and was given an office in Labour’s headquarters, it was an autonomous organisation. It hoped to influence Labour and make it more attractive to young people. Furthermore, in the run-up to the 1987 general election it produced its own manifesto (Move On Up), which differed somewhat from Labour’s official programme, and it conducted its own campaign with public meetings and concerts.
This paper will examine how Red Wedge attempted to cross the border between parliamentary politics and popular music, examining some of the problems it encountered in doing so. It will focus on Red Wedge’s efforts to encourage musicians to take part in its activities and on its complex relationship with Labour politicians and activists. It will suggest that given the inherent difficulties of its project, it is perhaps surprising that Red Wedge continued to exist for over five years.
Biographie
Jeremy Tranmer is a senior lecturer at the Université de Lorraine (Nancy), where he teaches contemporary British social, cultural and political history. His PhD was about the political and ideological evolution of British Communism in the 1070s and 1980s, and he has written numerous articles about the far left in general. He is also interested in the relationship between the left and popular music since the 1960s and has published several articles about Rock Against Racism, for example. He is currently working on music and opposition to the Thatcher governments.
Son Troisième concerto pour piano, op. 30, avait été composé pour une tournée aux Etats-Unis, en 1909. ↑