Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Rock 'n' Roll, the Labor Question, and the Musicians' Union, 1942-1968 - Hardcover

Roberts, Michael James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822354632 ISBN 13: 9780822354635

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2014

Synopsis

For two decades after rock music emerged in the 1940s, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the oldest and largest labor union representing professional musicians in the United States and Canada, refused to recognize rock 'n' roll as legitimate music or its performers as skilled musicians. The AFM never actively organized rock 'n' roll musicians, although recruiting them would have been in the union's economic interest. In Tell Tchaikovsky the News, Michael James Roberts argues that the reasons that the union failed to act in its own interest lay in its culture, in the opinions of its leadership and elite rank-and-file members. Explaining the bias of union members—most of whom were classical or jazz music performers—against rock music and musicians, Roberts addresses issues of race and class, questions of what qualified someone as a skilled or professional musician, and the threat that records, central to rock 'n' roll, posed to AFM members, who had long privileged live performances. Roberts contends that by rejecting rock 'n' rollers for two decades, the once formidable American Federation of Musicians lost their clout within the music industry.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael James Roberts is Associate Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University.

Review:

"In this book Michael James Roberts has succeeded in breaking down the categories of labor studies and aesthetics. Not only has he written a superb account of how the Musicians Union lost its bargaining power with the record industry. He shows that its refusal to recognize the musical value of popular music of the past forty years led to its narrowing and ultimate reduction of influence over the most vital section of the music industry. The book is vividly written, conceptually strong and instructive about the growing complexity of labor relations in the entertainment industry." (Stanley Aronowitz, author of Taking It Big: C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals)

"In this lively study of the remarkable victories and disheartening failures of the American Federation of Musicians, Michael James Roberts presents a strong case that union culture played a central role in the decline of the U.S. labor movement. Focusing on the union's dismissal of rock 'n' roll, Tell Tchaikovsky the News explores how class cleavages—conflicts over what count as culture, taste, talent, skill, and proper expressions of working-class resistance—undermined solidarity among workers. This wonderfully engaging analysis of the class textures of popular music and the cultural politics of the labor movement is a must-read." (Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries)

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0822354632
• ISBN 13: 9780822354635
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280