Search Results

Genuine people do not feel they need to pay much attention to fads. They learn to dismiss fads as trivial, silly, and inconsequential. People tend to pick examples of young people playing: fad toys, dance fads, college students acting up, and the like. These promoters assure that this diet or exercise program will make a real difference, that people can shed those pounds, becoming fitter, and dramatically improve lives. Physicians go through periods when they favor particular diagnoses or therapies; managers adopt and then reject methods for improving business practices; educators devise and then drop teaching techniques. Fads can fool people. The sociologist Emory Bogardus made what was probably the first serious study of fads. He found that most fads did not last long enough to make more than one list; only a few received mention in three successive years.

This chapter analyzes the initial proliferation of bossa nova in the United States and United Kingdom in the early 1960s, primarily as a jazz and dance fad. By using material culled from top English-language periodicals of the era, it traces the popularity of bossa nova in the United States from its adoption by jazz musicians in the early 1960s, the invention of a dance to accompany the musical trend, and the ultimate rejection of bossa nova by purists in the jazz press. It also shows how the style’s initial popularity was partially due to the divisive racial politics that had overtaken jazz in that era, allowing the Otherness of bossa nova to temporarily offer an alternative for jazz musicians and fans.

This chapter traces the development of Brazilian music within a “world music” framework, through the influence of music compilations in contrast with attempts to market a short-lived world dance craze (lambada), and through the participation of Margareth Menezes in a high-profile international tour. These musical phenomena owed their heightened prominence to contact between Brazilians and enterprising outsiders in Brazil, especially in the state of Bahia. Brazil’s international musical brand would be linked either to the kinds of music that US-based rock and pop musicians tapped in their effort to revitalize their sound, or to specialist record labels compiled to meet the rising demands of the market. Through these contrasting examples, the chapter historicizes the emergence of “world music” as a marketing genre and subject of scholarly inquiry.

This chapter covers three areas largely ignored by scholars concerning revues: music, dance styles, and scenic effects. The role of the music coordinator and lead composer for each Passing Show (a role usually filled by Sigmund Romberg) is examined, with a look at contracts and job requirements. The roles of other employees, such as orchestrators Frank Saddler, arranger Robert Russell Bennett, and conductor Oscar Radin, are considered. The use of dance in all its forms—ballet, popular, and eccentric styles—is included. The chapter considers specific dance routines, their placement in the revues, and their content, which could often be controversial. The newest fads such as the tango, the hula, and the shimmy are mentioned. Also explored is the placement and deployment of scenic effects within the context of The Passing Shows, the use of new technologies, and how they were made.