Search Results

This chapter explores the role of the trade union and the collecting agency in relation to music in cinemas though the “silent” period and on to the emergence of synchronized sound. A brief history of the Musician’s Union and its relationship with other unions is followed by an investigation of the union’s role in supporting cinema musicians, and its negotiations with the principal employers’ organization, the Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association. This is followed by an introduction to the Performing Right Society (PRS), the institution established by publishers and composers in 1914 to collect revenue for the public performance of their music. Here the vital role that cinemas played in the establishment and survival of the PRS during its infancy is highlighted, alongside the periodically difficult relationship between the Musicians’ Union and the PRS, in part due to the society’s classification system for the licensing of music in cinemas.

This chapter attempts to rescue an early American Jewish institution from historical oblivion—di rusishe progresiv muzikal yunyon no. 1 fun amerike (the Russian Progressive Musical Union No. 1 of America)—the first Jewish musicians' union in the United States and the missing link in the history of the migration of klezmer music and musicians from eastern Europe to the United States. The origins of this union reveal a great deal about the early effects of social, cultural, and political currents of urban America on this genre of eastern European Jewish music, and about the overall transformation of traditional Yiddish culture in the New World.

This chapter outlines the early history of the Amalgamated Musicians’ Union (AMU) and the work of its first General Secretary, Joseph Bevir (“Joe”) Williams. It illustrates the types of work undertaken by musicians in the last nineteenth and early twentieth century. Debates about whether musicians’ collective interests are best served by a trade union or a professional association are outlined. The key issues facing the Union in its early days are discussed including competition from military bands and European immigrant musicians, recruitment, strikes, the Union’s penchant for litigation, its efforts to communicate with members and its political lobbying and campaigning. The effect of the First World War on the AMU and musical employment is also outlineds.

This chapter outlines the AMU’s history immediately post 1918 and its moves towards merger with the National Orchestral Union of Professional Musicians (NOUPM) to form the Musician’s Union (MU) in 1921. It examines the resignation of Joe Williams and the problems faced by his successor as General Secretary, E.S.Teale and his successor, Fred Dambman. Changes within the music profession as musical tastes change are outlined. The advent of broadcasting is discussed and the BBC’s developing role as a key employer of musicians is highlighted. The development of the recording industry is discussed and the crisis in musical employment caused by the advent of the “talkies” in the cinema outlined. Problems caused for the Union by “alien” musicians working in the UK are noted.

This chapter outlines the history of musicians’ representative organisations before the formation of the Amalgamated Musicians’ Union in 1893. It traces developments from the fourteenth century to the late nineteenth, examining the various fraternities, brotherhood guilds and societies which were formed. Issues of protectionism, benevolence and organisation are raised. The moves towards a re trade unionism are outlined in the context of the growth of new unionism. The formation of the Amalgamated Musicians’ Union (AMU) and thee rival London Orchestral Association (LOA) are outlined.

The book begins with reflections on the Musicians’ Union 2015 conference and the some of the perennial themes which such events have addressed. It then outlines the sources used for the book including previous literature, archives and interviews. The book’s theoretical paradigm – that musicians are best thought of as particular sorts of workers is then outlined. We then address a number of key themes which recur in the book including technology, the music industries, musical tastes, competition and gender.

Among San Francisco's noisy political battles during the first half of the twentieth century, those involving labor were perhaps the most vicious—and certainly the most public. Like other union workers, the city's musicians included some of the nation's most vocal exponents for respectable pay, reasonable hours, and decent working conditions. During the Hadley years, the symphony management was able to hire and fire the entire orchestra between each concert set. During Hertz's early years, contracts for the players and for the conductor himself were rarely settled before the late spring, and were issued for only a year or two at a time. Musicians in casual employment experienced far worse exploitation from fly-by-night theater managers, who would sometimes skip town without paying hired orchestras, and from restaurant and club owners, who found creative ways to stiff their employees. The “musicians' protective unions” that sprouted throughout the country by the turn of the century aimed at curbing such abuses. San Francisco musicians were among the first to affiliate with the American Federation of Musicians: Local 6 was chartered on February 2, 1897.

This chapter introduces the Los Angeles Federal Music Project (FMP), which partially solved the unemployment problem of musicians in Los Angeles during the Great Depression, first describing the pre-FMP music programs in Los Angeles, which were strongly influenced by the musicians' union. It then studies the national leadership of the Federal Music and Theatre projects, in order to further understand their local implementation and the issues that these projects raised. Next, the chapter looks at the administration and organization of the FMP and the WPA Music Projects, describing the FMP's 1936 production of La Traviata, and finally introduces the “Society of Native American Composers.”

The history of American religions is overrun with intentional communities and religious utopian experiments, many of which have a strongly pedagogical and/or social critical dimension. Jazz has nurtured a number of significant counter-academies, community organizations, and experimental societies focused on musical and religious development simultaneously. This chapter examines several such endeavors—Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, St. Louis’s Black Artists Group, Los Angeles’s Union of God’s Musicians in Artists Ascension, the Church of John Coltrane, and Alice Coltrane’s ashram—in light of this long history of new religious movements and their alternate socialities. By examining and contextualizing the motivations of community members, we see how the disciplines of music-making are integral to (even coterminous with) the formation of new religious identities that contrast with those of an artless world.

This chapter focuses on the changes in the life of Kay Swift after she moved to New York City with her husband James Warburg. It explains that Swift re-enrolled in the Institute of Musical Art and decided to pursue the private activities of composition and performance instead of teaching piano. It also discusses the transformation in Swift's career and how the highbrow culture of classical music, ballet, and literature became tainted with the lowbrow thrills of Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, and Harlem. This chapter also mentions Swift's decision to join the Musician's Union.