NOTE: I expect to be available throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, particularly fr virtual lectures.
Barbara L. Tischler is the author of numerous articles on American culture, the 1960s, and aspects of the anti–Vietnam War movement, along with An American Music (1986), Sights on the Sixties (1992), and Muhammad Ali: A Man of Many Voices (2015). She has also taught courses on the U.S. Constitution and U.S. history at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her most recent research and presentation interests include African-American history, the civil rights movement, and the discourse of enslaved people as a aspect of community, humanity, and resistance.
Americans have found myriad ways to assert the cultural independence and exceptional ism of their nation. Composers for the concert hall chose to quote folk and popular music in pieces that were intended too describe America in musical terms. In addition, composers in the 1920s and 30s asserted the "American" quality of their compositions by quoting jazz idioms, The presence of hip hop on Broadway is a continuation of the synthesis of popular and concert genres. This lecture explores varieties of American concert music whose creators strove to depict aspects of America's history and culture on stage.