Music for the People (Essay Sample)

Was The BBC In The 1920s To 1930s A Force For Democratising Culture And For Reinforcing Old Cultural Hierarchies?
Name
Institution
Introduction
Entertainment convoluted the cultural hierarchy during the interwar in Britain that privileged the national culture and arts. While state agencies and cultural elites invested in safeguarding their salience in the capital, leisure and entertainment was increasingly becoming accepted among the rising urban classes. Entertainment, mainly trending from abroad, altered not only how Britain’s contributed in the city, but also how they understood culture. The essay will focus mainly on the role, and challenges faced by BBC during its mission of broadcasting. The essay will also explain more about how BBC through its broadcasting democratised culture and how it reinforced old cultural hierarchies. The essay will illustrate how BBC through its broadcasting unified the public and harmonized everybody.
Radio broadcasting in Britain’s dates back to 1920 through the Marconi experimental station located in Writtle, Essex called 2MT. The station was awarded full responsibilities to transmit its test transmission for a period of half an hour every week. On 1922 May, the Marconi Company entered into talks with manufacturers of wireless sets and other interested institutions to come up with more broadcasting stations across the country under a joint organization dubbed the BBC. Since its incorporation to 1924, BBC had been transmitting local programmes via medium waves, which were associated with low power transmitters recognized around the country. Peter steered the experimental research, where they came up with a 25kW transmitter in July 1925, which was able to transmit via long wave hence improved the coverage around the country (Eckersley, 1998).
The social history regarding popular music of the early 20th century is not an easy matter. It covers a diverse, large and scattered enquiry field. It spans across development in radio, cinema, and gramophone. Popular music was a persistent and powerful influence towards the life of millions during the interwar in Britain. Gramophone was widely used during interwar, but cinema and radio had vital effects towards the popular music in Britain. The cinema and the radio mainly depended on music for their appeal (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991). These two technologies had the power to convey access to music and entertainment to all, but mainly to the poorest members of the community, widening the quality and range of musical entertainment to the majority beyond the gramophone. Additionally, they were meant to transform the world in which musicians and music operated, increasing the commoditisation of the popular music that was started by the gramophone.
BBC dominated the radio industry, although it was not the only provider. Though commercial broadcasting was prohibited, advertisers and entrepreneurs circumvented restrictions by setting up broadcasts from commercial stations that had signals, which could be established in Britain. These stations were run mainly for making profit and advertisers knew that trendy music led to the sale of products. By concentrating on an area where BBC was identified to be scarce, the commercial radio broadcasters set up a reputation for promotion of popular music (Nott, 2002). The output associated with these stations was previously given scant concentration from historians, but it had a great importance towards the popular music industry. Another aspect that was greatly ignored was the British film industry’s productivity of musical films. Mainly negligible aesthetic worth, British musical films were, however, a tremendously vital element of British popular culture in the interwar period.
Urban entertainment during the nineteenth century Britain was limited in style, catering primarily men and the upcoming bourgeoisie and had a vital function in the city’s cultural politics. Kafans and hotels intended for travellers later transformed to urban leisure. Kafans and hotels were later changed to entrainment and business space, thus shifting ideas regarding public pleasures and private affairs. In the twentieth century, the growth of entertainment houses and sports grew by double as entertainment was used as a cultural exchange platform. Interwar entertainment significantly expanded from slender offering of makeshift Kafana stages, Orpheum theatres and circuses, but there was merely more of it in the city.
New technology made it possible for the diversification of entertainment like electricity and lights made it more impressive and magazines and newspapers printed with extended frequency, increased circulations and more current fashion, news, and trends and the cheaper production of musical scores, images and novels increased the urban entertainment boundaries to homes and intricate the notions of private and public. Most entertainment that was produced and consumed in Britain during the interwar years signified foreign practices and styles (Eckersley, 1998). The global entertainment network led to the increase in variety and quantity of the local singers and comedians.
Urban entertainment was defined by its transcendence of gender, class, and age, though these boundaries persisted, the urban class’s exceptional access to entertainment during interwar in Britain. Similar to other industrializing cities, Britain’s labour force started growing after the First World War and with that came leisure, which signified the autonomy and choice brought about by a paycheck. While style, price, and taste preserved some of the social boundaries, Britain’s entertainment was theoretically accessible to anyone who possessed some income. Interwar Britain’s were slowly developing a consumer perception, and they practiced expenditure as a means of social democratization so as to subvert social hierarchies, access urban spaces, and experience pleasure. Britain’s cultural leaders refused the consumption of culture on the basis that it stripped authenticity of culture and commercialized arts (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991).
James Nott in his book “Music for the people” offers tremendous insight in regards to the BBC role regulation of the broadcasting of popular music in the period of interwar until the Second World War end. The novel continues and draws some of its information regarding BBC from its greatest critics, the weekly “melody maker magazine”. The essay will also indicate the various challenges that BBC encountered while providing appropriate soundtrack during war. Being a vital institution of the British life, BBC offered news coverage and different forms of entertainment to more than eighty percent of Briton. BBC did not undermine that responsibility as it assumed the responsibility of unifying the British nation, with music purely for functional purposes of being a source of entertainment that led to the motivation of people in overseas and on the homefront keep with war efforts. The interwar was dubbed the “people’s war”, and everybody had a vital part to act on throughout the second world war, despite it facing conscription call or working long hours in factories and the BBC had the hard task of engaging the masses (2002).
Using the BBC perspective to view the war, we are able to derive valuable insights regarding the Second World War Britain and the support offered by popular music towards the nation’s effort to victory. BBC used the phrase “victory through harmony” as a way to request the people to end the war. BBC was a central and chief British media, and it assumed a vital role in the promotion of national unity throughout the war. James continues to state that there were effects associated with BBC as a result of its programming decisions and he argues that the wartime approach BBC took towards popular music never catered for the majority, but rather it catered for the voices diversity dialogue, including the press, listeners, the music industry, and government authorities (Hajkowski, 2010).
During the 1920-1930, there was a great transformation associated with BBC. BBC operated on a set of firm standards, and it became the sole provider of broadcasting programs for Britain after its establishment in 1922. In 1927, BBC was awarded the royal charter and given the mandate to broadcast to the people, but be educative, informative, and entertain. BBC aimed to be the news provider, entertainment and programming, which would be educational and uplifting. BBC faced many challenges including modernity, mass culture, growing competition from continental stations and popular music. BBC conceptualized its audience with its concern for cultural uplift ideologies, music appreciation advocacy, and promotion of active listening. BBC evidently reinforced and defined a sense of hierarchy among music via broadcasting lens, rating the significance of various accepted music genres (Scannell & Cardiff, 1991).
Classical music was favoured over the other music types like the American music, which was attributed by BBC as degrading since it was a sign indicating the cultural uplift in Britain. BBC was attributed by the government to be a way of uniting the nation, maintain morale, and inform its people. During the 1934, there were closures of cinemas and theatres and blackouts after the deceleration of war on September 3rd that year. Later after the war declined, BBC implemented the music while you work program. BBC used this program to implement rules associated with broadcasting, interruption free, non-vocal, stating appropriate music as rhythmic as a way of overcoming the noises associated with factories workshop.
Talks that span during the 1920s included how to prune fruits or to catch a tiger, but talks that span during 1930 were more ambitious. The ambitiousness experienced ...