[mplpost] Tangential Topic

[John Coleman]

Are we talking Latin dancers or Morris dancers?? 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <gene@wilburn.ca>
To: <maplepost@icomm.ca>
Sent: Sunday, November 11, 2001 10:07 AM
Subject: [mplpost] Tangential Topic


> I caught this post on an e-books list I subscribe to. It's an interesting
> take on how Latin dance music, rock'n'roll, and country/western came to
> become popular on the airwaves. I wondered if there was a Canadian
> parallel to this story. Is there a folk music tie-in (US or Canada)?
> 
> Gene
> 
> Forwarded message:
> 
> Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 11:08:29 -0500
> From: "Daniel P. B. Smith" <dpbsmith@world.std.com>
> Subject: Re: [TAN] How Rock 'n' Roll displaced Tin Pan Alley
> 
> There was a piece on NPR last week that interested me very much.  I had
> known the bare facts but hadn't put them together.  The story goes
> something like this.  In the twenties and thirties, songwriters, very
> notably including Irving Berlin, got together and formed ASCAP.  And
> negotiated licensing terms with the emerging radio stations so that the
> stations could play records and the composers, artists, etc. could get
> paid.  These were the halcyon days of the likes of Gershwin, Cole
> Porter, Rodgers and Hart, when song lyrics were sophisticated,
> metrically precise, and had tricky internal rhymes.  Nobody would ever
> dare rhyme a singular with a plural...
> 
> In 1941, ASCAP raised their license fees too high, the broadcasts balked
> and refused to pay them, and for a year or so played mostly public
> domain material.  References to the period always mention Stephen Foster
> songs as ruling the airwaves.
> 
> The broadcasters formed their own group, BMI.  Seemingly, though, ASCAP
> had all the good music.
> 
> The interesting point is that BMI was forced to look elsewhere, and this
> was the impetus that led to a lot of formerly marginalized material
> entering the mainstream.  
> 
> Here I'd always thought that the sudden popularity of Latin dances in
> the forties, and the ascent of rhythm-and-blues and country/western in
> the fifties was just an inexplicable shift in public taste.  It wasn't. 
> It was a direct result of BMI being cut off from the traditional New
> York/Jewish/musical comedy material and being forced to search
> elsewhere.  They introduced material out of desperation, and, wonder of
> wonders, it turned out that the public liked it.
> 
> Dunno what this has to do with indie eBook houses and traditional
> publishers, but I thought it was interesting.  
> 
> 
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