L’histoire des brass bands britanniques dans la deuxième moitié du xxe siècle est souvent mise en avant comme le symbole d’une culture ouvrière en déclin, progressivement avalée par les forces de la culture de masse et le succès d’autres types de musiques populaires comme le rock’n’roll. Le cas des brass bands miniers montre que si ce genre musical est de plus en plus marginalisé entre 1945 et le milieu des 1970, processus qui n’est que l’intensification d’un phénomène amorcé dans l’entre-deux-guerres, son évolution est complexe. L’utilisation de sources variées et inédites, et en particulier de sources orales, met en lumière des phénomènes de complémentarité, de continuité et d’adaptation. Ce travail vise ainsi à penser la complexité de l’articulation entre les notions de culture ouvrière, culture populaire et culture de masse et à contribuer au dialogue entre l’histoire sociale et les popular music studies.
- consumérisme / culture de masse
- jeunes / jeunesse
- pratiques / usages sociaux
- enquête / terrain / observation participante
- orchestre / big band / fanfare
- classe sociale
- ouvriers
Working-class Cultures and Popular Music in Great Britain: The Case of Brass Bands in British Coalfields From 1945 to mid-1970’s
The history of British brass bands in the second half of the 20 th century is often portrayed as the symbol of a declining working-class culture swallowed by mass culture and other types of popular music like rock’n’roll. The case of brass bands in British coalfields shows that if this musical genre became more and more marginalized between 1945 and the mid-1970s, this process was ongoing since the interwar years and its unfolding was very complex. The use of new and varied material—and especially oral history—highlights the importance of complementarities and continuities between genres of popular music and adaptation capacities from brass bands. The aim of this paper is ultimately to refine our understanding of the relationship between the notions of working-class culture, popular culture and mass culture and to foster the discussion between social history and popular music studies.
- youth
- consumerism / mass culture
- practices / uses (social)
- investigation / fieldwork / participant observation
- orchestra / brass / big band
- class
- workers
