Project Details
Projekt
"Music field Europe" - Entangled franco-german history of popular music within transatlantic and inner-european dynamics of exchange during the long 1960s
Applicant
Professor Dr. Dietmar Hüser
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2018
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 285228642
"Music field Europe" aims at filling the white spot of a Franco-German history of popular music against the backdrop of inner-European as well as transatlantic dynamics of exchange during the long 1960s. It pays particular attention to the potential repercussions of transnational genres on sociocultural, political and cultural change and their relevance for processes of liberalisation, pluralisation and democratisation in several European countries. In addition, common narratives of the Americanisation of popular culture in the early post-war decades, especially the Americanisation of popular music in the long 1960s, can be told more openly and in a more differentiated form as narratives of Europeanisation or transatlantic integration. It will also be shown how popular music products crossed national borders to participate in the growing international music market of the time. With a view to France, the Federal Republic and the GDR, the Franco-German border region, and with consideration of Luxembourg and Belgium (as countries at the intersection of neighbouring cultural influences) this project proposes a twofold Franco-German history of popular musical genres by means of historical comparison, transfer and interdependence. “Music field Europe" starts from the assumption that players, phenomena and practices are subject to continuous dynamics and complex circulation: a prime example for this are various styles of music such as rock, beat and pop (which are difficult to delimit with any degree of precision), but also chanson, protest songs or "Schlager"-melodies of the long 1960s. The focus of this study will be the links and exchanges between journalists (press, trade journals, radio, television), producers, record publishers, artists, translators/writers, SACEM and its German counterpart, GEMA, private and public broadcasters and the governments of both countries study in order to bring to light the origins, development and mechanisms of the Franco-German music market during the long 1960s.
DFG Programme
Research Units
