John Mullen, The Show Must Go On (Routledge 2016)
A Marxist history of Music Hall during the war years, this work was originally published in French in 2012. Mullen is a Marxist historian and Professor of History at Rouen University. He has extensively written academically on popular culture in the 20th century and politically on Islamophobia and anti-capitalism.
Building on extensive research of trade press of the period and an enormous corpus of songs, Mullen studies Music Hall ‘from below’. There is no showbiz tittle-tattle in this study, but there are copious relevant facts illustrating what the songs say about the lives and fantasies of their audience.
Mullen critiques scholars who see Music Hall either as a ‘culture of consolation’ or as a commercial project to inculcate conservative ideas. Nor should it be understood as an unmediated vox populi, but rather as an ‘expression of working-class experience’.
Beginning with an analysis of the British entertainment industry, its economy and industrial relations, he shows that musicians and staff were part of Britain’s trade union movement, and while generally accepting the need to win the war, did not shy from strike action.
Two dynamics exerted pressure on the industry, the economic drive toward concentration of capital in the search for profits and the ideological drive to build respectability.
The rise of the revue format was not a tragic sign of the decline of the good old days, as some scholars have it, but rather a centralisation enabling economies of scale.
The drive to reassure moralistic organisations and licensing boards meant that ‘vulgarity’ was discouraged, and singers were limited to suggestive gestures and double entendres (e.g., ‘She’d Never Had Her Ticket Punched Before’).
A turn at the Music Hall, where a sing-along chorus was de rigueur, had to reach the widest audience possible, and quickly, before the next act came on. Interestingly, the format of narrative verses plus sing-along chorus allowed the presentation of conflicting ‘voices’ in the same song, the verses mocking the character and the chorus empathising with him. The overall tone was one of ‘working-class neighbourliness’.
There is a valuable chapter on men and women as reflected in song. Women begin to be praised for their wartime work (‘We Thank You, Women of England’, 1917) rather than for their patiently waiting at home (‘Women Who Wait’, Ernest Pike 1914). The occasional anti-women’s rights song was more likely to poke fun at the caricature suffragette rather than propound against women’s votes per se.
The study’s most important conclusion is the challenge to the popular myth of universal working-class jingoism. Support for the British Empire is given, but the emphasis is not pro-war but rather homesickness of soldiers or supporting love ones left at home. They sang more about ‘Mother’ than about ‘Empire’. ‘The majority of songs…were not about the war, and [those that were focused] instead on ‘comic and tragic aspects of the war experience.’ Soldiers’ songs demonstrated black humour in the face of horror and not ‘Tommy’s undaunted spirit’. ‘The general tone is one of dissent’ but almost never of mutiny.
This book is a must for musicologists and WWI buffs but also a fascinating read for any lover of history. Though links are provided for many of the songs to listen to online, there are unfortunately no photographs. It is to be hoped that future printings will consider illustration.
Susie Helme 