Jacobs faculty lectures for library series

Classic musical numbers, Chicago blues and rural folk music filled the auditorium at the Monroe County Public Library Monday night during the panel discussion titled “Dealing with Hard Times: Popular Music During the Depression.”

Jacobs faculty members Constance Cook Glen, Andrew Hollinden and Glenn Gass lectured as part of the IU Library series “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”, which continues through the end of October. All three included music from the Depression era, as well as music that was influenced and had influence during the time period.

“Some songs depict a very painful existence,” Cook Glen said.

Cook Glen lectured about musicals and film from the Depression era. She provided the audience with cuts of performances from famous 1920s musicians, who had great influence during the Broadway scene in the next decade.

“The music of the ‘20s so directly connected to the music of the ‘30s,” Cook Glen said.

While many people tend to associate sad songs with the Depression, she said there were several uplifting songs from the era to give the country hope in a time of despair.

“There’s so much in them that’s glamorous and escapist,” Cook Glen said.

Hollinden went on to lecture about blues music from the Depression era.

“Nobody really knows when the blues was born,” he said. “Most assume the blues came directly from slavery.”

Hollinden talked about how the blues gained popularity in the 1920s because of Bessie Smith and other similar singers. He added that the blues changed as more musicians started recording with microphones and electricity.

“Records became more soulful, bluesy, rural sounding,” Hollinden said.

Gass covered the folk music portion, mainly speaking about rural folk music legend Woody Guthrie, whose songs have been popularized by Bob Dylan. Dylan, along with his generation, related to the folk music of the Depression era because of the messages songwriters made, Gass said.

“It was a road map for generations later,” he said.

Gass later mentioned how the longing to question the government reemerged in the Cold War and McCarthy era, which led to the popularity of folk music from the Depression.

“There was real nostalgia for folk music in the ‘50s,” Gass said.

He explained that these folk songs were questioning government and capitalism back in the ‘30s.

“This was really radical music,” Gass said. “There’s this sense of, ‘Okay, who’s on whose side?’”