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‘Adult Reactions to Popular Music and Inter-generational Relations in Britain, 1955–1975’ challenges stereotypes concerning a post-war ‘generation gap’, exacerbated by rebellion-inducing popular music styles, by demonstrating the considerable variety which frequently characterized adult responses to the music, whilst also highlighting that the impact of the music on inter-generational relations was more complex than is often assumed. [NP] Utilizing extensive primary evidence, from first-person accounts to newspapers, television programmes, surveys and archive collections, the book adopts a thematic approach, identifying three key arenas of British society in which adult responses to popular music, and the impact of such reactions upon relations between generations, seem particularly revealing and significant. The book examines in detail the place of popular music within family life and Christian churches and their engagement with popular music, particularly within youth clubs. It also explores ‘encounters’ between the worlds of traditional Variety entertainment and popular music while providing broader perspectives on this most dynamic and turbulent of periods.
Adult Responses to Popular Music presents its arguments in three main chapters. The first chapter covers how contemporary generational differences were navigated within nuclear families. Drawing primarily on oral history sources, the chapter argues that, while some parents held negative attitudes towards their children’s interest in contemporary popular music, this negativity was not always expressed as outright hostility. Chapter Two discusses how youth clubs and Christian institutions responded to, and largely accommodated, youth culture and popular music. Chapter Three contends with the decline of variety theatre in the 1950s and 1960s and how youth culture changed the face of contemporary leisure — Jacob Bloomfield; Zukunftskolleg/
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. ‘You Go Halfway, Don’t You?’ Family Life, Generational Identity and Popular Music; 2. ‘To Have Done Something’: The Christian Churches, Youth Clubs and Popular Music; 3. ‘You’ve Got to Be Able to Entertain People’: The Encounter between Popular Music and the Worlds of Variety and ‘Light Entertainment’; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.