Performing Tsarist Russia in New York (eBook)

By combining archival research with fieldwork and interviews with Russian émigrés of various generations and emigration waves, Performing Tsarist Russia in New York presents a close historical and ethnographic examination of music's potential as an aesthetic, discursive, and social space through which diasporans can engage with an idea of a mythologized homeland, and, in turn, the vital role played by music in the organization, development, and reception of Russia Abroad.

1. This book is a window into the intersection between Russian popular music and American popular culture in the early 20th century.

2. It sparks a new discussion on Russian émigré composers in the United States by looking at the influence of the First Wave Russian diaspora and their music up through the Post-soviet era. This study goes further than previous studies, which have usually stopped at the start of World War II.

3. Author Natalie Zelensky is an up-and-coming scholar who writes in a very accessible way and makes clear how relevant this topic is to current events regarding the relationship between the United States and Russia, and the role of immigrants in American society.

---

An examination of the popular music culture of the post-Bolshevik Russian emigration and the impact made by this group on American culture and politics.Performing Tsarist Russia in New York begins with a rich account of the musical evenings that took place in the Russian emigre enclave of Harlem in the 1920s and weaves through the world of Manhattan's Russian restaurants, Tin Pan Alley industry, Broadway productions, 1939 World's Fair, Soviet music distributors, postwar Russian parish musical life, and Cold War radio programming to close with today's Russian ball scene, exploring how the idea of Russia Abroad has taken shape through various spheres of music production in New York over the course of a century. Engaging in an analysis of musical styles, performance practice, sheet music cover art, the discourses surrounding this music, and the sonic, somatic, and social realms of dance, author Natalie K. Zelensky demonstrates the central role played by music in shaping and maintaining the Russian emigre diaspora over multiple generations as well as the fundamental paradox underlying this process: that music's sustaining power in this case rests on its proclivity to foster collective narratives of an idealized prerevolutionary Russia while often evolving stylistically to remain relevant to its makers, listeners, and dancers. By combining archival research with fieldwork and interviews with Russian emigres of various generations and emigration waves, Zelensky presents a close historical and ethnographic examination of music's potential as an aesthetic, discursive, and social space through which diasporans can engage with an idea of a mythologized homeland, and, in turn, the vital role played by music in the organization, development, and reception of Russia Abroad.