| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Derek Vaillant. Sounds of Reform: Progressivism and Music in Chicago, 1878–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2003. Pp. xiii, 401. Cloth $59.95, paper $19.95.
Derek Vaillant tackles a topic that has received less attention from historians than it deserves: the role of music in effecting social change. Popular music has been studied somewhat from this perspective, as has the place of music in certain movements, such as the workers movements of the 1930s or the protest songs of the 1960s, but Vaillant has in mind here a broader topic: the role of secular music of many different types as a weapon in Progressive reform. He focuses on Chicago, and on how music was used by various Progressive groups and organizations, in public spaces, especially city parks, and in a number of other venues, such as Hull House and the 1893 Columbia Exposition.	1
Progressive reformers were split on how to use music. Some advocated a Platonic, moral approach: educate and improve the masses by exposing them to the proper kind of music (often placed under the classical rubric). Others stressed a democratic approach: create civic awareness and solidarity among the masses by bringing them together for music that they preferred.	2
Prior to the 1920s, most reform activity occurred in park settings, and Vaillant traces the morphing concepts of public parks from the nineteenth-century vision of large, formal parks, centrally located, which attracted thousands throughout the city to Sunday concerts, to the creation of smaller parks in working-class neighborhoods where musical activities centered around field houses, thus providing an indoor site for performances. Use of the field houses themselves evolved over the years, as they became the locus of a number of experiments in musical venues and social reform.	3
Questions of ethnicity and race are woven through the study, as they inevitably must be when these factors defined neighborhoods themselves. Vaillant's most extensive analysis of this element occurs in the chapter "Unmasking Differences at the Dance," where he discusses different dance venues that sprang up during World War I and the 1920s, in particular the taxi-dance clubs where males paid women ten cents per dance. Taxi-dance clubs were strictly for men of color, but not African Americans, and employed only white women. Since the women were Eastern or Southern European, and the men Latino, Filipino, Chinese, or Greek, the stereotypical binary of African-American men and Nordic European women was not the reality; rather each group explored and negotiated complex roles involving race, ethnicity, and acculturation. In this fascinating chapter, Vaillant's analysis is sustained and nuanced and demonstrates how fluid and negotiated issues of identity and power could be.	4
The study does encounter two terminological problems. What exactly was musical Progressivism? Vaillant argues that "music served as a medium for the tendencies of the Progressive Era; these tendencies in turn redefined the centrality of music in expressing individual, group, and civic aspirations" (p. 4). As the book demonstrates, Vaillant seems to mean that Progressives used music in various settings to advance their political agenda. Sometimes music was central, as in the extensive program at Hull House; at other times it was necessary but incidental to the Progressive agenda, as were the dances sponsored by the Civic Music Administration, a group whose purpose was to provide a more wholesome venue for young people than commercial dance halls. The park concerts of the late nineteenth century engendered considerable musical debate, as Progressive reformers split between a Platonic and a democratic approach. The Platonic approach in the United States may be traced back to the Whig Republican ideal, and surfaced several times throughout the nineteenth century.	. . .

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