| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African American Culture between the World Wars. By Joel Dinerstein. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003. xiv, 415 pp. Cloth, $80.00, ISBN 1-55849-373-5. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 1-55849-383-2.)

Joel Dinerstein's lively, ambitious work posits the existence of a technology-driven aesthetic in 1930s African American culture. Dinerstein argues that the John Henry folktale and other 1800s precursors eventually yielded a "techno-dialogic" (p. 126) aesthetic, in which "the presence (or 'voice') of machinery became integral to the cultural production of African American storytellers, [tap and ballroom] dancers, blues singers, and jazz musicians" (ibid.). The swinging big band beat, the groove of jazz rhythm sections, the rapid-fire stylings of tap and ballroom dancers, and the fleet improvisations of solo instrumentalists taught 1930s America a "survival technology" (p. 22). White modernists had not mastered machine rhythms with such creative flair. Instead, Benny Goodman, Fred Astaire, and others borrowed or stole from the African American techno-dialogic and made it the foundation of lucrative popular arts for the mass U.S. audience: swing jazz, movie musicals, and such stage hits as Mike Todd's The Hot Mikado (the rage of the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair).

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