{"title":"Modernism and Record Covers: Raising the Status of Jazz in Sweden","authors":"Mischa van Kan","doi":"10.1177/17499755211052363","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"By introducing a wider understanding of the discourse of modernism at the time that record covers were introduced, this article investigates record covers as a means through which various actors in the Swedish jazz scene connected jazz with modernist art forms. In the 1950s, specific designs for record sleeves became integrated into the ways in which jazz was mediated in Sweden, which coincided with wider debates about whether jazz could be seen as an art form. The main question of this article is: How did the artwork on record covers influence the acceptance of jazz as an art form in Sweden? In responding to this question, the article aims to demonstrate that, in addition to written discourse, visual objects – in this case record covers – were of great importance to the rising status of jazz in Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s. More broadly, I argue that the visual elements in music cultures can be just as important, if not more so, than written forms of discourse, for negotiating the social status of music.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"16 1","pages":"165 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cultural Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755211052363","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
By introducing a wider understanding of the discourse of modernism at the time that record covers were introduced, this article investigates record covers as a means through which various actors in the Swedish jazz scene connected jazz with modernist art forms. In the 1950s, specific designs for record sleeves became integrated into the ways in which jazz was mediated in Sweden, which coincided with wider debates about whether jazz could be seen as an art form. The main question of this article is: How did the artwork on record covers influence the acceptance of jazz as an art form in Sweden? In responding to this question, the article aims to demonstrate that, in addition to written discourse, visual objects – in this case record covers – were of great importance to the rising status of jazz in Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s. More broadly, I argue that the visual elements in music cultures can be just as important, if not more so, than written forms of discourse, for negotiating the social status of music.
期刊介绍:
Cultural Sociology publishes empirically oriented, theoretically sophisticated, methodologically rigorous papers, which explore from a broad set of sociological perspectives a diverse range of socio-cultural forces, phenomena, institutions and contexts. The objective of Cultural Sociology is to publish original articles which advance the field of cultural sociology and the sociology of culture. The journal seeks to consolidate, develop and promote the arena of sociological understandings of culture, and is intended to be pivotal in defining both what this arena is like currently and what it could become in the future. Cultural Sociology will publish innovative, sociologically-informed work concerned with cultural processes and artefacts, broadly defined.