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‘The practice of the twanged instruments’. Evaluating the amateur fretted instrument orchestra in British popular musical life, c.1890–c.1960

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2024

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Dave Russell*
Affiliation:
Independent scholar, Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK
*
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The British amateur fretted instrument orchestra was a product of the late Victorian and Edwardian banjo and mandolin ‘crazes’. Lacking deep community roots, early organisations were numerous but mainly short-lived. However, reconstituted as more broadly based clubs, they enjoyed a substantial revival from the later 1920s and played a major role in the preservation of fretted instrumental culture at a time when it was losing purchase in wider popular musical life. Clubs and orchestras provided a significant outlet for the musical talents of lower-middle and working-class amateur musicians and, although always ultimately male-dominated, gave greater opportunity to women than was the norm within amateur instrumental music-making. The charitable concerts that featured so strongly in their work provided an impressive record of public service. However, their instrumentation and middle-of-the-road repertoire rendered them increasingly unfashionable in the changed popular musical climate of the 1950s and entirely marginal by the end of the 1960s.

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Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , October 2023 , pp. 227 - 245
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The quotation in the title is taken from the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 21 May 1903.

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