"The Yanks Are Coming" (Eventually): Hearing America Change, 1914-1919
September 26, 2018, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Nationally-syndicated radio show host Michael Lasser will present the first lecture of the Geneva Historical Society’s Fall Lecture Series on Wednesday, September 26, 2018. The program, “'The Yanks Are Coming' (Eventually): Hearing America Change, 1914-1919,” will be held at the Geneva History Museum at 7 p.m.
In conjunction with the Geneva Historical Society's exhibit, A Changing World: Geneva and World War I, Mr. Lasser will speak about the songs Americans enjoyed during this war that ended a century ago. The songs of the First World War reveal the attitudes, values, and beliefs of their time, especially since it was America's most musical war. They trace the changes in American attitudes from “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier” in 1914 to “Over There” in 1917 to “How Ya’ Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm” in 1919.
For more than 35 years, Michael Lasser has spoken about popular music as social history — about songs and the America they reflect — at museums and universities, bringing popular music to bear on American history in illuminating ways. Mr. Lasser is a lecturer, writer, broadcaster, and critic. He is the co-author of America’s Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley, and the author of America’s Songs II: From the 1890s to the Post-War Years. His nationally syndicated public radio show, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, has been on the air since 1980 and won a 1994 Peabody Award. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he is the former theater critic for The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, and speaks often at museums and universities around the country. In 2010, he was named a Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Rollins College. The University of Rochester Press will publish his newest book, City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950.
This lecture is supported in part by the Samuel B. Williams fund for programs in the Humanities and is free and open to the public.
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