Saturday, November 12, 2022 | 2:00 P.M. to 3:30 P.M. | Kirkwood Library | Free of charge!
6000 Kirkwood Highway, Wilmington, DE 19808
Musical life in Shanghai at the end of the 1930s was extremely diverse, with popular music dominating. This multimedia lecture focuses on the question of how the Nazi refugees integrated themselves into the entertainment venues of the city after 1938. Great contrasts become apparent in relation to the topographical distribution of musicians in the city and their repertoire. Some musicians adapted to the conditions in the long-established cafés, nightclubs, and ballrooms in the city center. They changed their repertoires and began to play American as well as Chinese swing music, which were popular in the so-called “Paris of the East” of the 1930s. Other musicians were unable to adapt in this way. Instead, these musicians took the opportunity to present their traditional repertoire of light music (“Unterhaltungsmusik”) in the bars and restaurants in the Hongkou district, where most of the refugees settled and which quickly acquired the reputation of a “Little Vienna,” or respectively, “Little Berlin”. The options were therefore very different and ranged from adaptation to demarcation.
About Dr. Fetthauaer & SSER
Dr. Sophie Fetthauer is a scholar of musicology from the University of Hamburg, Germany, who has researched and authored numerous publications on music and musical life in the Third Reich with a special focus on Jewish musicians in exile in Shanghai during World War II. As part of the University of Delaware’s Shanghai Sonatas Educational Residency, Dr. Fetthauer will share her research through a series of multimedia presentations in November 2022 that will highlight various aspects of life in the Shanghai Jewish Ghetto through the lens of music. The lectures, which will be supplemented by illustrations and musical examples, will each last 60 minutes, plus 30 minutes of discussion. Topics will include options of integration for popular musicians in Shanghai Exile; the Jewish refugees’ relationship to “Chinese Music;” and Jewish Cantors in Shanghai.
