Singing in Misery: Jazz and Popular Music in Spanish Post-War Comedies

Abstract

After the Civil War (1936–1939) and the commencement of the Franco dictatorship, the debate about the Spanishness of the national film industry was consolidated in the criticism and writings of the period. Post-Civil War Spanish film production was more inclined towards comedies. Within this genre we can distinguish between two very different kinds: on one hand, films of a markedly Spanish nature, or which placed particular emphasis on traits of national identity, commonly known as “españoladas”; and on the other, comedies based on models imported from the United States, featuring the rich bourgeoisie and aristocrats in which affairs and love stories were frequent. These films presented aristocratic and upper-middle class characters in a cosmopolitan urban setting a long way from the social reality of post-war Spain. The songs of these films take us to the world of North American jazz dominated by big-band swing. When analysing the music and songs of the modern post-war comedies, there is an overall prevalence of 1940s international popular jazz: dances such as the foxtrot and styles such as swing and hot. The main objective of this proposal is therefore to evaluate the significance of modern popular music in post-war comedies in order to understand how it fitted into a dictatorial regime with conservative, nationalist, and traditionalist ideological policies.