Music, Archives, and Colonial Encounter in the Cold War: A Case Study from British Guiana

How did musical activity intersect with imperialism and colonialism in the Cold War period (1948–89)? While musicologists have started to explore this question, most current research has focused on the role of the U.S.A. rather than declining European powers, and has frequently foregrounded those efforts at engagement and exchange that Christina Klein has termed ‘Cold War Orientalism’. With reference to the archival records of one Cold War colonial encounter in British Guiana, this article reveals a more disturbing strain of postwar cultural relations, one in which efforts at rapprochement were obstructed by imperial powers, and in which colonial cultural voices were denied or dismissed. At the same time, the article considers the surprising case of a British communist musician – Alan Bush – who, in spite of these barriers to encounter, was able to attempt a form of cultural hybridity in his opera The Sugar Reapers (1962–1965). Ultimately, this article demonstrates the importance of interpreting cultural artefacts like Bush’s opera as musical embodiments of complex colonial connections, and of exploring more deeply those Cold War encounters in which the imperial past was painfully present.