Hugo Keesing collection on music and World War I

[See finding aid for the Hugo Keesing collection on popular music and culture for information on Hugo Keesing]

World War I was an international conflict fought between 1914 and 1918. One of the largest wars in history, it was fought by two opposing alliances: the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), and the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States). The war was initiated in 1914 with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Austria-Hungary presented an ultimatum to Serbia, triggering a series of diplomatic conflicts that resulted in the major powers declaring war on one another within a month.

The United States was not initially involved in the conflict; President Woodrow Wilson maintained a policy of neutrality, while continuing trade relations with European countries on both sides. But American neutrality was challenged in 1915 when Germany, in an act of unrestricted submarine warfare, sunk the British cruise liner Lusitania, killing hundreds of American passengers. This incident swayed American public opinion against Germany, and after the sinking of three more U.S. merchant ships in 1917, President Wilson declared war. The military and economic support that the United States provided to the Allied Powers facilitated Germany’s defeat in 1918.

On the home front, every aspect of American life was mobilized toward producing soldiers, supplies, food, and ammunitions for the war effort. A draft was issued to ensure sufficient manpower in the Armed Forces. Public forms of expression were closely monitored by way of the Sedition Act, which criminalized speech or writing that was considered disloyal or unpatriotic. New jobs were created in munitions factories, filled mostly by women. Propaganda campaigns were launched encouraging citizens to buy Liberty bonds, or war bonds to support the Allies.

World War I coincided with the peak of the United States sheet music publishing industry. Centralized in New York on a street commonly known as “Tin Pan Alley,” the sheet music industry published vaudeville tunes, pop songs, dance numbers, and jazz and blues ballads. The sheet music in this collection, most of which was produced in New York, express various aspects of wartime sentiment: war bond propaganda, exultation of American values such as liberty and democracy, soldiers’ longing to return home, and sweetheart songs dedicated to enlisted men. This music, collected by popular culture scholar and former American Studies professor Hugo Keesing, provides insight into both musical and wartime life in the early-twentieth-century United States.