The Musicians Union Archive includes a full set of the various journals, reports and bulletins produced by the union over the years for its members. These publications provided information relating to union activity and reported on the major issues affecting musicians. From 1921 – 1931 the union produced the Musicians Journal. This publication is notable for the cartoons which featured in many of its issues, these images both entertaining the journal’s readers and illustrating many of the threats to the livelihoods of musicians in the period.
The first cartoons, which begin to appear in 1923, reflect the working conditions of many of the union’s members with amusing scenes depicting such common complaints as overcrowding in orchestra pits. The benefits of union membership begin to be stressed in the aftermath of the General Strike of 1926 with a number of cartoons illustrating the valuable role played by the union and urging members to renew their (increased) subscriptions.
Towards the end of the decade technological advances in film and sound presented a major threat to musicians employed in cinemas and the Journal includes a series of cartoons which reflect the concerns felt by its members by these new developments. A number of these cartoons also illustrate the views expressed in a number of journal articles that the ‘talkies’ were a passing fad. Facing the new decade of the 1930s the fears of an uncertain technological future were summed up in the Journal in this striking image from the January 1930 issue…
