Contents -- Maps and Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Listening to Musical Progressivism -- Notes -- 1. Preludes of Reform: The Chicago Jubilee, Thomas "Summer Nights" Concerts, and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition -- Notes from the Embers: The Ghosts of Unheard Concerts Past -- Patrick Gilmore: The Civics of Aural Extremity -- Staging Greatness: The Chicago Jubilee -- Sounds of Ourselves: Neighborhood Music and Civic Participation -- Singing from the Same Songbook: Choral Groups and Singing Societies -- "The Music was Very Fine...and the Beer Very Good": Turner Concerts -- Tuning a City: The Thomas ''Summer Nights'' Concerts -- "Theodore Thomas" and the Masses -- "Summer Nights" and Democratic Desire: Charlotte Teller's The Cage -- Sound Consequences: The Problem of ''Democratic Spite'' -- Love and Theft: Claiming the Audience of Reform -- Democratic Ghosts and the Thomas Legacy -- The Best-Laid Plans: The World's Columbian Exposition, 1893 -- A "Full Illustration of Music": Thomas and the Music Bureau -- From "Theodorable" to Theodeplorable: Sacralization and Its Discontents -- Music Publics on the Midway -- Multiple Publics: Music on the Midway -- "After the Fair": The Ascent of Musical Progressivism -- Notes -- 2. Battle for the Baton: Ceremonial Parks and the Landscape of Musical Reform, 1869-1904 -- "No Place for Social Distinctions": The Garfield Park Incident in Context -- Aural Arcadias: Music and Nineteenth-Century Park Design -- Putting on Airs: Early Park Concerts -- "It Will Not Be Much Used by the Citizens": Geographies of Privilege in the South Parks -- "The Eclat of the Scene": The Musical Crowd in Lincoln Park -- Musical Publics: Neighborhood Variation and Reform from Below -- Calling the Tune: Ragtime in the Ceremonial Parks -- Johnny Hand versus the "Ragtime Strength".

Settling the "Long-Debated Question": The 1901 Chicago American Concert Contest -- Resuscitating Uplift in Lincoln Park -- "No Demand for 'Catch' Music": Reclaiming Concert History -- Notes -- 3. I Was Improvising Right from the Start: Musical Progressivism at Hull House, 1889-1919 -- Dreams of Harmony: The Education of Jane Addams -- The Genealogy of Musical Progressivism -- Breaking the Ice: The First Sunday Concerts -- "Some Hours They Sit 'Neath Music's Spell": Eleanor Smith and the Hull House Music School -- "Not from the Avenues, but from the Alleys": William L. Tomlins, Children's Choruses, and the ''Moral Forces'' of Music -- "Apparently the Workers are not Yet Ready to Sing": Activism and Ambivalence -- Effacing the Music: Countering Local Music Culture -- "We are Only Beginning to Understand What Might be Done": Learning from the Marketplace of Recreation -- Where Have You Gone, David Quixano? -- Notes -- 4. Come Over Here and Listen to the Music: Municipal Power and Local Authority in the Field House Parks, 1903-1919 -- Fanfare for the Common People: The Rise of the Field House Park -- Domesticating the Sounds of Reform -- 'The Standard . . . is Unimpeachable'': Band Concerts at the Field House Parks -- In the Footsteps of the Competition: Field House Dances -- Self-Government and Self-Control: South Park Dances -- Notes -- 5. Music of the People is Music of the World: The Civic Music Association and the Racial Challenges of World War I and Its Aftermath, 1912-1919 -- The Civic Music Association: Redefining the ''Music of the People'' -- Musical Self-Determination at Dvorak Park -- "Who am I?": Elusive Reform Subjects -- World War I and Issues of Cultural Dissonance -- ''Musical Americanism'' and the CMA -- Good-Bye Bach and Good Morning Mr. Zip. Zip, Zip: Community Singing in Chicago.

"Oh Darkies! How My Heart Grows Weary": The Racialized Nostalgia of Home Front Mobilization -- The Strange Career of Race in the Field House Parks -- The Cultural Geography of Segregation on the South Side -- A Walk in the Park: Racial Violence and Localism -- Disavowing Racial Reform: Field House Supervisors after 1919 -- Notes -- 6. They Whirl Off the Edges of a Decent Life: Unmasking Difference at the Dance, 1904-1933 -- Seeds of the Dance Craze: Social Dancing in Everyday Life -- By Invitation Only: Traditional Ballroom Dancing in Chicago -- "The Wickedest City in the World": The Moral Challenges of Commercial Dancing -- Making the Ball: The ''Beer Permit'' Dance Controversy -- "About a Dance You Can Say the Same as About Mushrooms": Rogue Dances and Challenges to Authority -- Redefining Recreation Reform: The JPA and the Vice Commission of Chicago -- "Neither a Professional nor an Outcast": Sex, Gender, and Performance Culture in Cabarets -- "Even the Waiters...Are Shimmying": The JPA Discovers the Sights and Sounds of Jazz -- Black-and-Tan Cabarets: Music and Difference -- ''Butchers and Barbers and rats from the Harbors'': Taxi-Dance Halls -- ''The Din Becomes Terrific'': Music at Taxi-Dance Halls -- Dolling Up: Parodies of Whiteness, Gender, Race, and Sex in Taxi-Dance Halls -- Beyond ''Giddy Young Girls'': Toeing the Color Line -- The Customer is Always White: Exercising Male Power -- ''A Young White American Who Likes Clean Dancing'': Commercial Recreation and Status Inversion -- Notes -- 7. Sounds of Whiteness: Urban Subcultures, Race, and the Public Interest on Chicago Airwaves, 1921-1935 -- Aural Excursions Across the Color Line: Themes of Presence and Absence -- All in the Family: Race and On-Air Community -- Commercial Competition and the Difference of Localism -- Federal Regulation and "Reform" in the Public Interest -- Notes.

8. Sound Americans: Echoes of Reform from the 1930's to the Present -- Nationalizing Musical Progressive Ideology: The Federal Music Project -- Swinging Patriotism: Musical Civics in World War II and After -- Granting Music Reform: Private Philanthropies and Public Needs -- Postindustrialization and Civic Corrosion in Chicago -- The ''Reagan Revolution,'' the Arts, and the Civic Realm -- Pissing Contests: Culture Wars and the NEA -- Perfect Pitch: Music, Consumerism, and Postindustrial Public Culture -- ''Waltz of Hands'': The Ballad of Jane and Tupac -- Notes -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A-B -- C -- D -- E-G -- H-I -- J-M -- N-O -- P-R -- S -- T-W -- Y-Z.