"Atomic Tunes" by Joanna Smolko and Tim Smolko receives Certificate of Merit

Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music (Indiana University Press, 2021) by Dr. Joanna Smolko (Instructor, Musicology and Ethnomusicology, HHSOM) and School of Music alumnus Tim Smolko (MA in Musicology 2011) has won a Certificate of Merit in the 2022 Association for Recorded Sound Collections' Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research in Rock and Popular Music. This book is the first large-scale survey of American and British popular music's role in articulating and shaping viewpoints on Cold War issues such as nuclear weapons, fear of the Soviet Union, the proxy wars, civil defense, bomb shelters, espionage, McCarthyism, Berlin Wall, and glasnost.

The awards will be presented at a ceremony during ARSC’s annual conference, which will be held in Pittsburgh on May 17-20, 2023. Additional information about the ARSC Awards for Excellence can be found at www.arsc-audio.org/awards.

Begun in 1991, the ARSC Awards are given to authors of books, articles or recording liner notes to recognize those publishing the very best work today in recorded sound research. In giving these awards, ARSC recognizes the contributions of these individuals and aims to encourage others to emulate their high standards and to promote readership of their work. Awards are presented annually in each category for best history and best discography, and others may be acknowledged with Certificates of Merit. Awards are presented to both the authors and publishers of winning publications.

Winners are chosen by a committee consisting of three elected judges representing specific fields of study, two judges-at-large, the review editor of the ARSC Journal, and the President or past President of ARSC or their designee. The 2022 ARSC Awards Committee consists of the following:

Rob Bamberger (Jazz Music Judge); Dennis D. Rooney (Classical Music Judge); Matthew Barton (Popular Music Judge); Cary Ginell (Judge-At-Large); Richard Spottswood (Judge-at- Large); James Farrington (Book Review Editor, ARSC Journal); Cece Otto (ARSC president’s designee); and Roberta Freund Schwartz (Awards Committee Chair).

The 2022 Awards for Excellence honor books published in 2021.