Music and Social Movements

1. Music and Social Movements Andrew Jamison

2. Based on:Music and Social Movements, byRon Eyerman and Andrew JamisonCambridge University Press, 1998

3. A Cognitive Approach to Social Movements • movements as spaces for collective creativity • where culture and politics can blend together • helping to form new ”structures of feeling” • songs provide a shared, or collective memory

4. The Mobilization of Tradition • ”movement artists” combine musical genres • a kind of hybridization process • leading to new forms of music-making • as well as changes in cultural values

5. On Movements and Music • From slavery to civil rights • the movements of black music • From populism to the folk revival • the making of an alternative culture • The movements of the sixties • the making of global popular music

6. The Movements of Black Music • The spirituals as a source of identity • The ”New Negro” movement: Paul Robeson • The emergence of jazz and blues • The songs of the Civil Rights movement

7. From the Sorrow Songs... ”They that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days – Sorrow Songs – for they were weary at heart...” W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

8. Shout All Over God’s Heaven (1926)

9. Water Boy (1926) Paul Robeson (1898-1976) Singer, actor, political activist

10. Cross Road Blues Robert Johnson, 1911-1938 From the country blues...

11. We Will Overcome (1950) We Shall Overcome (1963) ...to the Civil Rights Movement

12. The Making of an Alternative Culture • Populism and the labor movement • The popular front and the second world war • The popularization of folk music in the 1950s • The ”folk revival” of the 1960s

13. Joe Hill, by Phil Ochs (1964) The IWW, or the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read but once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over... Joe Hill, 1914

14. The Boll Weevil (1926) Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) Poet and collector The people is a myth, an abstraction. And what myth would you put in place of the people? And what abstraction would you exchange for this one? And when has creative man not toiled deep in myth? from The People, Yes

15. This Land is Your Land (1940) Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly: The Makers of a Tradition

16. House of the Rising Sun (1941) The Almanac Singers

17. Goodnight Irene (The Weavers,1955) The Weavers and Pete Seeger: keeping the traditions alive in the 1950s

18. Where Have All the Flowers Gone (Joan Baez, 1962) Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen,1964) The Folk Revival: ”Woody’s Children”

19. Only a Pawn in Their Game (Bob Dylan, 1963) ”I Have a Dream”: The Movements Meet Joan Baez and Bob Dylan at the March on Washington, 1963 ...and the folk revival of the sixties

20. Movements of the Sixties • Bob Dylan: from folk to rock • Janis and Jimi: the appropriation of the blues • Phil Ochs: keeping the music political • Woodstock: the end of the beginning

21. Blowin’ in the Wind (1963) Like a Rolling Stone (1965) Bob Dylan, from movement artist to cultural icon

22. Summertime, from Porgy and Bess, performed by Janis Joplin, 1968 The cultural appropriation of the blues

23. There But For Fortune (1964) Phil Ochs, 1941-1975 We’re trying to crystallize the thoughts of young people who have stopped accepting things the way they are. Phil Ochs, 1964

24. When I’m Gone, sung by Eric Andersen, 1999 The Memory Lives On...

25. I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill, by Earl Robinson, sung by Joan Baez at Woodstock, 1969