American Academy of Political and Social Science "The Times They Are A-Changin'": The Music of Protest Author(s): Robert A. Rosenstone Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 382, Protest in the Sixties (Mar., 1969), pp. 131-144 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1037121 . Accessed: 22/09/2011 16:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Inc. and American Academy of Political and Social Science are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. http://www.jstor.org "The Times They Are A-Changin"' The Music of Protest* By ROBERTA. ROSENSTONE ABSTRACT: Once a medium of vapid love lyrics, popular music in the 1960's has taken on a new seriousness. In the words of popular songs, young musicians have begun to express their alienation from and disdain for American institutions and mores. Part of this has taken the form of traditional attacks on war and intolerance. More significant, however, have been criticisms of the quality of life in an affluentsociety. In their music, youth have worried about such things as the impact of technology on man, the confused state of American sexual practices, and the repressive nature of supposedly democratic institutions. Affirming a strong faith in the freedom of the individual, song writers have turned their backs on pragmatic reality and have sought freedom in a transcendentalexploration of man's internal reality. Part of this has been done with "mind-expandingdrugs," and many songs have urged listeners on to the use of hallucinogens. For youth, music has come to serve the function of helping to define and codify the standards of their own subculture. And it has also put them in touch with more serious critiques of Americanlife made by the intel- lectual community. Robert A. Rosenstone, Ph.D., Pasadena, California, is Associate Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology. He has written articles on both the Radical Right and the Radical Left for such publications as the Journal of American History, Engineering and Science and the South Atlantic Quarterly. Dr. Rosenstone has also edited a volume entitled Protest from the Right (1968). He is author of a forthcoming study of the Lincoln Battalion, the Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War. * The author would like to thank his student and assistant Michael Henery for his research help on this paper, and even more for his aid in bridging the generation gap. 131 132 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT the beginning of the 1960's, no- Rock 'n Roll to its ultimate absurdity." body took popular music very seri- Three years later the Saturday Review ously. Adults only knew that rock n' roll, solemnly discussed a new Beatles record which had flooded the airwaves in the as a "highly ironic declaration of disaf- 1950's, had a strong beat and was fection" with modern society, while in terribly loud; it was generally believed 1968 Life devoted a whole, laudatory that teen-agers alone had thick enough section to "The New Rock," calling it eardrums,or insensitive enough souls, to music "that challenges the joys and ills enjoy it. Certainly, no critics thought of the . world." 2 Even in the intel- of a popular star like the writhing Elvis lectual community, popular music has Presley as being in any way a serious found warm friends. Such sober jour- artist. Such a teen-age idol was simply nals as The Listener, Columbia Univer- considered a manifestation of a sub- sity Forum, New American Review, and culture that the young happily and Commentary have sympathetically sur- inevitably outgrew-and, any parent veyed aspects of the "pop" scene, while would have added, the sooner the better. in The New York Review of Books-a Today, the view of popular music has kind of house organ for American drastically changed. Some parents may academia-composer Ned Rorem has still wonder about the "noise" that their declared that, at their best, the Beatles children listen to, but important seg- "compare with those composers from ments of American society have come to great eras of song: Monteverdi, Schu- recognize popular musicians as real mann, Poulenc."3 artists saying serious things.1 An indi- The reasons for such changes in atti- cation of this change can be seen in tude are not difficult to find: there is magazine attitudes. In 1964, the no doubt that popular music has become Saturday Evening Post derided the more complex, and at the same time Beatles-recognized giants of modern more serious, than it ever was before. popular music-as "corny," and Re- Musically, it has broken down some of porter claimed: "They have debased the old forms in which it was for a long time straight-jacketed. With a wide- 1 The definition of "popular music" being music has used in this article is a broad one. It en- ranging eclecticism, popular compasses a multitude of styles, including folk, 2Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 237, March folk-rock, acid-rock, hard-rock, and blues, to 21, 1964, p. 30; Reporter, Vol. 30, Feb. 27, give just a few names being used in the musi- 1964, p. 18; Saturday Review, Vol. 50, August cal world today. It does so because the old 19, 1967, p. 18; Life, Vol. 64, June 28, 1968, p. musical classifications have been totally 51. smashed and the forms now overlap in a way 3 "The Music of the Beatles," New York that makes meaningful distinction between Review of Books, Jan. 15, 1968, pp. 23-27. them impossible. Though not every group or See also "The New Music," The Listener, song referred to will have been popular in Vol. 78, August 3, 1967, pp. 129-130; Columbia the sense of selling a million records, all of University Forum (Fall 1967), pp. 16-22; them are part of a broad, variegated scene New American Review, Vol. 1 (April 1968), termed "pop." Some of the groups, like Buf- pp. 118-139; Ellen Willis, "The Sound of Bob falo Springfield, Strawberry Alarm Clock, or Dylan," Commentary, Vol. 44 (November the Byrds, have sold millions of records. Oth- 1967), pp. 71-80. Many of these articles deal ers, like the Fugs or Mothers of Invention, with English as well as American popular have never had a real hit, though they are groups, and, in fact, the music of the two played on radio stations allied to the "under- countries cannot, in any meaningful sense, be ground." Still, such groups do sell respectable separated. This article will only survey Amer- numbers of records and do perform regularly ican musical groups, though a look at English at teen-age concerts, and thus must be consid- music would reveal the prevalence of most of ered part of the "pop" scene. the themes explored here. THE MUSIC OF PROTEST 133 adapted to itself a bewildering variety folk songs were often serious, they were of musical traditions and instruments, hardly contemporary. Popular were from the classic Indian sitar to the most numbers about organizing unions, which recent electronic synthesizers favored by might date from the 1930's or the late composersof "serious"concert music. nineteenth century, or about the trials As the music has been revolutionized, of escaping Negro slaves, or celebrating so has the subject matter of the songs. the cause of the defeated Republicans In preceding decades, popular music was in the Spanish Civil War. Occasionally, almost exclusively about love, and, in there was something like "Talking A- the words of poet Thomas Gunn, "a Bomb Blues," but this was the rare very limited kind [of love], constituting exception rather than the rule." a sort of fag-end of the Petrarchan A change of focus came when per- tradition." The stories told in song formers began to write their own songs, were largely about lovers yearning for rather than relying on the traditional one another in some vaguely unreal folk repertoire. Chief among them, and world where nobody ever seemed to destined to become the best known, was work or get married. All this changed Bob Dylan. Consciously modeling him- in the 1960's. Suddenly, popular music self on that wandering minstrel of the began to deal with civil rights demon- 1930's, Woody Guthrie, Dylan began by strations and drug experiences, with writing songs that often had little to do interracial dating and war and explicit with the contemporary environment. sexual encounters, with, in short, the Rather, his early ballads like "Masters real world in which people live. For of War" echoed the leftist concerns and perhaps the first time, popular songs rhetoric of an earlier era. Yet, simul- became relevant to the lives of the teen- taneously, Dylan was beginning to write age audience that largely constitutes the songs like "Blowin' In the Wind," "A record-buying public. The success of Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," and "The some of these works prompted others to Times They Are A-Changin'," which be written, and the second half of the dealt with civil rights, nuclear war, and decade saw a full efflorescenceof such the changing world of youth that par- topical songs, written by young people ents and educators were not prepared to for their peers.