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The “voices of the ’60s” actually begin in the late fifties, peak during the cultural revolution of the sixties, carry on into the seventies, and in many ways continue today. Think of the ever-evolving body of American music and song as a great tree in the forest of world music. Anything of significance that happens to a tree during its growth will continue to shape it to some extent for many years. I remember when lightning struck a tall alder outside my parents home in Washington State one night. It was one of those double evergreens that were joined at the roots, towering some 60 feet or so high. One of the twins was pretty much demolished by the lightning strike, but the other one remained intact except for one very tell-tale marking. The lightning traced a spiral path down the tree peeling a half-inch or so of bark all the way down. As the years progressed and the tree grew, that spiral widened and became a permanent feature of the tree, even as it was slowly covered over with new growth, you could clearly see the spiral outline running the length of the tree commemorating it’s encounter with the lightning.
The folk revival that took place during the late fifties and early sixties was not the first, nor was it the last. But it occurred at a particularly auspicious time spawned from the earlier “beat” movement of the post-war fifties, and fueled by, in some ways a reaction to, the recent advent of rock ‘n roll, it coincided with a number of political and social issues competing for space on the front pages of the newspapers of the time; the anti-war movement protesting the Draft, nuclear proliferation and the Vietnam War; civil-rights demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King; the feminist movement, the environment and sustainable forms of energy. One of the ways to generate support and educate people about these issues is through song. Speeches are fine, but not every speaker can captivate an audience whose attention span has been formed (or foreshortened) by television sound bites and mass media marketing. The folksinger/songwriter’s role in modern society is still very much the same as that of the storyteller in ancient cultures. The medium has changed, but the same stories still need telling and the public will usually respond as well or better to a good song than they will to some political diatribe. But ours is a media-driven society and ironically the very thing that contributed to the success of the voices of the ’60s would eventually contribute to their obsolescence as well.
Later on this period would be called “The Great Folk Scare” because for a while it looked as if this revival/revolution would accomplish what no other ever had. Society was primed for the folk-heroes of the ‘60s because to a certain extent they were already used to the rock-star/movie star celebrity phenomena promoted by TV, radio and the mass media in general. But these new counter-culture heroes were not their parent’s matinee idols. They spoke to the younger generation directly, they were hip, they were happening, and they mobilized an entire generation almost overnight to get out on the streets and make their voices heard. The “times they were a-changin’” and at times it would seem that to rid the world of war, bombs, bigotry and hate, all we needed to do was overthrow the “Establishment”, bring down “the Man”, and peace would be at hand.
Visit this web site, an archive dedicated to documenting the singers and songwriters that were responsible for the Great Folk Scare; http://zipcon.net/~highroad/folkscare.html
“They believed if they sang loud and long enough they could change the world". - Gavan Daws, author of “Follow the Music” the story of Elektra Records.
Now for as long as we’d had a formal ‘music business’, lyric-writers and composers worked together hawking their wares (often through an agent) to professional publishing houses and the popular singers of the day. But the voices of the 60s for the most part wrote, recorded and performed their own material, though they did rely to a great extent on the whims of recording companies and radio stations. Nevertheless, this new independent spirit fostered an increase in personal responsibility and social significance in an art form that had for so long been little more than an outlet for adolescent romantic fantasies and teenage idol worship. Dancing in the streets turned to marching in the streets as issues from the Draft to Feminism transformed the entertainment industry into a viable context for social commentary. No one suspected at the time, except for perhaps media-savvy watchmen like Marshall McLuhan at the University of Toronto, that this transformation would turn out to be a 2-way street. For just as the media factories were being enlisted for promoting social issues, social issues began to be co-opted, reduced to infotainment, for in the end, the sponsors and commercial investors were bound to realize a profit. It was fine to promote world-peace, as long as while we taught the world to sing in perfect harmony, we sell lots of coca-cola.
(to be continued....)
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