LibGuides: On the Road: 7-12 Ball of Confusion: Rock Music & Social Change in the 1960s

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Ball of Confusion: Rock Music & Social Change in the 1960s

Suggested Grade Level: 7-12

This research guide serves as a resource for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's Education Department course, Ball of Confusion: Rock Music & Social Change in the 1960s. For additional information on the course and for more teacher resources, see: http://rockhall.com/education/distance-learning/courses/BOC/

The history of rock and roll overlaps with some of the most turbulent times in U.S. history. In the 1960s in particular, American society faced challenges stemming from the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s Liberation movement. During this time many people felt that the world was a “Ball of Confusion,” as described in lyrics of the popular Temptations song. This class features songs from artists including Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, Aretha Franklin, and Jefferson Airplane, and helps students identify ways that popular musicians have used messages of revolution, protest, and empowerment to question society and effect change. Supplemental media includes recordings and videos of Hall of Fame Inductees.

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Databases

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Academic Search Complete
This scholarly collection offers full text coverage of information in many areas of academic study including: archaeology, area studies, astronomy, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, ethnic and multicultural studies, food science and technology, general science, geography, geology, law, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, physics, psychology, religion & theology, women's studies, and other fields.
African American Music Reference
African American Music Reference brings together 50,000 pages of text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music. The database is constantly expanding to include comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.
American Song
Hear and feel the music from America's past right up to recent additions including Motown, Jimi Hendrix, the Mamas and the Papas, and other artists from the rock era. There are songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys; songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War; and every great American genre is here—from folk and blues to country, gospel, and rock.
Newspaper Source
Selected full text for 28 national (U.S.) and international newspapers, including USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, The Times (London), The Toronto Star, etc. Also contains selected full text for more than 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers, including The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press, The Miami Herald, The New York Daily News, The San Jose Mercury News, etc. In addition, full text television & radio news transcripts are provided from CBS News, FOX News, NPR, etc.
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975
Popular Culture explores the dynamic period of social, political and cultural change between 1950 and 1975. The resource offers thousands of color images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera, and memorabilia from this exciting period in our recent history. The Library and Archives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum contributed over 7,000 items from its collections to the project. The database allows you to explore an interactive chronology to learn a wealth of fascinating facts, take a tour of the site's visual resources, and watch video footage to experience the spectacular sights and sounds of the period for yourself.

For Your Students

Fashions of a Decade by Yvonne Connikie; Valerie Cumming (Editor); Elane Feldman (Editor)
Call Number: GT596 .C66 1990
A pictorial survey chronicling the international fashions of the 1960's
How to Analyze the Music of Bob Dylan by Teresa Ryan Manzella
Call Number: ML420.D95 M26 2012
Play It Loud! by Sara Gilbert; Kathleen Baxter (Consultant Editor); Alexa L. Sandmann (Consultant Editor)
Call Number: ML3916 .G55 2010
Describes the history of music, focusing on 20th and 21st century movements in popular music, groundbreaking musicians of the time period, and how music has influenced social, political, and cultural change
Rock 'n' Roll Soldier by Dean Ellis Kohler; Susan VanHecke
Call Number: DS559.5 .K64 2009
Dean Ellis Kohler, aspiring rock star, is drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he forms a rock 'n' roll band at the behest of his Captain

Online Resources

Music2Life - Music For Social Change Database
A moderated wiki tool for
exploring and sharing
music for social change
Music of Social Change

Objectives

These resources, pulled from class discussion and selected from the Library and Archives' collections, will help you to:

Give examples of ways musicians have used popular music to respond to current events and suggest avenues for change.
Analyze the lyrics of songs that respond to social debates within the context of the Vietnam War, the 1960s counterculture, the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War, and the Women's Liberation movement.
Explain how music and musicians both influence and are influenced by society and culture.

Books

Hippie by Barry Miles
Call Number: HQ799.5 .M54 2004
Experience the ultimate flashback with this celebration of an era. Rich in illustrations and filled with the history, politics, sayings, and slogans that defined an age, this tribute to the 1960's counterculture is as groovy as it gets.
Hip Hop Movement: from R&B and the civil rights movement to rap and the hip hop generation by Reiland Rabaka
Call Number: ML3479 .R33 2013
The Hip Hop Movement offers a critical theory and alternative history of rap music and hip hop culture by examining their roots in the popular musics and popular cultures of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement.
Music of the Counterculture Era by James E. Perone
Call Number: ML3918.P67 P47 2004
With vibrant narrative chapters on the role of music in the anti-war movement, the Black power movement, the women's movement, political radicalism, drug use, and the counterculture lifestyle, James Perone details the emerging issues explored by performers in the Sixties and Seventies.
Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution by Dick Weissman
Call Number: ML3917.U6 W45 2010
Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution is a comprehensive guide to the relationship between American music and politics
Story Behind the Protest Song by Hardeep Phull
Call Number: ML3551.5 .P48 2008
Story Behind the Protest Song features 50 of the most influential musical protests and statements recorded to date, providing pop-culture viewpoints on some of the most tumultuous times in modern history. Among the featured: songs about the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the most recent upheaval over policy in the Middle East, as well as teenage rebellion, animal rights, criticisms of mass media, and even protest songs that lambaste other protest songs
When the Music's Over by Robin Denselow
Call Number: ML3916 .D46 1990
This book sets out to examine the history of post-war political pop from the McCarthy era to Live Aid and from Ewan MacColl to Red Wedge. The story includes the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 50s, the Civil Rights and Vietnam campaigns of the 60s, the Rock against Racism Movement of the 70s and the close connection between pop and politics in the Caribbean, Africa, Greece and Russia - areas where the authorities have often made it clear that they regard music as a potentially subversive force.
Women and Popular Music by Sheila Whiteley
Call Number: ML82 .W45 2000
From Janis Joplin to Tori Amos, this work explores the changing role of women musicians & the ways in which their songs resonate in popular culture. It examines the interaction between feminist debates & music culture over 30 years of pop history

Audio

My Girl by the Temptations
Call Number: CD TEMP MY 2001
Buffalo Springfield Box Set by Buffalo Springfield
Call Number: CDB BUFF-S BOX 2001
I never loved a man the way I love you by Aretha Franklin
Call Number: CD FRANK-A INEV 1995
John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan
Call Number: CD DYLA JOHN 1987
Surrealistic pillow by Jefferson Airplane
Call Number: CD JEFF-A SURR 1990

Video

1968 with Tom Brokaw by History Channel
Call Number: DVD VAR NINETE 2008
Bob Dylan: No direction home by Martin Scorsese
Call Number: DVD DYLA NODI 2005
The two-part film includes never-seen performance footage and interviews with artists and musicians whose lives intertwined with Dylan’s during that time. For the first time on camera, Dylan talks openly and extensively about this critical period in his career.
Phil Ochs: There but for fortune by Kenneth Bowser
Call Number: DVD OCHS THER 2010
As our country continues to embroil itself in foreign wars, Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune is a timely and relevant tribute to an unlikely American hero. Over the course of a meteoric music career that spanned two turbulent decades, Phil Ochs sought the bright lights of fame and social justice in equal measure - a contradiction that eventually tore him apart.

Archival Resources

New to Archives? Check out:

Allen Ginsberg
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this artist.
Family Dog Productions
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this group.
Ken Kesey
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this individual.
Phil Ochs
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this artist.
Ravi Shankar
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this artist.
Woodstock
This catalog search provides links to a variety of archival materials in our collections on this event.
ARC-0230 Robert Altman Photographs
The Robert Altman Photographs consist of 347 digital images on a DVD-R, spanning the years 1967 to 1978, with the bulk of the photographs from 1969 and 1970. The collection focuses on the psychedelic rock music era of the San Francisco area, but also covers 1960s counterculture in general, including hippies, Yippies, psychedelic drug use, radical liberal politics, anti-war demonstrations, music festivals, mystic eastern religions, communal living, and sexual liberation. The images in the collection feature a wide range of musicians and musical groups, political figures, religious leaders, writers, journalists, intellectuals, artists, actors, and New Wave film directors. There are numerous images of the members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jefferson Airplane, and the Rolling Stones, as well as musicians Bo Diddley, Joni Mitchell, and Iggy Pop; the drag queen theatrical troupe, the Cockettes; Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary.

YouTube Videos

Aretha Franklin, "Respect" 1967

Temptations, "Ball of Confusion" video clip

Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth," 1967

Jefferson Airplane, "Somebody To Love," live at Woodstock, 1969

Bob Dylan, "All Along The Watchtower," Verona, May 29, 1984