TeachRock

Overview

The teenage culture of the fifties and early sixties was the seedbed for the youth-driven counterculture of the late sixties and early seventies. This shift toward a countercultural sensibility among young people was reflected in the music itself. If in the fifties Rock and Roll had been viewed primarily as a popular entertainment, in the period of “transformation” it would come to be viewed as–in its most elevated forms–an Art. In the hands of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and others, music became a “serious” thing. As young people faced the troubling facts of a war that included them and a country that refused them the right to vote, music now offered, among other things, a megaphone through which their disillusionment could be voiced. As the nation saw the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement that followed, artists like Marvin Gaye, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder used music to express feelings of frustration about the racial divide and excitement around the possibility of change. And as the music addressed the world of which it was a part, the music grew more complex, more varied—but, importantly, that music was also changing the world in ways it hadn’t previously.

1. Folk Music, Rock and Roll Attitude
2. Dylan as Poet
3. Debating Dylan’s Nobel Prize
4. The Emergence of Folk Rock
5. Jimi Hendrix: Introducing Hard Rock
6. The Sound of Blue Collar Detroit
7. Assembling Hits at Motown
8. The San Francisco Scene, 1967
9. Artists Protest McCarthyism
10. Music of the Civil Rights Movement
11. The Impact of 1960s Antiwar Music
12. Protest as Event
13. The Vietnam War: A Document-Based Question
14. The Roots of Country Rock
15. The Rise of Black Pride
16. Seventies Soul: The Soundtrack of Turbulent Times
17. Dan Penn
18. Singer-Songwriters and the Environmental Movement
19. Female Singer-Songwriters in the Early 1970s

Teachers are encouraged to allow students to select which of these assessments they would like to complete to demonstrate their understanding of Transformation

1. Create an illustrated timeline which depicts the key events and people that you have learned about in this unit.
2. Select one artist or group highlighted in this unit and create an infographic which describes their impact and trajectory.
3. Write an essay which reflects on the Rock and Soul’s role in reflecting and impacting change in society during the 1960’s and early 70’s..
4. Write a poem about Rock and Soul in the 1960’s and early 1970’s.