Week 6: The Rock Era – Protest Music and Concept Albums

For this week’s post, I would like you to write about one of the major concerns the “Rock Era” brings to mainstream popular music. You can pick one topic or the other for your post, or do both for extra credit.

The first is the  belief that popular music must be important socially or politically, and that it indeed can have a concrete effect on the direction of political movements. For this, I want you to give an example of music with a social or political message. Explain the message in detail — what issue is the artist addressing and in what way? What makes this song an appropriate vehicle for this message? What is/was/will be/should be its impact? Remember, it doesn’t have to be an explicit protest song – Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix largely avoided overt political statements while making music that was relevant to the social movements at the time.

The other option is to write about a concept album.  The Rock Era is the birth of the album as a unique, coherent art object, and concept albums feature themes and progression, both musically and lyrically, throughout their running time. Explain the concept and how the artist executes it. It would be helpful to include several songs from the album as examples if you can find them.

You should add lots of your own original content to these posts — don’t just copy from other sites! I am interested in your ideas that you get from your own thinking and listening. I want to see at least 300-400 words of original writing. Good luck!

~ by Gavin on May 12, 2008.