Protest Songs of the 70s Term Paper

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The Sixties and the Seventies were a complicated era. On the one hand it was the height of the Cold War. On the other hand, it was the height of the peace and love movement. It was an era in which the culture of America was being shaped from that point on. Feminism sparked in the 1970s, but so too did the punk movement. Before that rock ‘n’ roll had deviated into hippie music with artists singing about wearing flowers in one’s hair. The punks would spike their hair to look menacing in response to the flower people. The era was like a pendulum swinging back and forth—an action here being met by a reaction there, back and forth, on throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

When Kennedy was elected in 1960, the Cold War was underway and communism in Cuba was viewed as a threat by some—though not by all. 13 years later, when the Ramones formed in 1973, they reflected a lot of the angst of young people, who felt betrayed by the sell-out of rock ‘n’ roll for flower-power, hippie peace and love. The Ramones were edgy, punk and loud. “Havana Affair” was their 1976 satirical critique of American foreign policy over the preceding decade: “PT boat on the way to Havana

I used to make a living, man / Pickin' the banana / Now I'm a guide for the CIA / Hooray! for the USA / Sent to spy on a Cuban talent show / First stop, Havana go go! / I used to make a living, man / Pickin' the banana / Hooray! For Havana.” The song mocks the paranoia of the U.S. government and the idea that it is spying on a Cuban talent show in order to collect intelligence about what its enemies during the Cold War were doing. Like the Ramones’ song, there were many protest songs during the Sixties and Seventies that were written out of frustration with what the U.S. government was doing during the Cold War—whether that was attempting to assassinate Castro or propping up a puppet dictator in Vietnam, as Anderson points out. Some people, frustrated by the state of the U.S. government, found in punk the perfect expression of their anger and angst.

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Others went the opposite direction: they turned to expressions of peace and love to find their place and footing.

Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” was the type of hippie love that some young people were turning to in response to the turmoil of the 1960s: “If you’re going to San…

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…it's just the same. Pharoahs spin the message, 'round and 'round the truth. They could have saved a million people, How can I tell you?” Creedence, like many bands in 1969, were frustrated beyond words at the tragic turn American history had taken that decade: the assassinations of two Kennedys, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had rocked the country, and Fogerty felt like there was nothing he could even say at this point to convey the bewilderment: “If you see the answer, now's the time to say. All I want, all I want is to get you down and pray.” It was the kind of spiritual message that many felt was missing now that so many had been silenced.

The four major assassinations of the 1960s were like the death of the American conscience—the American soul. The voices that had been most prominent had been silenced. All felt stupefied. Some retreated into a passive cocoon where they could sing of love and offer up their protest songs, following in the “spirit” they believed of MLK—not acting violent or countering violence with violence but rather countering the aggression of the government with hope and love. Others made fists and shouted angrily and broke the rules—they were the punks and they, like Malcolm X, understood that sometimes violence….....

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