Politics: An American Cultural Perspective
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2022
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Politics is the result of culture demanding a change. Often, it is music that facilitates that change. Music provides the voice for not only the songwriter, but listener as well. Music can speak to the euphoria one feels when experiencing the joys of human freedom, and it can express the feeling of frustration and loss when there is a perception of those freedoms being lost or denied. This has been at the center of the American cultural experience. From the earliest tunes of revolutionary America to the moving overtures of the populist songwriters of the age of the world wars and on to the protest and social comment verses of the present age, music has been the way we “get the message through” and given voice to our values, frustrations, and faith. It displays the innermost expressions of who we are as individuals and Americans.
This book is the story of some of those songs and the messages they attempted to portray. Many of the songs provide an obvious message. A number will speak more poetically, but all will convey the voice of political desire. A longing expressed in patriotic fervor or a plea, or a demand, for political change.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 “… from this time forward forevermore”
Second Continental Congress
John Dickinson
Music of the American Revolution
A Changing Colonial Empire
From Englishmen to Americans
The Declaration of Independence
The Articles of Confederation
A New Constitution
The Music and Culture of the Birth of America
Understanding the Integration of Faith and Learning
Chapter 2 “The Gift of Providence”
Antebellum America
The Age of Jackson
Musical Culture in Early America
A National Song
The Aftermath of the War
An American Hymn
Stephen Foster: The American Tune
Understanding the Integration of Faith and Learning
Chapter 3 “The Civil War: The Moral Lights Around Us”
Frederick Douglass
Stephen Douglas
Abraham Lincoln
Music and the Civil War
Understanding the Integration of Faith and Learning
Chapter 4 “A pioneer should have imagination…”
America in the Gilded Age
Politics in the Gilded Age
Cultural Development in the Gilded Age
Robber Barons or Philanthropists?
Carnegie and “The Gospel of Wealth”
Pioneers of American Culture: The Music of the Gilded Age
Understanding the Integration of Faith and Learning
Chapter 5 “Great Wars, Great Expectations, and a Great Depression”
An Age of Progressive Reform
America and the World Wars
President Roosevelt and The New Deal
Progressive Reform & Culture and Music
George M. Cohan}
Irving Berlin
Woody Guthrie
Aaron Copland
The Progressive Era’s Music and Culture in Review
Understanding the Integration of Faith and Learning
Chapter 6 “The Torch has Been Passed”
The Kennedy Administration
Flexible Response and Southeast Asia
The Struggle for Civil Rights
Martin Luther King Jr. & the Civil Rights Bill
The Johnson Administration
Johnson and Vietnam
The End of the Johnson Administration
Welcome to the Sixties
Pete Seeger
Bob Dylan
Summing Up the Sixties
Understanding the Integration of Faith and Learning
Chapter 7 “The Reagan Revolution - A Rendezvous with Destiny”
The Reagan Revolution
The Reagan Revolution, Part 2
Bill Clinton
The Reagan Revolution Continues - George W. Bush
The End of the Reagan Revolution - Barack Obama
Music of the Reagan Revolution
Musical Bookends of the Reagan Revolution
Bruce Springsteen
Lee Greenwood
Concluding the American Cultural and Musical Journey
Understanding the Integration of Faith and Learning
Chapter 8 “Presidential Candidates”
Appendix: Speeches