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In our July, 2021 episode on the first generation of folk music, “Folk Music Stood for America”, we talked about how the music was swept up in the major social movements of the day, especially the socialist/ American Communist party movements which gathered speed because of events like the Great Depression and the Dustbowl.  

The second revival of the 1960’s also had its own causes; the war in Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Women’s  movement primarily.  The ‘60s was the era when all the WWII war babies grew up.  Highly idealistic, they wanted to seize the moment in history and change the world for the better.  Raised in the suburbs of the concensus-driven fifties, and living under the palatable fear of the Cold War, with Eishenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex ringing in their ears, seeing their classmates ship off to Vietnam, and shipped back home in body bags, they’d grown cynical about their parent’s generation and demanded change NOW.  

Folk music was the soundtrack to their rebellion; you could hear it played on college campuses all over America.  Many of the musicians matched that idealism note for note.   That’s the theme of today’s episode, Folk Music Played the Changes in American Society.

 Artists Featured in This Episode
Tom Paxton
Richie Havens
Peter, Paul & Mary
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bob Dylan
Phil Ochs
Crosby, Stills & Nash

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