History Goes Pop! Songwriting the Past

Catalog description

Historical research doesn't always lead to an essay, an article, or a book. Sometimes, research leads to filmmaking, playwriting, the curation of museum exhibits, choreography, or... music. The genres in which we disseminate historical research shapes the research we do. For example, when one is preparing a museum exhibit, a researcher must think about the visuality and three-dimensionality of objects in ways they might not if they were planning to write an essay. Likewise, filmmakers and dramaturges must think about how their subjects might have moved through space, and how their voices might have sounded. Genre and research are linked. What about music? What happens when we try to set the past to music, capturing and conveying historical complexity in the span of just a few minutes? How can a song convey historical information without coming across as didactic and wooden? How can one make full use of the songwriting toolkit - repetition, call and response, arrangement, phrasing, and more - to capture history in ways that only music can - as opposed to making a song that feels like a pale comparison to some other for of historical narration? When one succeeds in this venture, the effects can be haunting. Throughout this course, we will be encountering works such as "Strange Fruit" (the disturbing reflection on the lynching of African-Americans, written by Abel Meeropol, and immortalized by Billie Holiday); "Ohio" (by Neil Young, protesting the killing of unarmed student protestors at Kent State University in 1970); "I Don't Like Mondays" (by Bob Geldof, about the 1979 school shooting at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego); "Mr. President" (by El General, considered an early anthem of the Arab Spring); and "The Donald" (the last track on the final album by A Tribe Called Quest), among many others. These "critical listenings" will be accompanied by critical…