A native of Oakland, California and a frustrated oboist, I earned a BA in Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an MA in Musicology from the University of Chicago, an MA in Music, Culture and Politics from Cardiff University, and the PhD from Cardiff University in 2002 for my work on Welsh-language popular music and cultural identity.
From 2002-2007 I was a Lecturer in Music at the University of Southampton. I joined the faculty of the School of Music at Cardiff University in 2007.
I am a Coordinating Editor of the journal Popular Music, an Associate Editor of the journal twentieth-century music, and a member of the editorial board of Y Cydymaith i Gerddoriaeth Cymru. Address: School of Music
Cardiff University
Corbett Road
Cardiff
CF10 3EB
Wales
San Francisco and the Long 60s tells the fascinating story of the legacy of popular music in San ... more San Francisco and the Long 60s tells the fascinating story of the legacy of popular music in San Francisco between the years 1965-69. It is also a chronicle of the impact this brief cultural flowering has continued to have in the city – and more widely in American culture – right up to the present day. The aim of San Francisco and the Long 60s is to question the standard historical narrative of the time, situating the local popular music of the 1960s in the city's contemporary artistic and literary cultures: at once visionary and hallucinatory, experimental and traditional, singular and universal. These qualities defined the aesthetic experience of the local culture in the 1960s, and continue to inform the cultural and social life of the Bay Area even fifty years later.
The brief period 1965-69 marks the emergence of the psychedelic counterculture in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, the development of a local musical 'sound' into a mainstream international 'style', the mythologizing of the Haight-Ashbury as the destination for 'seekers' in the Summer of Love, and the ultimate dispersal of the original hippie community to outlying counties in the greater Bay Area and beyond. San Francisco and the Long 60s charts this period with the references to received historical accounts of the time, the musical, visual and literary communications from the counterculture, and retrospective glances from members of the 1960s Haight community via extensive first-hand interviews.
In this paper I explore the idea of ‘canon’ in a lesser-spoken language culture. The sense of ‘ca... more In this paper I explore the idea of ‘canon’ in a lesser-spoken language culture. The sense of ‘canon’ in Welsh popular music is intimately related to political and cultural activity, and ‘canonical’ figures are often inseparable from their involvement in the movement to secure a future for the Welsh language. By examining the relationship between the Anglo-American ‘majority’ canon and its ‘minority’ Welsh counterpart, I engage with the process of historicizing Welsh popular music on its own musical and chronological terms as but one in a possible network of ‘micro-canons’ that exist to challenge Anglo-American cultural dominance.
Because of their brevity, many pop songs of the last fifty years seemingly elude the application ... more Because of their brevity, many pop songs of the last fifty years seemingly elude the application of narrative theory. But the deliberate lengthening of individual tracks during the early years of progressive rock exposes them to precisely that kind of examination. One such song is ‘Supper’s Ready’, which closes the 1972 Genesis album Foxtrot. This allegorical 23-minute epic, abundant with references to the Book of Revelation, provides an intriguing model for the ‘concept song,’ and confounds the listener’s expectations – lyrical, musical, narrative, structural, and temporal. In this article I explore the seven tableaux of ‘Supper’s Ready’, paying particular attention to the treatment of the apocalyptic theme, apply formalist and narrative theories of interpretation, and consider ways in which the song’s design demands that the listener engage with both its concept and its construction.
1968 was a year of upheaval in America. President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war i... more 1968 was a year of upheaval in America. President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war in the early years of his presidency proved unpopular and costly, with the loss of 30,000 American lives by the end of 1968; his announcement in March 1968 that ‘all air naval and artillery bombardment of north Vietnam was to cease’ was delivered in the same speech as his announcement that he would not run for re-election. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy shook the foundations of the fracturing Civil Rights Movement while the Black Panther Party was branded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as ‘the greatest threat to the internal security’ of the United States.
Yet despite the struggles for peace abroad and an end to oppression at home, the connection between popular music and political engagement in the United States in the 1960s had waned by the year 1968. Whereas in the early years of the decade, the ‘message’ was signaled by the sound of an acoustic guitar and a solo voice, amid the turbulence of 1968 the definable ‘politics’ of American popular music was not perceptible by a single sonic marker. Although some recordings betray the indelible scars of social trauma – for example, Nina Simone’s Nuff Said! was recorded three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. – others bear a more general sense of their tumultuous moment. Acoustic singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Buffy Sainte-Marie were still speaking directly to the anti-war and rights movements, but it was the indirect statements that made the more vivid reflection of the disillusioned and disenfranchised.
For these reasons the sounds of the United States in 1968 cannot be essentialized, but they can be heard as foreshadowing the more overt political stances expressed at the following year’s Woodstock Festival; of the synthesis of psychedelia and soul; in the emergence of the ‘confrontational’ sounds of bands such as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, of funk, and of the prototypical rap of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron: all of these musics are the inevitable legacy of the upheavals of 1968.
In this chapter I consider the messages of the politically-charged popular music of 1968, from the Broadway production of the rock musical, Hair, to James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ to the gentler entreaties of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ 'This Is My Country'; the return-to-roots sound of the nascent country-rock of The Band; and the fusions of rock and ‘other’ musics which signaled at once a quest for belonging and the desire for peaceful coexistence to come.
in Peter Gabriel, from Genesis to Growing Up, 2010
In considering Peter Gabriel's recorded output an overall topical shift becomes clear. Beginning ... more In considering Peter Gabriel's recorded output an overall topical shift becomes clear. Beginning with the mythology of Genesis, through the African imprint of the 3rd & 4th solo albums, to the emotional catharsis of Us, Peter Gabriel's progression from public schoolboy persona (Foxtrot, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) to a more questioning persona ('Here Comes the Flood', 'Solsbury Hill') to a more questing persona ('Lay Your Hands On Me', 'Love To Be Loved') is likewise chartable musically in his progression from progressive rock to pastoral 'English' rock to African-influenced 'other' rock to the multicultural tapestry of his most recent solo work. In broad terms, this exploration of the subjective and the embracing of the 'other' suggests the shedding of a certain notion of 'Englishness’. The social and political ramifications of these excursions beyond the English may be observed in the communities organized in and around the WOMAD festivals; and the musical effects may be considered from the perspective of ‘new’ musicological practices. This paper will suggest such an intersection between the subjective and the collective, the self and the other, with a view toward understanding Peter Gabriel's 'shifting self' as the metaphor for a larger musical process.
Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time, Feb 2006
The Monterey Pop Festival was the first of its kind. Not only did it establish the template for ... more The Monterey Pop Festival was the first of its kind. Not only did it establish the template for the Woodstock and Isle of Wight Festivals, it was one of the pivotal moments of the Summer of Love. The music ranged from folk (Simon & Garfunkel) to blues (Paul Butterfield Blues Band) to rock (The Who) and beyond (Ravi Shankar), but it was Otis Redding's performance which embodied a moment of transition in American cultural history. As a collaborative effort with Booker T and the MGs, Redding's performance was a statement of racial inclusion; as a twenty-minute segment within a three-day festival, it was a career-defining moment; and as a cultural artefact it defined the festival's remit of 'love, flowers and music'. The impact of Monterey Pop on Redding's career was only posthumously suggested by '(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay', but rather than viewing his performance through the lens of nostalgia, it is here considered as the meeting between 'the love crowd' and deep soul, at a point when soul music itself was in transition.
For Welsh-language popular musicians, contributing to the Anglo-American market entails both ling... more For Welsh-language popular musicians, contributing to the Anglo-American market entails both linguistic and musical border crossings. For the female Welsh popular musician, this problem has traditionally been compounded by the negotiation of culturally-specific gender roles, vocality and presentation. In this article I examine the parallel careers of two Welsh women, Mary Hopkin and Cerys Matthews, who crossed over successfully from the Welsh-language popular music scene into the mainstream Anglo-American market. These women embodied specific moments in Welsh cultural history, and their voices retained palpable vestiges of an ‘otherness’ attributable to the shared musical tradition that informed their vocal style. I argue that these women’s voices serve as a metaphor for the process of Welsh identity, challenging the role of the female pop voice in Wales, and the Welsh pop voice in Anglo-America.
San Francisco and the Long 60s tells the fascinating story of the legacy of popular music in San ... more San Francisco and the Long 60s tells the fascinating story of the legacy of popular music in San Francisco between the years 1965-69. It is also a chronicle of the impact this brief cultural flowering has continued to have in the city – and more widely in American culture – right up to the present day. The aim of San Francisco and the Long 60s is to question the standard historical narrative of the time, situating the local popular music of the 1960s in the city's contemporary artistic and literary cultures: at once visionary and hallucinatory, experimental and traditional, singular and universal. These qualities defined the aesthetic experience of the local culture in the 1960s, and continue to inform the cultural and social life of the Bay Area even fifty years later.
The brief period 1965-69 marks the emergence of the psychedelic counterculture in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, the development of a local musical 'sound' into a mainstream international 'style', the mythologizing of the Haight-Ashbury as the destination for 'seekers' in the Summer of Love, and the ultimate dispersal of the original hippie community to outlying counties in the greater Bay Area and beyond. San Francisco and the Long 60s charts this period with the references to received historical accounts of the time, the musical, visual and literary communications from the counterculture, and retrospective glances from members of the 1960s Haight community via extensive first-hand interviews.
In this paper I explore the idea of ‘canon’ in a lesser-spoken language culture. The sense of ‘ca... more In this paper I explore the idea of ‘canon’ in a lesser-spoken language culture. The sense of ‘canon’ in Welsh popular music is intimately related to political and cultural activity, and ‘canonical’ figures are often inseparable from their involvement in the movement to secure a future for the Welsh language. By examining the relationship between the Anglo-American ‘majority’ canon and its ‘minority’ Welsh counterpart, I engage with the process of historicizing Welsh popular music on its own musical and chronological terms as but one in a possible network of ‘micro-canons’ that exist to challenge Anglo-American cultural dominance.
Because of their brevity, many pop songs of the last fifty years seemingly elude the application ... more Because of their brevity, many pop songs of the last fifty years seemingly elude the application of narrative theory. But the deliberate lengthening of individual tracks during the early years of progressive rock exposes them to precisely that kind of examination. One such song is ‘Supper’s Ready’, which closes the 1972 Genesis album Foxtrot. This allegorical 23-minute epic, abundant with references to the Book of Revelation, provides an intriguing model for the ‘concept song,’ and confounds the listener’s expectations – lyrical, musical, narrative, structural, and temporal. In this article I explore the seven tableaux of ‘Supper’s Ready’, paying particular attention to the treatment of the apocalyptic theme, apply formalist and narrative theories of interpretation, and consider ways in which the song’s design demands that the listener engage with both its concept and its construction.
1968 was a year of upheaval in America. President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war i... more 1968 was a year of upheaval in America. President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war in the early years of his presidency proved unpopular and costly, with the loss of 30,000 American lives by the end of 1968; his announcement in March 1968 that ‘all air naval and artillery bombardment of north Vietnam was to cease’ was delivered in the same speech as his announcement that he would not run for re-election. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy shook the foundations of the fracturing Civil Rights Movement while the Black Panther Party was branded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as ‘the greatest threat to the internal security’ of the United States.
Yet despite the struggles for peace abroad and an end to oppression at home, the connection between popular music and political engagement in the United States in the 1960s had waned by the year 1968. Whereas in the early years of the decade, the ‘message’ was signaled by the sound of an acoustic guitar and a solo voice, amid the turbulence of 1968 the definable ‘politics’ of American popular music was not perceptible by a single sonic marker. Although some recordings betray the indelible scars of social trauma – for example, Nina Simone’s Nuff Said! was recorded three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. – others bear a more general sense of their tumultuous moment. Acoustic singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Buffy Sainte-Marie were still speaking directly to the anti-war and rights movements, but it was the indirect statements that made the more vivid reflection of the disillusioned and disenfranchised.
For these reasons the sounds of the United States in 1968 cannot be essentialized, but they can be heard as foreshadowing the more overt political stances expressed at the following year’s Woodstock Festival; of the synthesis of psychedelia and soul; in the emergence of the ‘confrontational’ sounds of bands such as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, of funk, and of the prototypical rap of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron: all of these musics are the inevitable legacy of the upheavals of 1968.
In this chapter I consider the messages of the politically-charged popular music of 1968, from the Broadway production of the rock musical, Hair, to James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ to the gentler entreaties of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ 'This Is My Country'; the return-to-roots sound of the nascent country-rock of The Band; and the fusions of rock and ‘other’ musics which signaled at once a quest for belonging and the desire for peaceful coexistence to come.
in Peter Gabriel, from Genesis to Growing Up, 2010
In considering Peter Gabriel's recorded output an overall topical shift becomes clear. Beginning ... more In considering Peter Gabriel's recorded output an overall topical shift becomes clear. Beginning with the mythology of Genesis, through the African imprint of the 3rd & 4th solo albums, to the emotional catharsis of Us, Peter Gabriel's progression from public schoolboy persona (Foxtrot, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) to a more questioning persona ('Here Comes the Flood', 'Solsbury Hill') to a more questing persona ('Lay Your Hands On Me', 'Love To Be Loved') is likewise chartable musically in his progression from progressive rock to pastoral 'English' rock to African-influenced 'other' rock to the multicultural tapestry of his most recent solo work. In broad terms, this exploration of the subjective and the embracing of the 'other' suggests the shedding of a certain notion of 'Englishness’. The social and political ramifications of these excursions beyond the English may be observed in the communities organized in and around the WOMAD festivals; and the musical effects may be considered from the perspective of ‘new’ musicological practices. This paper will suggest such an intersection between the subjective and the collective, the self and the other, with a view toward understanding Peter Gabriel's 'shifting self' as the metaphor for a larger musical process.
Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time, Feb 2006
The Monterey Pop Festival was the first of its kind. Not only did it establish the template for ... more The Monterey Pop Festival was the first of its kind. Not only did it establish the template for the Woodstock and Isle of Wight Festivals, it was one of the pivotal moments of the Summer of Love. The music ranged from folk (Simon & Garfunkel) to blues (Paul Butterfield Blues Band) to rock (The Who) and beyond (Ravi Shankar), but it was Otis Redding's performance which embodied a moment of transition in American cultural history. As a collaborative effort with Booker T and the MGs, Redding's performance was a statement of racial inclusion; as a twenty-minute segment within a three-day festival, it was a career-defining moment; and as a cultural artefact it defined the festival's remit of 'love, flowers and music'. The impact of Monterey Pop on Redding's career was only posthumously suggested by '(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay', but rather than viewing his performance through the lens of nostalgia, it is here considered as the meeting between 'the love crowd' and deep soul, at a point when soul music itself was in transition.
For Welsh-language popular musicians, contributing to the Anglo-American market entails both ling... more For Welsh-language popular musicians, contributing to the Anglo-American market entails both linguistic and musical border crossings. For the female Welsh popular musician, this problem has traditionally been compounded by the negotiation of culturally-specific gender roles, vocality and presentation. In this article I examine the parallel careers of two Welsh women, Mary Hopkin and Cerys Matthews, who crossed over successfully from the Welsh-language popular music scene into the mainstream Anglo-American market. These women embodied specific moments in Welsh cultural history, and their voices retained palpable vestiges of an ‘otherness’ attributable to the shared musical tradition that informed their vocal style. I argue that these women’s voices serve as a metaphor for the process of Welsh identity, challenging the role of the female pop voice in Wales, and the Welsh pop voice in Anglo-America.
Beti a’i Phobol has been a fixture on the Radio Cymru schedule since 1987. In comparison to Deser... more Beti a’i Phobol has been a fixture on the Radio Cymru schedule since 1987. In comparison to Desert Island Discs, Beti a’i Phobol follows a more relaxed structure: guests are allowed four musical choices and much more time for conversation. In this paper I consider Beti’s roster of guests, their musical choices, and the impact that language has had on their presentation of subjective and cultural identity. I will then shift focus to those guests of Beti a’i Phobol who have ‘crossed over’ to Desert Island Discs, and gauge the changing sense of Welshness over the programme’s history, and the concomitant sense of Wales within British culture.
The premiere of Terry Riley’s In C coincided with the dawn of psychedelia in San Francisco. The ... more The premiere of Terry Riley’s In C coincided with the dawn of psychedelia in San Francisco. The work’s history, embedded as it is in the landscape and creative environment of the city, is also entangled with the general search for spiritual transcendence that many in the burgeoning local counterculture undertook with the aid of peyote, mescaline and LSD. Riley’s own belief in the shamanic power of music infuses In C with a sense of its chronological moment, and it this sense of ‘moment’ that carried the first recording of the piece (Columbia, 1968) through the turbulent end years of the decade, its label promising listeners ‘the only legal trip you can take.’ The 1968 Columbia recording also inspired San Francisco Ballet choreographer Carlos Carvajal to create Genesis 70, a 40-minute metaphysical journey, and one of the last creative utterances of the fading local psychedelic counterculture.
It is my intention in this paper to explore the little-known Genesis 70, not only as a piece of choreography, but also as a limited, live performance of In C. I will draw on extensive personal interviews with Carlos Carvajal, as well as documentary and archive sources, and consider this work as one of a number of notable interactions of the psychedelic ‘underground’ with the mainstream culture of San Francisco in the 1960s.
In Spring 2012 an exhibition celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Welsh band Datblygu ope... more In Spring 2012 an exhibition celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Welsh band Datblygu opened in a small coffee shop in Cardiff. Formed in Cardigan, west Wales, by poet David R. Edwards, Datblygu cultivated throughout their career a willfully contrary relationship with the Welsh-language establishment, while commenting from the margins of Wales on the reality of life in the Thatcher era. Stylistically more aligned with The Fall than with any of their Welsh contemporaries, Datblygu were intellectually concerned with nothing less than an honest commentary on Welsh life: abrasive, splenetic and in some ways prophetic. Datblygu were championed by BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, but it was only in the past decade that their influence has been properly charted, with many younger bands and musicians registering the effect of Datblygu’s dark insights. In this paper I consider the importance of a reassessment of Datblygu’s output from this temporal remove – what Karl Mannheim called ‘the sociological problem of generations’ – and the phenomenon of the Datblygu anniversary celebration itself – a shift from the radical margins to a central geographical place.
Of the many storied musical spaces in San Francisco, the Avalon Ballroom remains perhaps the most... more Of the many storied musical spaces in San Francisco, the Avalon Ballroom remains perhaps the most mythical. Run from 1966-68 by Chet Helms and the Family Dog, the Avalon embodied the hippie ethos of the Haight-Ashbury community. As an aesthetic experience, a night at the Avalon would begin with the first glimpse of the poster advertising that night’s entertainment; the light show would magnify the audience’s communion with the musicians; and the Haight community would feed on the residual good vibes until the following weekend. In this paper I will draw on documentary evidence and personal interviews with agents in the mid-1960s psychedelic community to recreate a ‘typical’ night at the Avalon – from the commissioning of the art work, through the sound check and performance, and back to the Haight – and suggest a connection between ideology and locality, imagination and expression, in the ‘long 60s’ of San Francisco.
There is an efficient historical narrative that traces the psychedelic ‘moment’ in San Francisco ... more There is an efficient historical narrative that traces the psychedelic ‘moment’ in San Francisco back to the exploration of expanded consciousness as celebrated by Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters at the Acid Tests. The house band for the Acid Tests, the Warlocks – later the Grateful Dead – certainly became a byword for psychological liberation, though the many musical strands (folk, blues, bluegrass) which evolved into the contemporary local psychedelic rock were initially somewhat less embroidered. The enormity of the psychedelic moment has overshadowed the other contemporary local musical projects in those efficient historical narratives, however. Minimalism, for example, represents one point on the musical ley line between 'art' and 'pop' in San Francisco: Terry Riley's In C coincided with the psychedelic moment; Steve Reich's friendship with Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead has provided musical as well as personal insights into the nature of 'influence'; and John Adams' The Dharma at Big Sur evokes the 'shock of recognition' of geographical as well as sonic landscapes.
It is my intention in this paper to address the interactions of the psychedelic subculture in San Francisco with the contemporary local ‘art music’ community, from the underground (San Francisco Tape Music Center) to the mainstream (The San Francisco Ballet). In so doing I hope to trace the indelible imprint of the 'low' on its 'high other', and to explore the mini seismic musical events in 1960s San Francisco which have produced four decades of aftershocks in the cultural life of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
Every neighborhood in San Francisco has its distinct character, with its own evolving history of ... more Every neighborhood in San Francisco has its distinct character, with its own evolving history of in-migration and gentrification; but the Haight-Ashbury is perhaps the only area with an enshrined sense of chronological moment. Though that moment was brief, the Haight has both benefited and suffered from continued interest in the hippie era. Sixties psychedelia and optimism have been refined, rarefied and commodified. Forty years on from the Summer of Love the corner of Haight and Ashbury is as popular a tourist snapshot backdrop as the zebra crossing in Abbey Road. The street signs represent more than a famous street corner, however: they represent the intersection of nostalgia and commerce, heritage and myth. In this paper I will travel the hippie streets of the Bay Area, from the Summer of Love Hotel to the weekly Grateful Dead DJ nights in Berkeley and evaluate how the musical legacy is exploited. By exploring the mutable sense of hippie ideology with original members of the Haight community and some of those whose livelihood depends on the adaptation, perpetuation and selling of it, this paper will examine the notion of the Haight as a museum, and the tie-dyed hippies that still patrol the neighbourhood as its grey-haired curators.
From 1965 until the close of the decade the San Francisco Bay Area was home to a popular music th... more From 1965 until the close of the decade the San Francisco Bay Area was home to a popular music that fused folk, country and rock with philosophy, anarchy and acid. The bands that were on the forefront of the scene – the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Moby Grape – did not necessarily share musical style or values, but they shared a sense of honor and duty to their community, whatever their drug of choice. And this movement did not go long unnoticed. When the Haight became the destination for thousands of seekers in the summer of 1967 the message of the community, and the medium of that message, changed. By drawing on recent interviews with members of the ‘original’ Haight-Ashbury community I will explore the ways in which the spirit of San Francisco was enacted on either side of of the city’s ‘Summer of Love’, and the ways in which that spirit was perpetuated and codified in the early-1970s studio recordings of the Grateful Dead.
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Books by Sarah Hill
The brief period 1965-69 marks the emergence of the psychedelic counterculture in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, the development of a local musical 'sound' into a mainstream international 'style', the mythologizing of the Haight-Ashbury as the destination for 'seekers' in the Summer of Love, and the ultimate dispersal of the original hippie community to outlying counties in the greater Bay Area and beyond. San Francisco and the Long 60s charts this period with the references to received historical accounts of the time, the musical, visual and literary communications from the counterculture, and retrospective glances from members of the 1960s Haight community via extensive first-hand interviews.
Papers by Sarah Hill
Yet despite the struggles for peace abroad and an end to oppression at home, the connection between popular music and political engagement in the United States in the 1960s had waned by the year 1968. Whereas in the early years of the decade, the ‘message’ was signaled by the sound of an acoustic guitar and a solo voice, amid the turbulence of 1968 the definable ‘politics’ of American popular music was not perceptible by a single sonic marker. Although some recordings betray the indelible scars of social trauma – for example, Nina Simone’s Nuff Said! was recorded three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. – others bear a more general sense of their tumultuous moment. Acoustic singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Buffy Sainte-Marie were still speaking directly to the anti-war and rights movements, but it was the indirect statements that made the more vivid reflection of the disillusioned and disenfranchised.
For these reasons the sounds of the United States in 1968 cannot be essentialized, but they can be heard as foreshadowing the more overt political stances expressed at the following year’s Woodstock Festival; of the synthesis of psychedelia and soul; in the emergence of the ‘confrontational’ sounds of bands such as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, of funk, and of the prototypical rap of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron: all of these musics are the inevitable legacy of the upheavals of 1968.
In this chapter I consider the messages of the politically-charged popular music of 1968, from the Broadway production of the rock musical, Hair, to James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ to the gentler entreaties of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ 'This Is My Country'; the return-to-roots sound of the nascent country-rock of The Band; and the fusions of rock and ‘other’ musics which signaled at once a quest for belonging and the desire for peaceful coexistence to come.
Book Reviews by Sarah Hill
Talks by Sarah Hill
The brief period 1965-69 marks the emergence of the psychedelic counterculture in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, the development of a local musical 'sound' into a mainstream international 'style', the mythologizing of the Haight-Ashbury as the destination for 'seekers' in the Summer of Love, and the ultimate dispersal of the original hippie community to outlying counties in the greater Bay Area and beyond. San Francisco and the Long 60s charts this period with the references to received historical accounts of the time, the musical, visual and literary communications from the counterculture, and retrospective glances from members of the 1960s Haight community via extensive first-hand interviews.
Yet despite the struggles for peace abroad and an end to oppression at home, the connection between popular music and political engagement in the United States in the 1960s had waned by the year 1968. Whereas in the early years of the decade, the ‘message’ was signaled by the sound of an acoustic guitar and a solo voice, amid the turbulence of 1968 the definable ‘politics’ of American popular music was not perceptible by a single sonic marker. Although some recordings betray the indelible scars of social trauma – for example, Nina Simone’s Nuff Said! was recorded three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. – others bear a more general sense of their tumultuous moment. Acoustic singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Buffy Sainte-Marie were still speaking directly to the anti-war and rights movements, but it was the indirect statements that made the more vivid reflection of the disillusioned and disenfranchised.
For these reasons the sounds of the United States in 1968 cannot be essentialized, but they can be heard as foreshadowing the more overt political stances expressed at the following year’s Woodstock Festival; of the synthesis of psychedelia and soul; in the emergence of the ‘confrontational’ sounds of bands such as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, of funk, and of the prototypical rap of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron: all of these musics are the inevitable legacy of the upheavals of 1968.
In this chapter I consider the messages of the politically-charged popular music of 1968, from the Broadway production of the rock musical, Hair, to James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ to the gentler entreaties of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ 'This Is My Country'; the return-to-roots sound of the nascent country-rock of The Band; and the fusions of rock and ‘other’ musics which signaled at once a quest for belonging and the desire for peaceful coexistence to come.
It is my intention in this paper to explore the little-known Genesis 70, not only as a piece of choreography, but also as a limited, live performance of In C. I will draw on extensive personal interviews with Carlos Carvajal, as well as documentary and archive sources, and consider this work as one of a number of notable interactions of the psychedelic ‘underground’ with the mainstream culture of San Francisco in the 1960s.
It is my intention in this paper to address the interactions of the psychedelic subculture in San Francisco with the contemporary local ‘art music’ community, from the underground (San Francisco Tape Music Center) to the mainstream (The San Francisco Ballet). In so doing I hope to trace the indelible imprint of the 'low' on its 'high other', and to explore the mini seismic musical events in 1960s San Francisco which have produced four decades of aftershocks in the cultural life of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.