Music has been a universal part of the human experience for as long as humans have been communicating and sharing the experience of life. By ancient Mesopotamia in the 6000 BCE era, music was integral to religious and daily life, and the earliest known written music was carved into a clay tablet between 1450 and 1250 BCE.
Despite the ubiquitous nature of music in human history, some people feel as though music has never played a significant role in shaping the course of history. This view is likely influenced by the commodification of music today, where the average American listens to music for 20 hours per week. [a]Much of the modern consumption of music has lost its meaning and has taken the role of simply another form of entertainment to be mindlessly and readily absorbed and then forgotten. However, music has played a pivotal role in the history of America itself, particularly in the evolution of the black experience within America and in the American public’s protests for peace and change during the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.
Even before the United States was established as an independent country, music directly aided America’s settlers in defeating their British rulers, not only through music that expressed colonists’ dissent towards Britain but by directly improving the army’s ability in battle. Drummers in the continental army kept morale up during downtime but also had specific jobs both in and out of battle. Their drum patterns served as signals that could be heard over gunfire in battle, allowing for directions to be communicated to everyone at once.
They also drummed to wake soldiers up and to indicate when it was time to go to church or forage for food. Once the States earned their independence and began to participate in the transatlantic slave trade, music quickly became a vital tool for enslaved Africans for survival, communication, resistance, and preservation of a cultural identity, as they now fought to resist their rulers. Slaves were stripped of all personal or cultural ties when they arrived from Africa, treated as nothing more than biological tools for the slave owners.
Almost all slave purchasers made a concerted effort to strip their new slaves of any ethnic identity and worked hard to prevent them from forming one in America, as they feared it would lead to organization and rebellion amongst the slaves. Owners would intentionally split up families, mix Africans from different ethnic groups so that they could not communicate and had cultural differences, and go to extreme lengths to prevent slaves from learning to read and write. This effort was so widespread that, between 1740 and 1834, seven southern states passed anti-literacy laws outright banning enslaved Africans from reading or writing.
Against this pressure, the roots of a black American culture were born, and music was a key component through which enslaved Africans formed a culture and practiced resilience against their enslavers. As the vast majority of slaves were illiterate, singing became the main way that slaves would communicate. Slaves would often sing during their rare moments of rest as a slight reprieve from the grueling labor they were forced to endure, and it was very difficult for owners to regulate how often, or what, slaves would sing. Once resistors to slavery had formed dedicated systems to assist slaves attempting to escape, music was crucial in proliferating these messages across the population with directions and instructions sneaking into the lyrics.
“Follow the Drinking Gourd” was a song referencing both the gourd that slaves used as a water dipper and the Big Dipper constellation, which pointed slaves towards the North Star and an escape from the southern slave states. Harriet Tubman, the famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, had specific songs that she would sing so the escaping slaves would know whether or not it was safe to come out of hiding. Music was especially important in The Underground Railroad’s system, so much so that their songs were coded between signal songs, about intentions to escape, and map songs, with directions on where to meet fellow escapees.
Both slaves and workers along the Railroad would sing certain songs to indicate to others that they would be escaping soon, to indicate that they were forming a plan to escape, or that there was an opportunity approaching. There was even a song called “Wade in the Water,” teaching escapees the strategy of concealing themselves in a river while traveling north so slave hunters and their dogs would have more difficulty seeing them. Music was not simply important in the story of the slaves’ story in America, but a necessary tool for the strategic spread of music was undoubtedly woven into the black American identity from its earliest days as one of the greatest weapons slaves had against the system of slavery.
As America moved into the era of Reconstruction, music’s role in the black American story evolved, yet still continued to play a crucial role in life and culture. The development of the blues in the late 19th and early 20th centuries grew out of work songs, field hollers, and spirituals, and it both maintained and adapted black traditions into what would eventually become distinctly African American musical styles. Bringing these styles into American society meant bringing the harsh realities of life under oppression with them, as blues lyrics often addressed issues of poverty, racial discrimination, and violence against African Americans.
Through this era, the idea of the “New Negro,” one who openly defied white supremacy and believed strongly in racial pride, accountability, and self-determination took place, and it led to black artists beginning to assert themselves publicly as blues music evolved into jazz in the early 20th century. This evolution formed a direct link between the music of the enslaved to resist their system of oppression and the music that began the unapologetic integration of black culture and ideas into white, mainstream American spaces.
Jazz quickly gained popularity among both the black and white American societies, and top jazz artists became the first black celebrities in American history, breaking color barriers in the entertainment industry. Two decades before Jackie Robinson would play for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Duke Ellington was one of the biggest names in American music, with songs such as “Black & Tan Fantasy,” which released in 1928, and “Mood Indigo,” released in 1931, both of which peaked at #3 on the United States music charts, both introducing the concept of black and white societies successfully assimilating and showing that black Americans could succeed in America.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was thrown to the forefront of American politics and social discussion, and music quickly emerged as a powerful motivator and tool for obtaining and voicing public support. Freedom songs, adapted from spirituals, gospel music, and developed music from earlier eras of black American music, were played and sung during protests as a signal of resistance and a unifying device.
Song collectors and organizers would collaborate with musicians and songwriters to disseminate certain songs to activists, with the goal of motivating protestors and increasing psychological morale. “We Shall Overcome,” an evolved gospel hymn, was perhaps the most popular of all freedom songs at the time. The song’s simple, yet powerful lyrics, consisting of “We shall overcome”, “We shall be alright”, “We shall live in peace”, and “We are not afraid” repeated one after the other, lended it the ability to be used very well during mass protests, to the point where it was considered the unofficial . The song was sung during the 1963 March on Washington with over 250,000 protestors in attendance, and helped contribute to the unity put on, helping to put significant pressure on the Kennedy administration to act on civil rights issues.
While the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, the United States had begun an offensive war against Vietnam in 1955 with aims of preventing a communist takeover of the country. Although this invasion was initially supported by a majority of the population, support waned after only a few years of unsuccessful combat. Instead, a fierce, country-wide protest sprung up from the common masses of the American population, with music as the core medium through which they conveyed their messages and hopes for peace. Although public perception of, and support for, the war had been crumbling throughout the 1960s once it became clear victory would not be quick and easy, it would become much more vocal at the turn of the century.
A flurry of some of the most famous anti-war songs of all time were released in 1969, including John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” and Creedence Clearwater’s “Fortunate Son,” which reached #1 and #14 on the Billboard charts, respectively. Two significant public musical demonstrations that year both signified how much opposition there was to the Vietnam war effort and provoked even more resistance, when the Woodstock music festival of 1969 was attended by nearly half a million peaceful protestors of the war, and when a crowd of five hundred thousand protestors sang the previously mentioned “Give Peace a Chance” outside of the White House in Washington, D.C.[b]
The next year, the Ohio National Guard fired on unarmed students at Kent State University who were peacefully protesting the war, and the band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released “Ohio,” whose second half of the song solely consists of the line “Four dead in Ohio” repeated until the instrumental fades away; it is a somber, bitter reminder of the cruel actions taken by the American government to continue a war not worth fighting and not prosecute those responsible for murdering protesting students. It represented the horrors war brought to people’s backyards Like “Fortunate Son,” it debuted at #14 on the charts, indicating a second consecutive year of large, popular anti-war demonstrations in pop culture.
The music and its accompanying messages slowly began to reach the generals and soldiers in Vietnam, who were already struggling mentally and physically, and all but crippled their morale. Support for the war took a significant single-year drop in 1969, which was both represented by and further contributed to by the music created in protest. By the early 1970s, soldiers in Vietnam were increasingly not following orders, and support on the home front was not recovering from where it had dropped in 1969 (Appendix 1). Thanks to the dissemination of anti-war beliefs through the music of the time, the government’s actions were being carefully watched by the American public, and continued suffering and death were not going to be idly accepted anymore; indeed, in 1973, just a few years after widespread opposition began to sprout against the Vietnam War through song, the United States removed its last troops from Vietnam.
Since the very beginning of the United States’ history as a nation, music has worked its way into its fabric. It is hard to conjure up another example of citizens using their freedom of expression so perfectly to show their disapproval of their government actions than the American public and their vocal, musical opposition at the tail end of the Vietnam war, and perhaps nowhere else have humans shown the beautiful range of music’s abilities than in the black American’s heavy struggle for freedom and continual battle for acceptance against their oppressors.
Although it is very difficult to directly link the creation or proliferation of music, musical ideas, or specific songs with progress or events in many cases, it seems incredibly evident based on the evidence in the story of black Americans, and the successful protests of the American public against the war on Vietnam, not complete without the music that was created along the way. The incredible importance that music has played in America’s history is a powerful but sobering reminder of how humans can come together, yet also how much so many people have had to endure and fight throughout our history to get us to where we are today.
By: Ellie Kim
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