Since August 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair looms large when recounting the history and impact of the baby boom generation and the societal upheavals of the Sixties. Scholars study the sociological, political, musical, and artistic impact of the event and use it as a cultural touchstone when exploring alternative perspectives or seeking clarity. This interdisciplinary annotated bibliography records the details of over 400 English-language resources on the Festival, including books, chapters, articles, websites, transcriptions and videos. Divided into six main subsections―Culture & Society, History, Biography, Music, Film, Arts & Literature―for ease of consultation Woodstock Scholarship sheds light on all facets of a key happening in our collective history. Throughout the 1960s, popular music became increasingly reflective and suggestive of the rising political and social consciousness of the youth culture. Examples can be seen in the development of the protest song genre within the folk music boom of the early Sixties and the marriage of lifestyle to music first reflected by The Beatles with fashion, followed by psychedelic music with the emerging drug culture. Woodstock was where these themes coalesced, thus becoming the defining and last great moment of the 1960s. However, Woodstock also represented an abundant amount of experiences and ideas and moments. Thus, when exploring the complicated accounts and numerous facets of America during the turbulent Sixties one discovers scholarship on the key subjects, such as the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights Movement, often considering and debating the importance, relevance, and epic nature of Woodstock. Multiple narratives emerge: a radical engagement of the hippie movement, an overt commercial exploitation of youth culture, a political statement. Woodstock scholarship does not stand alone as field of study, but it is at the cross-road of a number of disciplines―music history, cultural studies, sociology, arts and literature, media studies, politics and economics. Providing full bibliographical details and concise, informative annotation for each entry, Woodstock Scholarship is an essential tool for students, scholars, teachers, and librarians in all these areas, as well as for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of both the Woodstock Music and Art Fair phenomenon and of the confluence of music, commerce and politics.

Known as the "Father of Festival Sound," Bill Hanley (b. 1937) made his indelible mark as a sound engineer at the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair. Hanley is credited with creating the sound of Woodstock, which literally made the massive festival possible. Stories of his on-the-fly solutions resonate as legend among festivalgoers, music lovers, and sound engineers. Since the 1950s his passion for audio has changed the way audiences listen to and technicians approach quality live concert sound. John Kane examines Hanley’s echoing impact on the entire field of sound engineering, that crucial but often-overlooked carrier wave of contemporary music. Hanley’s innovations founded the sound reinforcement industry and launched a new area of technology, rich with clarity and intelligibility. By the early seventies the post-Woodstock festival mass gathering movement collapsed. The music industry shifted, and new sound companies surfaced. After huge financial losses and facing stiff competition, Hanley lost his hold on a business he helped create. By studying both his history during the festivals and his independent business ventures, Kane seeks to present an honest portrayal of Hanley and his acumen and contributions. Since 2011, Kane conducted extensive research, including over one hundred interviews with music legends from the production and performance side of the industry. These carefully selected respondents witnessed Hanley’s expertise at various events and venues like Lyndon B. Johnson’s second inauguration, the Newport Folk/Jazz Festivals, the Beatles' final tour of 1966, the Fillmore East, Madison Square Garden, and more. The Last Seat in the House will intrigue and inform anyone who cares about the modern music industry.

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This book uses humour and personal insight to weave tales, analysis, and history in this insider account of an enlightened populist student movement. The students involved took their citizenship seriously by asking the authorities who they were benefiting and who they were ignoring. They altered the prevailing culture by asking, “why not do something different”? Unlike other books on the Sixties, this book shows how predominantly working middle-class white students in a very conservative region initiated radical changes. They ushered in a new era of protecting women and minorities from discriminatory practices. This vivid account of bringing conservative students around to support social justice projects illustrates how step-by-step democratic change results in reshaping a nation’s character. Across the globe, students are seeking change. In the US, over 80 percent believe they have the power to change the country, and 60 percent think they’re part of that movement. This book’s portrayal of such efforts in the Sixties will inspire and guide those students.

It is common to hear talk of how music can inspire crowds, move individuals and mobilise movements. We know too of how governments can live in fear of its effects, censor its sounds and imprison its creators. At the same time, there are other governments that use music for propaganda or for torture. All of these examples speak to the idea of music's political importance. But while we may share these assumptions about music's power, we rarely stop to analyse what it is about organised sound - about notes and rhythms - that has the effects attributed to it. This is the first book to examine systematically music's political power. It shows how music has been at the heart of accounts of political order, at how musicians from Bono to Lily Allen have claimed to speak for peoples and political causes. It looks too at the emergence of music as an object of public policy, whether in the classroom or in the copyright courts, whether as focus of national pride or employment opportunities. The book brings together a vast array of ideas about music's political significance (from Aristotle to Rousseau, from Adorno to Deleuze) and new empirical data to tell a story of the extraordinary potency of music across time and space. At the heart of the book lies the argument that music and politics are inseparably linked, and that each animates the other.

Bob Dylan’s abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous. Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

Attempts to track rock and roll -- as music, as culture, as headline maker, as business -- from its hazy origins to the present day.