Simon And Garfunkel: Folk Music Analysis

Perhaps one of the strongest demonstrations of the power of music in “Sonny’s Blues” is the street revival. Everyone has seen these types of revivals before. Every song has been heard by the crowd, but when the music starts everyone stops, watches, and listens. “As the singing filled the air the watching, listening faces underwent a change, the eyes focusing on something within; the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them; and time seemed, nearly, to fall away from the sullen, belligerent, battered faces” (57). The music from the street revival helps lifts the hopelessness from the crowd and provides a sense of relief. Music is able to bring people from all walks of life together. It gives them a sense of calm and ease, an assurance that something is there to help. Music listens.

Analysis of 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night by Simon and Garfunkel In expressive arts we are studing the topics the 60’s. We listened to the song “7 O'clock News/Silent Night” Simon and Garfunkel. In 1956, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were juniors at Forest Hills High School in New York City. They began playing together as a group called Tom and Jerry, with Simon as Jerry Landis and Garfunkel as Tom Graph, so called because he always liked to track hits on the pop charts.

Folk music is a traditional style of music that has existed for generations. It is worldwide and each country has its own type of folk music. African folk music is the strongest influence noticeable in the piece ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’. Folk music is a very traditional style of music, so it is evident through the Afro-cuban instrumentation in the piece that it has its origins in Folk. Furthermore, African folk music's main purpose is for dancing. This is evident in the upbeat rhythm with the bass drum playing on each beat, which makes the piece easy to dance to. Finally, folk music is rhythmic and melodic rather than harmonic in style. Simon has used this folk feel after the intro in the music (see

The folk genre has origins all the way back to the 19th century, which in many ways is mirrored by many popular genres in modern musical genres. To make it easy folk music is merely, “ballads and songs which are composed and conveyed vocally, without being written.”(Mclean 12) Though what we distinguish ‘folk’ today as stylistically very different to what ‘folk’ was during the 19th century, at its basic form, it still holds the same standards and concepts, describing the simpler times. Through vigorous research, it’s hard to overlook the past and expansion of folk music originating from the south, and how it could help understand the significance for observing and expanding the dynamics of southern race relationships. Equally, race

The origins of country music were the folk music of mostly white, working-class Americans. According to Sean Dooley who contributed to “The History of Country Music”, they blended popular songs, Irish and Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, cowboy songs, and various musical traditions from European immigrant communities. In the 1930s, radio and recordings had begun to popularize the new style, renamed as “country and western”. It included country, gospel, bluegrass, cowboy musicals, brother and sister duets, and western swing (Dooley). The flip side of country music was jazz.

Since the creation of the genre in the late seventeenth century, patriotic music has told the stories behind many of the songs that have now become part of the American national

I guess you could say my obsession with musicals began in fifth grade, in a dark classroom with twenty or so other students all huddled around a small television. Sitting cross legged on the floor, my music teacher wanted to show the class a video; I don’t quite remember why. It was the first song of the Legally Blonde musical, called “Omigod you guys”. Upon hearing that song I wanted to listen to the rest of the musical. It was the first musical I have ever watched, I was captivated. Now four years later I’m hooked on a different musical, Hamilton, by Lin Manuel Miranda.

In the realm of music, words and melodies work together in order to form a complete idea of an artist’s work. However, by abandoning the melodies and reading closely into the lyrics of a song, readers are able to draw meaning and make observations from the text that could be overshadowed by its melodies. A fine example of a song where this method is applicable is Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” Examining the lyrics reveals the story of a man making a pilgrimage to Elvis Presley’s Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee in the same way a religious person would journey to a holy site. Through usage of imagery, tone, and metaphorical devices throughout allow this song to function as a comically surreal poem.

The evolution of the 1960s “protest song” has typically been associated with Joni Mitchell, but the expanding range of protest songs in the 1970s defines her continued presence as a leader in terms of environmental activism. More than just a vestige of the late 1960s, Mitchell continued to write protest songs long after many other artists from the 1960s had changed their lyrical content. In the “mellow turn” of early 1970s country rock and folk music, Mitchell represented a new environmental shift that moved away from the proto-typical antiwar songs of the 1960s. Mitchell, along with other musicians of this era, defined a shifting musical focus on songwriting and musical presentation during the early 1970as:

Whiskey Lullaby is a song sung by Brad Paisley (ft. Alison Krauss) which narrates the story of a soldier coming back from war to find his wife in bed with another man. After this, the man drinks away his life trying to escape the pain until he commits suicide. Then the song continues to talk about how the woman follows down the same path after hearing about his death. In the end of the song they both get buried next to each other which symbolizes how they are finally together. The audience for this country song is those who have served or who have had family members serve. The unexpectedness of how life will figure itself out when the soldiers return. Also, how hard it is for families when their loved ones are out fighting, and they are

Day night, ragtime musicdanced out of the neighborhood honky-tonks. At night, Little Louis fell asleep to the sad songs of the local blues singers. Those sorrowful songs sounded like they were full of all the pain in the world.

The 1960’s in America was often referred to as an age of protest because of not only the social protests that have taken place, but also for the upbringing of protest music, which became very popular during that era. The roots of protest music were largely from folk music of American musicians during 1950’. Folk musicians, such as Joe Hill, composed labor union protest songs and distributed song booklets, hoping to “fan the flames of discontent.” (Rodnitzky pg. 6) Symbolically, this meant that the songs, the fan, would reduce the uncontrollable social protests that the United States government caused with the misleading information that they did not keep their word on, or the flames of discontent. Other folk musicians, such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, traveled around the United States spreading their “message music” and becoming involved in political movements. Guthrie and Seeger were the pioneers of protest music, bringing their folk music to New York City and merging it with urban music. Woody’s songs were about the masses, often identifying problems and offering solutions. While Seeger was cautious about referring to his music as folk music, preferring the term “people’s music,” meaning that not everyone may had the same thoughts, but they all expressed it in their own unique musical sense. For both Woody and Seeger, folk music was a necessity in these protests, when the needs

Folk music was shaped and influenced by segregation during the Great Depression between blacks and whites, which led to divergent forms of African-American folk music in isolated towns where black music could evolve from its African origins. Even before the Great Depression, earlier African American music styles have influenced the folk music of southern Appalachia. The banjo is one of the most important musical instruments playing in Appalachia folk music, and it is a little known fact that this instrument was introduced by African Americans, as well as African work songs and chants to this region.1 This paper will address how segregation between blacks and whites have influenced folk music, if at all, and if racial tensions

The 1960’s was an era of revolution and social change in the United States. Painters, dancers, actors, musicians and many more artists all wanted to portray societies immoral issues through their art. Musicians played a very prominent role in providing society with an outlet on the importance of this change. Within these musicians was a folk rock singer and songwriter by the name of Robert Allen Zimmerman, or as America knows him, Bob Dylan. He is known and honored around the world for his influence on popular music and culture, however, he is much more than that (Wood 313). The beginning of Bob Dylan’s career as a singer and songwriter was marked by his repetitive emphasis on social change throughout his protest songs which include “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Masters of War,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’”; with each song, Dylan exposes many issues that affected, not one, but many lives as he aimed to spread social and political consciousness to society.

     Rock ‘n’ roll music came of age in the sixties which was a period in the nation’s history when a young generation expressed their anguish and sense of alienation to the country’s social establishments by searching for new answers to the age-old questions concerning the meaning of life, the value of the individual, and the nature of truth and spirituality (Harris 306). The classic rock music which was created during this period gave form and substance to this search. Songs such as “My Generation” by the Who recorded the keen sense of alienation that young people felt from the past and the “Establishment” and it also showed the keen sense of community they felt among themselves.      Classic albums such as the Beatles’ “White Album,” the Who’s “Who’s Next,” Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited, and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” capture what was essential about the time because they were both a result of that time and because they helped to produce it by reinforcing the younger generation’s feelings of alienation and separation.      Although