Movements, Music, and Meaning: Cultural Narratives in Vietnam Era and Post 9/11 Anti-War Music

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 11. Arts, Identity, and Social Justice

Abstract

This thesis examines the presence of widely circulating cultural narratives in the lyrics of approximately eighty anti-war songs from the Vietnam and post-9/11 eras. Although it is in conversation with contemporary social movements’ literature, this paper, unlike much prior work on the movement/music relationship, privileges culture as opposed to movements. Rather than looking at how movements “use” or “mobilize” culture, it views social movements as cultural antennae, both picking up on trends and cultural narratives, and broadcasting their own altered cultural meanings back into the “cultural airways.” It sees music as a cultural medium which acquires cultural meanings from its surroundings, alters those meanings, synthesizes new ones, and perpetuates old ones. Drawing on comparative and narrative analysis approaches informed by grounded theory methods, this paper seeks to examine the movement-music relationship from a new angle by attempting to identify cultural narratives and narratives of resistance present in antiwar music and to chart the transformation of those narratives over time.

Author

• Jonathan Nathaniel Redman, UC Irvine