Mat Callahan

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love floods the media with debates and celebrations of music, political movements, “flower power,” “acid rock,” and “hippies,”The Explosion of Deferred Dreams offers a critical reexamination of the interwoven political and musical happenings in San Francisco in the Sixties. Author, musician, and native San Franciscan Mat Callahan explores the dynamic links between the Black Panthers and Sly and the Family Stone, the United Farm Workers and Santana, the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the New Left and the counterculture. Callahan’s meticulous, impassioned arguments both expose and reframe the political and social context for the San Francisco Sound and the vibrant subcultural uprisings with which it is associated. Using dozens of original interviews, primary sources, and personal experiences, the author shows how the intense interplay of artistic and political movements put San Francisco, briefly, in the forefront of a worldwide revolutionary upsurge. A must-read for any musician, historian, or person who “was there” (or longed to have been), The Explosion of Deferred Dreams is substantive and provocative, inviting us to reinvigorate our historical sense-making of an era that assumes a mythic role in the contemporary American zeitgeist.

Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965–1975

Explosion of Deferred Dreams

Theo Dorgan

James Connolly

James Connolly Heron

The James Connolly Songbook

Songs of Freedom

Yvonne Moore

A History of Struggle in Song

Working Class-Heroes

Contributions by Franz Andres Morrissey, Mat Callahan, Suzanne G. Cusick, James E. Dillard, Steven Garabedian, Jim Rogers, Elissa Stroman, Britta Sweers, and Dick Weissman What exactly is American music? Is blackface minstrelsy American music? Is Hawaiian music? Is “The Star-Spangled Banner,” written by an Englishman, American music? And what exactly is “Rockin’ in the Free World”? Why does the Voice of America use jazz music to promote America? These and many other questions are discussed in Bombs Bursting in Air: Music and the State. The relationship between music and the state has been the topic of controversy for at least 2,500 years. The oft-quoted passage from Plato’s Republic, “the musical modes are never changed without changes in the most basic of the City’s laws,” not only underscores the importance of music in general but warns of music’s ability to affect how society is governed. The state must therefore employ music to serve its ends while at the same time guarding against the lawlessness and subversion music is capable of introducing. Bombs Bursting in Air gathers contributions from historians and musicologists to explore the role of music in the history of the United States. The essayists exhume music that has been forgotten or deliberately buried while drawing comparison with what has been promoted as “American music” by the academy, the music industry, and journalism, as well as by the US State Department.

Music and the State

Bombs Bursting in Air

Jim Rogers

Ours is an era when human genes can be copied and patented. From genetically modified foods to digital piracy, the concept of intellectual property (IP) and the laws upholding it play a foundational role in our society, but its political and ideological dimensions have rarely been understood outside of specialist circles. This collection cuts through the legal jargon that so often surrounds IP, to provide both a comprehensive history and analysis that explores the corporate interests that shape its conception and the movements that are developing alternatives. As the nature of industry changes, we might ask: what are the wider implications of the concept of IP, be it for agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies or the film and music industries? Has IP law has been used to safeguard and assert the ownership of ideas and creativity, or is it an essential foundation of our culture? Today, with mounting challenges from the growth of free software and open source movements, this collection provides an accessible and alternative guide to IP, exploring its significance within the wider struggle between capital and the commons.

A Critical Guide to Intellectual Property

Working-Class Heroes is an organic melding of history, music, and politics that demonstrates with remarkably colorful evidence that workers everywhere will struggle to improve their conditions of life. And among them will be workers who share an insight: in order to better our lot, we must act collectively to change the world. This profusely illustrated treasury of song sheets, lyrics, photographs, histories, and biographical sketches explores the notion that our best hope lies in the capacity of ordinary working people to awaken to the need to emancipate ourselves and all of humanity. Featuring over a dozen songwriters, from Joe Hill to Aunt Molly Jackson,Working-Class Heroes delivers a lyrical death blow to the falsehood that so-called political songs of the twentieth century were all written by intellectuals in New York. Many, like Ella May Wiggins, were murdered by the bosses. Others, like Sarah Ogan Gunning, watched their children starve to death and their husbands die of black lung, only to rise up singing against the system that caused so much misery. Most of the songs collected here are from the early twentieth century, yet their striking relevance to current affairs invites us to explore the historical conditions that inspired their creation: systemic crisis, advancing fascism, and the threat of world war. In the face of violent terror, these working-class songwriters bravely stood up to fight oppression. Such courage is immortal, and the songs of such heroes can still lift our spirits, if we sing them today. Featured in this twenty-song collection are Sarah Ogan Gunning, Ralph Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, Ella May Wiggins, Joe Hill, Paul Robeson, John Handcox, Aunt Molly Jackson, Jim Garland, Alfred Hayes, Joseph Brandon, and several anonymous proletarian songwriters whose names have been long forgotten, though their words will never die.

A History of Struggle in Song: A Songbook

Working-Class Heroes

Mat Callahan

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