The thousands of young adults that arrived in White Lake, New York on August 15th, 1969, wearing "gaily colorful clothing, beads, feather, and hair-any-way-you-please, touted free love, communal living, Asian philosophy and the occult" ("14850 Magazine" 7). Woodstock was a culmination of music and art which are both forms of expression. These hippies broke rules, violated norms, and found themselves as a united array of conglomerated ideas and a similar disgust for the fallacies that were filtered through their brains. The thousands that gathered came to release tensions, feel the music, and come to peace. Terry H. Anderson remarks, "For many participants, the growing sense of community turned this rock festival into an unforgettable counterculture experience" (278). The "hippie culture" exemplified a society as one, there were no superiors or minorities. Women were treated as equals to men and blacks were treated equivalently to whites. This sense of unity demonstrated the attitudes and feelings in the "three days of peace and music" at Woodstock. The hippie culture disturbed those that were still conforming to the government and were outraged by the nudity, sex and drugs. Anderson says, "Hippie culture was having an impact on the idea of revolution, for cultural activists began talking about the development of a Youth Nation committed to nonviolence concerned about one another" (279). This culture was engulfing many youths into a life of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." Free expression for this group came through their apparel, affects of drugs but most importantly, their music. Woodstock was a collaboration of many diverse artists, such as Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin and many other musicians who expressed their feelings through lyrics and the rhythm. These artists performed songs about the problems of war, culture, government, family, drugs, and sex. For example, High Time, written by Robert Hunter and performed by Jerry Garcia musically denotes, I was having a high time, living the good life These lyrics symbolize the use of drugs and looking at the deeper meaning of life. When she says goodbye, she is telling him to look deeper into her words, but he is high and living the good life, meaning that the good life is drugs. Lyrics like these are symbolic to the time period because of the idea of free expression. Hunter is demonstrating the hippie culture by expressing his ideas and views of society freely. Many other artists sang about the troubles of war and ideas that Americans openly shared about it. Drugs were influencing factors in the making of music and listening of music. The most commonly used drugs were LSD, marijuana, and cocaine. Marijuana intensified sensory perception, allowed for the user to let go of emotions and suspend reality (class notes). This made it easy for song writers to interpret their feelings into words and therefore produce music that was induced by thought and feeling. Woodstock drew a crowd of 500,000 young hippies, who wanted to smoke dope, as marijuana was commonly called, listen to music, and make love. These young adults had innovative ideas, but could not reveal these ideas in fear of breaking the norms, until Woodstock. Woodstock was an event that symbolized peace and free expression. The participants at this love festival represented a new culture, that was influenced by "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." Built up anger from societal pressures and an irrelevant war fueled young adults to become the individual in which they longed to be. Which brings me to a question... "Am I happy or in misery'" Bibliography: Hendrix, Jimi. Purple Haze. Hunter, Robert. High Time. Katz, Gene Ira. "Woodstock 25." 14850 Magazine July, 1994. July 1994 . Magoc, Chris. Class Lecture. 19 October 2017, 31 October 2017, 2 November 2017 网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文作品权归所有；未经官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。， |
