Battle Hymn of the Republic: The relationship between Music and War

    

            Johnny Cash once said that “the only good thing that ever came out of a war was a song.”[1] Although Cash’s comment was centered on the ongoing Vietnam War at the time, his quote underscores the relationship between music and war.  Since the American Revolution and the War of 1812, patriotic songs such as “Yankee Doodle” and “the Star-Spangled Banner” became the symbolic tunes of a growing and developing nation. In recent years, with the current Iraq War, music has been a prominent instrument in expressing either patriotism, nationalism, and of course criticism.  This is evident with the controversy surrounding the Dixie Chicks’ political comments, which has spurred negative responses from the general public.  Many believe that the musicians were not patriotic and were not giving the proper moral support to the American soldiers fighting overseas.  This is quite different from the events that took place nearly forty years ago, during the height of the Vietnam War, in which the anti-war movement challenged the government’s political and military policy through music and poetry.  This essay will review a select group of songs dating back to the Civil War and up to the Vietnam War to underscore the relationship between music and war. 

[More]

Group 5 received an A for your mid-term.  Good work!

[More]

Hello,

You may have noticed I added an image of Metallica's logo combined with a similar logo for Mozart as your group icon.  If you want to change your icon at any time, just e-mail me an image.

 I looked at your proposal and have some comments:

* In the second paragraph of the Purpose Section you talk of "cross-disciplinarity," but I would stick with transdiciplinarity.  The first implies a simple sharing whereas the latter implies that the paradigm of study is changed for all participants.

* $1,400 seems high for catering.  Is this a quote or an estimate?  Can you itemize it more thoroughly?

* Where do you plan to get the other funds from if you only get $1,500 from the Provost?  You might work this into your planning timeline.  Are you collecting a cover fee from participants?  How much for each person...academic specials?

* Lecturers sometimes cost in the thousands or sometimes waive their fee, but $150 for an honorarium seems a bit odd to me.  I'd cut it entirely or make it more substantial.

* Don't forget to list a budget total!

* Your CVs, as a few of you noted, are missing.  You don't need to e-mail them to me, but certainly include them in your packet for the grant this week and try to print out copies for me for the next class.

** Other than these points, the keynote speaker CV and the rest of the project looks just fine.  Feel free to e-mail me at thisstarvingwriter@yahoo.com if you have further questions.  Take care and I will see you in class.

~ Tom Morgan

[More]

Please, everyone else chime in here too, but as I see it, we are organizing a conference that will allow scholars in all kinds of disciplines to discourse about the links between music and death.  We ourselves will not necessarily be deciding the specific information that will be provided, but rather will have put out a call for papers and have the conference broken down into broad categories for sessions, like "Art music through history" or "Death and the contemporary music scene" or perhaps "Music, death, and war," etc.  This will differ from a course in that we will not be designing an specific curriculum, but rather we are structuring a kind of forum for people to share research on these topics. Our direction will lie in our choices as far as what papers to accept, and which keynote speakers we choose relating to the issues we want addressed in particular.

Does that help - did I answer your qustion at all?

[More]