American Music and Protest - Essay Example

In essence, artists such as Haggard, Sandler, Dylan and Lennon used music to express what they were going through as a reaction to what they saw their society go through. Music became a medium of expression for all manner of thought and emotions to go beyond the common feelings of love and sorrow towards more complex emotional states such as regretting the actions of a nation or taking the death of innocents in stride. As discussed by (Rodnitzky,1999, Pg. 56), “Protest music began as a merger of topical political songs and union songs”.

Protest music certainly did not become a mainstream genre of music but there were several notable songs which can be discussed with regard to how some musicians saw war protestors and how they reacted to the idea of war. With war, comes support for the war or protests against the war and it is about these very war protestors that Merl Haggard’s Okie from Muskogee has been performed. Haggard seems to have no patience with the individuals who were protesting against the war in Vietnam since the first line of the song makes it clear that people in Muskogee don’t smoke Marijuana.

Similarly, Haggard mentions that the taking of LSD and burning draft cards is only an activity such protesters would engage in. The image of the war protester given by Haggard is a person who is promiscuous, and behaves as the hippies do in San Francisco. In comparison Haggard takes the city of Muskogee in Oklahoma to be a city where people remain patriotic even if they do not believe in the war. They may protest, but they are not against American cultural or social values as noted in the song, “We dont smoke marijuana in Muskogee;/ And we dont take our trips on LSD.

(Haggard, 1969, Pg. 1)”. In fact, even famous protest song writers recognize that by leading people to do something, the performers may actually become what they hate. As discussed by Peddie (2006), remaining true to the ideals was difficult for Dylan himself who