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Populär Culture Review
Whereas some songs or artists communicated through radical and
subversive political messages, actual Philanthropie events organized to raise money
were rare occasions in the early to mid 1960s, and even if there were a few concerts
held for charitable purposes, the usual festival coverage had been local newspaper
accounts of the events. The only national news coverage came when riots occurred at
jazz festivals or rock and roll concerts (Peterson 97-123). This is a clear example of
rock music as a form of counterculture and threat to conservative America as late as
the late 1960s. Also, it is important in this regard to consider the social relations of
rock music with the mass media.
The late 1960s was the period that rock musicians established themselves
as the agents of social change in the United States. Folk rock music’s social and
political conscience reached its summit, as such high-profile politically active
musicians began to write and perform in what has become to be known as the
protest. Berger argued that such protest music “voiced from a left-wing perspective”
(57) and antagonized the powers-that-be, condemning and proposing possible
Solutions to social injustices. While music from this period and after did not always
hint Solutions, they fimetioned “to educate, motivate, and raise consciousness” (57).
In this sense, the folk rock movement that promoted the Civil Rights movement
shares its common thread with charity efforts in that it raised public awareness even
if no fundraising for the cause took place.
The two concerts that showcased rock music’s political involvement during
the decade of the 1960s were the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 and
Woodstock Festival in 1969. These festivals featured line-ups that Struck a balance
between artists from The United States and British Invasion bands, in addition to
several from the Third World. These events not only “played an integral role in
educating young adult participants in the counterculture and motivating them to act
against social injustices and inequalities” (Haycock and Anderson 4), but also
became two of the very first wide-scale non-benefit rock concerts of the era.
Although these two concerts did not employ charitable fundraising and are
not generally regarded and understood as true charity events, they still provided an
interpretive history of the rise and decline of the 1960s counterculture spirit and
serve as a prelude to the culture that would emerge in the 1970s and 1980s. It is
especially true for the Monterey International Pop Festival and Woodstock because
they constructed the phenomenon of the rock music concert in the late 1960s, setting
the stage for the future.
From a commercial standpoint, it is intriguing to note that most of the
major music festivals of the 1960s—The Monterey International Pop Festival (1967)
and Woodstock (1969), and even the infamous Altamont Festival (1969)—have been
captured on either films or albums (or on both media), and as Kitts noted, much of
what we know and think about these festivals comes from the films and recordings,
which soon became a marketing pattem for the future Philanthropie events to follow
(715). The television and recording industries have packaged these events as
historical Commodities that competed with other cultural products on the market.
Grossberg wrote that “The history of rock and roll-if not rock and roll
itself—is largely a set of images: musical and visual, live and recorded, personal and