Books by Sarah Hill
San Francisco and the Long 60s
San Francisco and the Long 60s tells the fascinating story of the legacy of popular music in San ... more San Francisco and the Long 60s tells the fascinating story of the legacy of popular music in San Francisco between the years 1965-69. It is also a chronicle of the impact this brief cultural flowering has continued to have in the city – and more widely in American culture – right up to the present day. The aim of San Francisco and the Long 60s is to question the standard historical narrative of the time, situating the local popular music of the 1960s in the city's contemporary artistic and literary cultures: at once visionary and hallucinatory, experimental and traditional, singular and universal. These qualities defined the aesthetic experience of the local culture in the 1960s, and continue to inform the cultural and social life of the Bay Area even fifty years later.
The brief period 1965-69 marks the emergence of the psychedelic counterculture in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, the development of a local musical 'sound' into a mainstream international 'style', the mythologizing of the Haight-Ashbury as the destination for 'seekers' in the Summer of Love, and the ultimate dispersal of the original hippie community to outlying counties in the greater Bay Area and beyond. San Francisco and the Long 60s charts this period with the references to received historical accounts of the time, the musical, visual and literary communications from the counterculture, and retrospective glances from members of the 1960s Haight community via extensive first-hand interviews.
Peter Gabriel, from Genesis to Growing Up
'Blerwytirhwng?' The Place of Welsh Pop Music
Papers by Sarah Hill
Minority Language, Majority Canon
In this paper I explore the idea of ‘canon’ in a lesser-spoken language culture. The sense of ‘ca... more In this paper I explore the idea of ‘canon’ in a lesser-spoken language culture. The sense of ‘canon’ in Welsh popular music is intimately related to political and cultural activity, and ‘canonical’ figures are often inseparable from their involvement in the movement to secure a future for the Welsh language. By examining the relationship between the Anglo-American ‘majority’ canon and its ‘minority’ Welsh counterpart, I engage with the process of historicizing Welsh popular music on its own musical and chronological terms as but one in a possible network of ‘micro-canons’ that exist to challenge Anglo-American cultural dominance.
Ending It All: Genesis and Revelation
Popular Music 32/2 , May 2013
Because of their brevity, many pop songs of the last fifty years seemingly elude the application ... more Because of their brevity, many pop songs of the last fifty years seemingly elude the application of narrative theory. But the deliberate lengthening of individual tracks during the early years of progressive rock exposes them to precisely that kind of examination. One such song is ‘Supper’s Ready’, which closes the 1972 Genesis album Foxtrot. This allegorical 23-minute epic, abundant with references to the Book of Revelation, provides an intriguing model for the ‘concept song,’ and confounds the listener’s expectations – lyrical, musical, narrative, structural, and temporal. In this article I explore the seven tableaux of ‘Supper’s Ready’, paying particular attention to the treatment of the apocalyptic theme, apply formalist and narrative theories of interpretation, and consider ways in which the song’s design demands that the listener engage with both its concept and its construction.
'This Is My Country': American Popular Music and Political Engagement in 1968
Music and Protest in 1968, 2013
1968 was a year of upheaval in America. President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war i... more 1968 was a year of upheaval in America. President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the war in the early years of his presidency proved unpopular and costly, with the loss of 30,000 American lives by the end of 1968; his announcement in March 1968 that ‘all air naval and artillery bombardment of north Vietnam was to cease’ was delivered in the same speech as his announcement that he would not run for re-election. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy shook the foundations of the fracturing Civil Rights Movement while the Black Panther Party was branded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as ‘the greatest threat to the internal security’ of the United States.
Yet despite the struggles for peace abroad and an end to oppression at home, the connection between popular music and political engagement in the United States in the 1960s had waned by the year 1968. Whereas in the early years of the decade, the ‘message’ was signaled by the sound of an acoustic guitar and a solo voice, amid the turbulence of 1968 the definable ‘politics’ of American popular music was not perceptible by a single sonic marker. Although some recordings betray the indelible scars of social trauma – for example, Nina Simone’s Nuff Said! was recorded three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. – others bear a more general sense of their tumultuous moment. Acoustic singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Buffy Sainte-Marie were still speaking directly to the anti-war and rights movements, but it was the indirect statements that made the more vivid reflection of the disillusioned and disenfranchised.
For these reasons the sounds of the United States in 1968 cannot be essentialized, but they can be heard as foreshadowing the more overt political stances expressed at the following year’s Woodstock Festival; of the synthesis of psychedelia and soul; in the emergence of the ‘confrontational’ sounds of bands such as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, of funk, and of the prototypical rap of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron: all of these musics are the inevitable legacy of the upheavals of 1968.
In this chapter I consider the messages of the politically-charged popular music of 1968, from the Broadway production of the rock musical, Hair, to James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ to the gentler entreaties of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ 'This Is My Country'; the return-to-roots sound of the nascent country-rock of The Band; and the fusions of rock and ‘other’ musics which signaled at once a quest for belonging and the desire for peaceful coexistence to come.
From the New Jerusalem to the Secret World: Peter Gabriel and the Shifting Self
in Peter Gabriel, from Genesis to Growing Up, 2010
In considering Peter Gabriel's recorded output an overall topical shift becomes clear. Beginning ... more In considering Peter Gabriel's recorded output an overall topical shift becomes clear. Beginning with the mythology of Genesis, through the African imprint of the 3rd & 4th solo albums, to the emotional catharsis of Us, Peter Gabriel's progression from public schoolboy persona (Foxtrot, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) to a more questioning persona ('Here Comes the Flood', 'Solsbury Hill') to a more questing persona ('Lay Your Hands On Me', 'Love To Be Loved') is likewise chartable musically in his progression from progressive rock to pastoral 'English' rock to African-influenced 'other' rock to the multicultural tapestry of his most recent solo work. In broad terms, this exploration of the subjective and the embracing of the 'other' suggests the shedding of a certain notion of 'Englishness’. The social and political ramifications of these excursions beyond the English may be observed in the communities organized in and around the WOMAD festivals; and the musical effects may be considered from the perspective of ‘new’ musicological practices. This paper will suggest such an intersection between the subjective and the collective, the self and the other, with a view toward understanding Peter Gabriel's 'shifting self' as the metaphor for a larger musical process.
Mary Hopkin and the Deep Throat of Culture
in She's So Fine: Reflections on Whiteness, Femininity, Adolescence and Class in 1960s Music, Aug 2010
When Deep Soul Met the Love Crowd: Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival, June 16-18, 1967
Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time, Feb 2006
The Monterey Pop Festival was the first of its kind. Not only did it establish the template for ... more The Monterey Pop Festival was the first of its kind. Not only did it establish the template for the Woodstock and Isle of Wight Festivals, it was one of the pivotal moments of the Summer of Love. The music ranged from folk (Simon & Garfunkel) to blues (Paul Butterfield Blues Band) to rock (The Who) and beyond (Ravi Shankar), but it was Otis Redding's performance which embodied a moment of transition in American cultural history. As a collaborative effort with Booker T and the MGs, Redding's performance was a statement of racial inclusion; as a twenty-minute segment within a three-day festival, it was a career-defining moment; and as a cultural artefact it defined the festival's remit of 'love, flowers and music'. The impact of Monterey Pop on Redding's career was only posthumously suggested by '(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay', but rather than viewing his performance through the lens of nostalgia, it is here considered as the meeting between 'the love crowd' and deep soul, at a point when soul music itself was in transition.
Beyond Borders: The Female Welsh Pop Voice
Radical Musicology 1, 2006
For Welsh-language popular musicians, contributing to the Anglo-American market entails both ling... more For Welsh-language popular musicians, contributing to the Anglo-American market entails both linguistic and musical border crossings. For the female Welsh popular musician, this problem has traditionally been compounded by the negotiation of culturally-specific gender roles, vocality and presentation. In this article I examine the parallel careers of two Welsh women, Mary Hopkin and Cerys Matthews, who crossed over successfully from the Welsh-language popular music scene into the mainstream Anglo-American market. These women embodied specific moments in Welsh cultural history, and their voices retained palpable vestiges of an ‘otherness’ attributable to the shared musical tradition that informed their vocal style. I argue that these women’s voices serve as a metaphor for the process of Welsh identity, challenging the role of the female pop voice in Wales, and the Welsh pop voice in Anglo-America.
(with Dai Griffiths) Postcolonial Music in Contemporary Wales: Hybridities and Weird Geographies
Postcolonial Wales, Jun 2005
Families of Resemblance: Welsh Popular Music and Other Marginalia
Book Reviews by Sarah Hill
Alice Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture
Cardiff University, Wales
Mina Yang, California Polyphony
David W. Bernstein, ed., The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde
Olivier Julien, ed., Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today
Monte Dutton, True to the Roots: American Music Revealed
Stan Hawkins, Settling the Pop Score
Talks by Sarah Hill
'Psychedelia and Its High Other in 1960s San Francisco'
'Psychedelia and Its High Other in 1960s San Francisco'
Uploads
Books by Sarah Hill
The brief period 1965-69 marks the emergence of the psychedelic counterculture in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood, the development of a local musical 'sound' into a mainstream international 'style', the mythologizing of the Haight-Ashbury as the destination for 'seekers' in the Summer of Love, and the ultimate dispersal of the original hippie community to outlying counties in the greater Bay Area and beyond. San Francisco and the Long 60s charts this period with the references to received historical accounts of the time, the musical, visual and literary communications from the counterculture, and retrospective glances from members of the 1960s Haight community via extensive first-hand interviews.
Papers by Sarah Hill
Yet despite the struggles for peace abroad and an end to oppression at home, the connection between popular music and political engagement in the United States in the 1960s had waned by the year 1968. Whereas in the early years of the decade, the ‘message’ was signaled by the sound of an acoustic guitar and a solo voice, amid the turbulence of 1968 the definable ‘politics’ of American popular music was not perceptible by a single sonic marker. Although some recordings betray the indelible scars of social trauma – for example, Nina Simone’s Nuff Said! was recorded three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. – others bear a more general sense of their tumultuous moment. Acoustic singer-songwriters such as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, and Buffy Sainte-Marie were still speaking directly to the anti-war and rights movements, but it was the indirect statements that made the more vivid reflection of the disillusioned and disenfranchised.
For these reasons the sounds of the United States in 1968 cannot be essentialized, but they can be heard as foreshadowing the more overt political stances expressed at the following year’s Woodstock Festival; of the synthesis of psychedelia and soul; in the emergence of the ‘confrontational’ sounds of bands such as the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, of funk, and of the prototypical rap of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron: all of these musics are the inevitable legacy of the upheavals of 1968.
In this chapter I consider the messages of the politically-charged popular music of 1968, from the Broadway production of the rock musical, Hair, to James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,’ to the gentler entreaties of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions’ 'This Is My Country'; the return-to-roots sound of the nascent country-rock of The Band; and the fusions of rock and ‘other’ musics which signaled at once a quest for belonging and the desire for peaceful coexistence to come.
Book Reviews by Sarah Hill
Talks by Sarah Hill