Music + Revolution – Book by Richard Barone – recommended by community member Rob Norris

 

Even before the Beatnik Riots of 1961, New York City’s Greenwich Village was the

epicenter of revolutionary movements in American music and culture. But, in the early

1960s and throughout the decade, a new wave of writers and performers inspired by

the folk music revival of the 1950s created socially aware and deeply personal songs 

hat spoke to a generation like never before. These writers—Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-

Marie, Janis Ian, and Phil Ochs, to name a few—changed the folk repertoire from

traditional songs to songs sprung from personal, contemporary experiences and the 

nation’s headlines, raising the level of political self-expression to high art. Message

and music merged and mirrored society.

In Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, Richard Barone unrolls a

freewheeling historical narrative, peppered with personal stories and insights from 

those who were there. Illustrated with contemporaneous portraits of the musicians

by renowned photographer David Gahr, it celebrates the lasting legacy of a pivotal

decade with stories behind the songs that resonate just as strongly today.