Introduction
- The Woodstock Festival -
The Woodstock Music and Art festival, was a rock music festival held in the open, often associated with the hippie movement, which stood against The Vietnam War (1955-1975) in 1969. Here's how the atmosphere looked like.
The local townspeople didn't like having so many hippies in their town. Some people expected to see a lot of trouble with so many people living together in a small area for three days.
The festival took place at Max Yasgur's in the town of Bethelin in the north west of New York, in The United-States of America, the weather was bad at the weekend. It rained every day except for the last one.
It was a three days concert which then rolled into a fourth day due to the number of people increasing at the festival.
First the festival was supposed to be paying, and was made to receive an audience of 50 00. At the end of the day, there was over half a million people, and due to the audience arriving by the tens of thousands, the festival became free.
The aim of that festival was to promote 3 days of peace and music, as opposed to the vietnam war taking place at the same time. Lots of drugs, sex and rock'n'roll were then, involved. The genre of the music was rock, folk and their derivatives.
But how does the festival stood against the Vietnam war? Lots of engaged musicians performed during the festival, as the famous Jimmy Hendrix with "Star Spangled Banner", where we can hear him playing a guitar solo imitating the bombardment of a B-52 during the Vietnam War.
As Joan Baez known for her political engagement with "We shall overcome" which is promoting peace by saying "we shall live in peace some day".
As the band Country Joe and the fish with the chorus of "I feel like I'm fixin' to die rag" which is saying "what are we fighting for? Dont ask me I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam" and ends up with "Whopee we're all gonna die", and more engaged musicians.
So basically, what are we fighting for? Was the Woodstock Festival an act of civil disobedience?
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
― Henry David Thoreau
Task
You will answer the following question :
What was Woodstock and was it an act of civil disobedience ?
To answer the question you will first need to answer a survey.
Process
Survey
1)a) In which state of America did the festival take place ?
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b) Which war the Woodstock festival stood against ?
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c) What kind of art did they used to stand against it ?
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d) More specifically, what style of this art ?
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e) How long lasted Woodstock ?
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f) How many people was the festival conceived to receive ?
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g) How big the audience was approximately ?
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f) Name three artists who performed at Woodstock
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2) Definition of civil disobedience :
Civil disobedience is a popular form of protest all over the world. When practicing civil disobedience, the masses taking part generally resist against a particular governmental action, decision, policy, or even refuse to accept an international power taking control. Civil disobedience can be violent or non-violent, depending upon the situation.
a) How can you tell the song is standing against the war? https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/countryjoeandthefish/ifeellikeimfixintodierag.html
Quote three sentences which are showing an act of denunciation/resistance :
1 - ____________________
2 - ____________________
3 - ____________________
b) How is Jimi Hendrix denunciating the war ?
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How is woodstock an act of civil disobedience ?
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3) True or false
The Woodstock music festival was held in the open
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Many people could not be at the concert because they did not have tickets
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The organizers of the festival decided not to have the concert until the weather got better.
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The local people were very enthusiastic about the event
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Evaluation
Introduction
□ Clear
□ Motivational
□Topic well explained
Process
□ Questions are clear and precise
□ Questions are varied
□ Links direct to the right page; information is easy to find.
Choice of resources
□ Reliable sources
□ Documents are varied (text, video, images, audio)
Language proficiency
□ Good English
□ Some mistakes but it is understandable
□ I couldn't understand some parts.
Overall opinion
□ It was interesting!
□ It was boring !
□ It was fun !
□ It was too hard !
□ It was too easy !
Conclusion
The Woodstock Festival is clearly an example of civil disobedience. And surely have had an impact on the end of the war and surely more,(Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll) by showing to the government that everybody was fed up of it. But it's not the only one, and not the only type of civil disobedience ; there are plenty of more recent examples of civil disobedience such as the movement Yo no coopero con la dictadura ("I Do Not Cooperate with the Dictatorship"), commonly called Yo No ("I don't") for short, wich happened in Cuba or the Orange revolution in Ukraine (2004) to protest against the massive corruption in the presidential election.
(Maxence) To qualify my subject, I will say that even if the initial goal of Woodstock was to protest against Vietnam war, there have been slippages, there were two recorded fatalities: one from what was believed to be a heroin overdose, and another caused in an accident when a tractor ran over an attendee sleeping in a nearby hayfield. There also were two births recorded at the event (one in a car caught in traffic and another in a hospital after an airlift by helicopter) and four miscarriages. Protest was surely the goal of some, but I believe that most people went there just to get high and have sex while listening to some of the greatest musicians of their generation.
(Angelica) I believe the Woodstock festival did encourage people to fight against the war by sending them good vibes with the music. The Woodstock Festival is an example of civil disobedience, in so far as civil disobedience can be expressed through art as street art or music. Furthermore, the festival did resist against a particular governmental action which was sending men to war. The Woodstock Festival had conveyed a message of peace to everyone by pacifying the atmosphere with talented and engaged artists, even though some people didn't come to the festival to protest again Vietnam War I found the idea of fighting war with music interesting.
To see what the hippie movement looked like and what it was made of, You can go and watch Hair by Milos Forman and to go further into what woodstock was like, there is the documentary film Woodstock, directed by Michael Waldleighas which focus as much on the hippies, the music, their feelings about compelling events contemporaneous with the festival, as on the views of the townspeople.