Woodstock Essay -- Woodstock Festival Concerts Music Essays

Woodstock One didn’t simply go to Woodstock: one lived through it. In August 1969, the Woodstock Festival was the largest counterculture event ever staged, attracting some 500,000 people and featuring many of the country’s top acts. Two decades later, Woodstock has come to mean more than just â€Å"three days of fun and music†; it symbolizes a time of community, exuberance, and intensity since lost. Woodstock festival gave power to the youth, united people of all ages, races, and sexes, and defined a generation, making it one of the most important musical events of all time. In order to understand the impact and importance of the Woodstock Festival one must first examine the society that preceded the 1960’s and set the stage so to speak for the events of the Woodstock Festival. The end of World War II brought thousands of young servicemen back to America to pick up their lives and start new families in new home and new jobs. With energy never before experienced, American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs. Americans began buying goods not available during the war, which created corporate expansion and jobs. Growth was everywhere. The baby boom was underway. Part of the what happened in the 1950’s with increased employment and income, families had more money to buy things. People could afford single family dwellings and suburbia was born . In the 1950’s a big change happened in public education. In 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren and other members of the Supreme Court ruled that separate facilities for blacks did not make those facilities equal according to the Constitution . Integration of the public classroom came about across the nation as a result of this action. Perhaps one of the things which most characterize the 1950’s was a strong element of conservatism and anticommunist felling which ran throughout much of society. The phrase â€Å"under God† was added to the pledge of Allegiance. Religion was linked with anti-communism mind-set. Fifties clothing was conservative. Men wore grey flannel suits and women wore dresses. Male and female stereotypes were strongly reinforced, girls played with Barbie Dolls and boys played with guns. When the 1950’s are mentioned, the first type of music to come to most people’s mind is rock ‘n roll. Developed from a... ... of biblical proportions. To many observers, Woodstock seemed to embody the values of the 1960’s youth culture of personal freedom, political pacifism and social optimism in what seemed to be a land of plenty.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Richie Havens, the first performer at the Woodstock Festival describes the impact the best when he says, â€Å"Woodstock was in essence a coming together, a gathering, a giant be-in. It was a peoples’ festival where people came together to celebrate their essences, their concerns, and their feelings for the world around them.† In Havens opinion, the Woodstock Festival accomplished what the youth of the early sixties set out to do, which was to show that we as young people were not going to back down from our political feelings, our emotional feelings and our newly discovered citizenry. Havens believes that the spirit of Woodstock has saturated the world and has served the purpose of awakening minds to the fact that they too have the right to celebrate and be free. Thus did the Woodstock festival empower the youth, unite people of many races and ethnicity and become one of the most significant musical events of all time.