What historical events have been brought to your attention through music?

Well, I was pretty oblivious to the Vietnam war until I got into Jr. High, but I remember the song War! from 1969.

Oh! The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

So, so many that I don’t have time to look up links. Most of them folk songs or by folk singers,

“The Springhill Mining Disaster”

From Pete Seeger:
“Guantanamera”
“The Peat Bog Soldiers”
“Viva La Quince Brigada”

From Gordon Lightfoot:
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”
“Canadian Railway Trilogy”

From Woody Guthrie:
“Pastures of Plenty”
“Banks are Made of Marble”

From Judy Collins (not sure who wrote but maybe Woody)
“Deportees”

From John Renbourn:
“Lord Franklin”

and many more which I can’t think of right now. My consciousness was raised by song.

You guys need to check out my link to the song. It shows video I’ve never seen before. It also includes original radio transmissions. I’m drowning in goosebumps.

I learned a lot about George Washington.

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was the only thing that sprang immediately to mind, but @Dutchess_III already linked to it.

I’ll go with this as the first powerful song that made me research it’s origins.
The combination of singer and song in that link literally brought a tear to my eye.

So many… this is such a great question. I’ll list just a few.

Sunday Bloody Sunday about the shooting of protesters(1972) in Belfast in 1972.

Bobcaygeon by the Tragically Hip, about the Christie Pitts riot in Toronto in 1933.

Of course… the haunting The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, about the wreck of the eponymous ship in 1975. Ha! @Dutchess_III beat me to it.

I grew up during the Cold War, which inspired a lot of the pop music in that time. Couple that with the new, new thing that was music videos, and you get some interesting results… like Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes and Kate Bush’s Breathing.

The Sinking of the Rueben James by Woody Guthrie

The Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton

Tom Dooley by The Kingston Trio

Woodstock by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Allentown by Billy Joel

Vietnam by Jimmy Cliff

Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley & The Wailers

Sandinista by The Clash

Oxford Town by Bob Dylan

The Titanic was brought to vivid reality with the Lionel Richie classic, Dancing on the Ceiling

Was not!

Work in the Dundee jute mills (which have all now closed) was commemorated by Mary Brooksbank in The Jute Mill Song

Napoleon’s attack on Moscow – Tchaikovsky, 1812 Overture.

Seriously, it was used as the soundtrack for a Quaker Puffed Wheat commercial back in the mid 1960s. My mom bought me a copy of the whole thing, and I read the history of the attack on Moscow and the defeat of Napoleon in the snows.

@zenvelo I’ll bet you were a cute little nerd.

Babies in the Mill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNeBgpuNMSI&list=PLAD4D33CE76ED9877&index=4

Everything I know about history I learned from Iron Maiden.

@zenvelo, me too with the 1812 overture. My dad was a serious Tchaikovsky fan, I knew the music, then the story, even before “it is the cereal that’s shot from guns!”

I’m not sure if I would count these a historical events. But there are two stories in a Fifteen song called Stolen Life. It was kinda when I woke up and looked into unnecessary police brutality towards minority’s here. 20 years later and nothing has changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtQHPABgFAw

Lyrics

Wake up in the morning go to work
Fire up the truck and drive to Sonoma
Hop on the forklift and load up the truck with 10,000 pounds of newspapers
10,000 pounds of racist, classist lies
Drive the truck back to Santa Rosa
Get the newspapers in the recycle
So the rich white man
Can print up the same batch of lies again and again
Like “it’s too bad the cops had to that man, but he had a broomstick
And he was asian
And we all know they’re all Kung Fu masters.
Samurai warriors, they’re all just like Jackie Chan
It’s too bad they had to restrain his wife,
‘cause she was a registered nurse and she tried to save his life
That goes against regulations, We’ll just chalk it up to a bad night.
We’re so proud our boys in blue
‘cause they always do what’s right”
I saw Aylene today
I saw her children play, in the front yard
The thought occurred to me, how does a mother
Tell her children their daddy got killed by the police
Wake up in the morning go to work
Fire up the truck and drive to Sonoma
Hop on the forklift and load up the truck with 10,000 pounds of newspapers
10,000 pounds of racist, classist lies
Drive the truck back to Santa Rosa Get the newspapers in the recycle
So the rich white man
Can print up the same batch of lies again and again
Like, “It’s too bad the cops had to kill that kid
But someone called in a stolen walkman
The cops had to chase him down
But he refused to lie face down on the ground
He just walked away, the cops said
His black skin walked away into the black night
So I had to shoot him in the back of the head from 50 feet away
I had to kill him it was self defense
I was afraid he would circle back around behind and kill me”
I saw Cornelius speak today, at Hayward Bart
About how his son’s life was stolen away
Over a walkman that wasn’t worth more than change
How does a father find justice for a son stolen away
I don’t want to hear your newscast anymore, it’s bullshit
I don’t want to see your headlines anymore, ‘cause they’re bullshit
I don’t want to hear your press release anymore, ‘cause it’s bullshit
I don’t want to hear your police report anymore, ‘cause it’s bull shit

The American Revolution.

Smoke on the Water.

Plane crash at Los Gatos, 1948; Deportees

@downtide great minds think alike.

@Darth_Algar Ha, I immediately thought of Maiden’s “Alexander the Great” when I saw this question
I’m going to go with Bolt Thrower’s “The IVth Crusade”

The National Anthem.

My father played the heck out of “Songs in the Key of Life” by Stevie Wonder. I was in maybe first grade and the song Black Man blew my mind.

I still play that album regularly.

The Clash – ’Please remember Víctor Jara, in the Santiago stadium’

Growing up, I always thought “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield taught me about Kent State, but now I’m not so sure and I’m thinking that I may have just associated it somewhere along the way.

“Somethin’s happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with a gun over there, tellin’ me…I got to beware…”

@DrasticDreamer @Dutchess_III For What It’s Worth was written 4 years before Kent State, and had to do with protests on Sunset Blvd. over the imposition of a curfew to get hippies off the sidewalks near the Whiskey A Go Go.

Whiskey A Go Go. Decades since I heard that name!

Sink the Bismark by Johnny Horton.

Please Mister Custer by Larry Verne

Ding-Dong the witch is dead
Margaret Thatcher’s funeral.

Has anyone mentioned The Battle of New Orleans?

@Dutchess_III that’s a good one!

“They fired our guns but the British kept a comin’.”

“But there wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago.” I had Lonny Donegan’s version that I played on a wind up gramophone as a kid.

@ucme I’ll raise you Tramp the Dirt Down on that subject.

The Ballad of Ira Hayes

Johnny does Casey

Last Train to Clarksville, Where have all the Flowers gone?, Still in Saigon, and Strange Fruit.

What historical significance did “Last Train to Clarksville” have?

What historical significance did “Where have all the Flowers gone?” have?

“Train to Clarksville” significant of all the young men who left home for Vietnam. The son was of a young man wanting to say his last goodbyes to his sweetheart before going to boot camp then the Jungle. One such launching point (as I heard) before you got sent to Paris Island was some depot in Clarksville. (This was from a Vietnam vet)

“Where have all the Flowers Gone” Part was gain the young gone off to Vietnam, but I believe it encompassed more.

Well, I was a ginormous Monkees fan. I missed the whole significance of Last Train to Clarksville. The lyrics take on a whole new meaning now. “And I don’t know if I’m ever comin’ home…”

“Part was gain the young gone off to Vietnam.” Ummm. Gibberish.

Seeger found inspiration for the song in October 1955, while on a plane bound for a concert in Ohio. Leafing through his notebook he saw the passage, ‘Where are the flowers, the girls have plucked them. Where are the girls, they’ve all taken husbands. Where are the men, they’re all in the army.’ These lines were taken from the traditional Cossacks folk song ‘Tovchu, tovchu mak’, referenced in the Mikhail Sholokhov novel And Quiet Flows the Don (1934), which Seeger had read ‘at least a year or two before’

Very prescient, as the war was not to really begin for another month

I played this relevant quiz on Sporcle today.

Interesting. I got 11/25. i suk.

18 out of 25

13/25 At least I got more than half.

Richard Shindell has several songs with historical significance.

Abuelita about the Argentine Dirty War and abductions/kidnappings and the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Cold Missouri Waters (actually written by James Keeleghan) about the 1949 Mann Gulch fires

Ballad of Mary Magdalen about, well, Mary Magdalen (ok, borderline historical event)

Follow the Drinking Gourd song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRGSgiTc7Jk