The Cold War in Music Assignment | Online Homework Help

The Cold War in Music

Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDPnsTRAvIM&feature=emb_title

Many changes occurred in the United States and the world following the Second World War. With the onset of the Cold War the world found itself quickly dividing based upon affiliation with either the United States or the Soviet Union. This new global order had a profound impact in every aspect of life: politics, economics, culture, foreign affairs, etc.

In the United States between 1945 – 1989, the culture began a rapid shift from the more traditional American life to a new philosophy that saw the breakdown of long-standing societal structures like family and the relationship between government and the American people. From the 1950s and the Eisenhower presidency through the turbulent 1960s and John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam,  the Great Society, and the return of Richard Nixon through the 1970s and Jimmy Carter, to the Reagan/Bush years of the 1980s, America literally transformed before everyone’s eyes.

From the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when the US and Soviet Union came to the closest point they had to initiating a nuclear war, to the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, Americans had lived under constant fear that at any moment all life on our planet could end. Following the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev as the leader of the Soviet Union, a new policy initiated by his government (Glasnost and Perestroika) began to gradually ease control of the Soviet Union over the communist nations of Eastern Europe. By 1989, citizens of those countries, most notably Poland, Hungary, Romania, and East Germany, began demanding an end to Communist rule.

Several times during the Cold War (1947 – 1989) – most notably in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland in 1980 – Soviet troops or the troops of those nations, had violently crushed any attempt to challenge those Communist governments. In 1989 however, Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear the Soviet Union would not intervene. Almost overnight, one by one, the communist governments of Eastern Europe began to agree to democratic elections. In December 1989, for the first time since the wall had been built in 1961, the East German government allowed its citizens to cross the border into West Berlin which was under Democratic rule.

It seemed to people watching this happen that the world was changing in the blink of an eye.

These events had a profound effect across America. Part of the impact of these event was captured in popular culture in movies, television, and music. In September 1989, singer/songwriter Billy Joel released a song on his new album that chronicled major events that occurred from 1949 – 1989, which were also the years of his life to that point, he having been born in May 1949.

***The song – “We Didn’t Start the Fire” – was #1 hit in 1989 and gives some insight into what people who were alive then remembered about the years of the Cold War. For me personally, I was in the military when all this occurred and had just 3 years earlier traveled to the Soviet Union. To see the conflict I had know my entire life appearing to come to an end was a very meaningful experience.

Your assignment is to play the video for the song. Listen to the lyrics once through before you begin the assignment. You will notice the list of events in quite substantial, so you will need to listen to it run through at least once before you start the assignment.

On a single Word or PDF document please write the following:

1 – Choose 5 events or things mentioned in the song that you have heard of before or know about. List them and then write 2-3 sentences explaining what they specifically refer to. You can choose an event, a person, or any one of the things in the song. Note – there are still images in the video that show a picture of each event, person, or item mentioned, with a brief phrase describing it. If you just write the caption, you will get a zero on the assignment. When I say write 2 -3 sentences, I mean 2-3 sentences;

2 – Choose 5 events or things mentioned in the song that you have NOT heard of before or don’t know about (which is probably most of the list) and then research what those items are on the internet or from any other source you have available. Just as I mentioned above, you can choose any event, any person, or any one of the things in the song. List them and then write 2-3 sentences telling me what they refer to. Again, you need more than just what the caption says in the song.

If you have any questions about any of the items or events in the song, please email me and I can help explain it.