Last week we got in a bus and took the long trip to upstate New York to see Bethel Woods, and learn about Woodstock. While unfortunately not as impressive as last year’s MASS MoCA trip, I did still enjoy my day and learn quite a bit about the event, the history, and music's interwovenness with social change. As Carlos Santana said in the documentary, “This was like a street gang and the weapon was music”. My biggest takeaway from this museum was how music brings people together, and lets out emotion. You see how someone like Jimi Hendrix uses music to both get in touch with, and let out his own emotion. During this time, when all these people were feeling all these ranging emotions, this festival was a clear outlet. Not much is certain in life, but feeling emotions is one of the most human things out there, and music as a gateway for this human characteristic is something I struggle to find a better example for than Woodstock. This protest music festival managed to express the wants and needs of so many people, in a peaceful, positive way. While I struggled to visualize the scenes I saw in pictures when looking out onto that massive hill, it was empowering to think of what this place looked like all those years ago. 

 The documentary viewing was probably the most informative part of the day, and where I am able to draw the most connections from. To start, the performance of “Higher”, by Sly and the Family Stone, led to hundreds of thousands of people pumping their fist in the air on each repetition of the word. This ability to unite people in protest reminded me of how ultras in Brazil and around the world were so effective in their respective protest movements, as spotlighted by Vincent Bevins. Sly and the Family Stone members also talked about how families can be all sorts of races, which was very controversial, and is a beautiful message. Another connection I found was when Janis Joplin talks about her intensity when she sings. She talked about how other female musicians think its not feminine “to get into”, and “get inside” music. This brought me back to Ms. Bernbach's Women Men and Power class, and all the gender binaries and stereotypes that were relevant the Woodstock era, and are still relevant today.

 
When exploring the museum, I found the following quote: “You had a whole field of people chanting ‘no rain’. It was just echoing all over the place. It was classic….there was no way to stop the rain. It was like chanting ‘no war’. This really struck me, because of the contrast between wanting change, and feeling like it is impossible to achieve. If chanting “no rain” or “no war” feels futile, why did all these people do it? This gets at what I learned from If We Burn. There is value in the shared comradery and connection you get from being surrounded by people who are struggling with the same things as you, and fighting for the same goals. At the end of the day, if the rain, and the war were both inevitable, these half a million people could leave Woodstock with guitar solos ringing in their ears, empty stomachs, and certainly less of a feeling of hopelessness and struggling alone.