Announcer explore new w worlds and new ideas through programs like this, vemade available for eryone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you, thank you. To your pbs station from viewers like you, thank you. John lk music has been around as long as there have been folks to sing it. Folk music is about real people and real lives and the frustration of dissent. It was a time in america when the simple act of gathering together to share experiences united us and helped us sing our troubles away. How do you dom John Sebastian, and that was me, and this is my music. Tonight, wekre gonna look b some of the most popular songs of the folk era. And well go dancing, baby, then youll see. How the magics in the music and the musics in me, yeah do you believe in magic . By the Lovin Spoonful john as a singersongwriter in the 60s, i was heavily influenced by the blues aditional country music. With my group, the Lovin Spoonful, we explored a variety of musical styles and differ
10 minutes. Nothing perhaps captures the popular memory of the 1950s i like ike. Nan this idea that this pin that so many peoplelike wore around the campaign of 1952 and 1956 notion of nostalgia and simplicity. It really emphasizes this ideaa era of1950s as this prosperity where america was a world leader and the American People were happy in suburban homes with their nuclear families. I like ike. Its so simple. And it conveys that happiness. This idea, however, is a myth. This ts a political construction. Ideathe 1950s in fact were s a time wrought with racial discrimination,nstr conflict, intense political and social pressures to conform to a suburban ideal that imposed gender hierarchies and mandated heterosexuality in the law. It was a time in whichin anticommunism targeted the liberal reform impulses of the new deal and frequently anticommunists took away civil liberties. These are all different areas of political pressures in terms of enforcing certain ideals and those that wenst