Why the Vietnam War Produced Such Iconic Music

Some of the 20th century’s most defining pop music emerged from the period during which the Vietnam War was fought — and in the installment of the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick docu-series The Vietnam War that premiered on Tuesday night, that fact was made abundantly clear. The sights and sounds of Woodstock are juxtaposed with those of Vietnam, where half a million Americans were fighting at the time, and the Kent State shootings blend into the strains of “Ohio.” But, while the role of music in stateside protest of that era is well-known — with anti-war songs like “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” featured in The Vietnam War — music also played an important role for those who were actually in Vietnam, fighting. For warriors across time, there have always been tunes to march to, and tunes to defuse the tension. But Vietnam was special. One key reason, say Doug Bradley and Craig Werner, authors of the book We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, is the role technology played in getting the music to the battlefield. Between radio, portable record players, early cassette players and live bands coming to Vietnam, soldiers in that war had far more access to music than their forebears. “The thing about Vietnam is we had modes of playing music and the military gave us enormous access because they wanted to keep our morale up,” Bradley, who was drafted into the Army in 1970, says. &ldquo...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Music Television Vietnam Vietnam War Source Type: news