LEAD 13
American Tunes: Songwriting in the 1970s Winter 2024

This is not the current course catalog

This course surveys American popular songwriting in the years 1971-1980. In addition to the songs themselves, we will examine their musical/lyrical reference points, the social and cultural contexts within which they were written and performed, and their reception and subsequent histories. Artists of primary interest include Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Stevie Wonder, but we will also make forays into genres such as funk, soul, R-and-B, singer-songwriter, country, punk, new wave, post-punk, disco, and various subgenres of pop and rock. This course assumes basic knowledge of music theory and a somewhat more detailed knowledge of the history of American music in the 20th century.