It’s a “fun” way to introduce students to historical material and to talk about the responsibility, if any, that cultural producers have to accurately interpret the past. Still, playing and discussing his music in the classroom has many payoffs. Young is not a historian, and his works are rife with historical inaccuracies. Take, for example, the affecting 1970 song “ Ohio” (about the shootings at Kent State), 1974’s “ Revolution Blues” (on the atmosphere of paranoia created by Charles Manson and his deranged followers), 1972’s “ The Needle and the Damage Done” and much of the 1975 album Tonight’s the Night (both reflecting on the casualties of the drug culture), and “ Campaigner” (1977), which features the memorable line, “Even Richard Nixon has got soul.” But Young’s interest in the distant (and usually American) past makes his work exceptionally beneficial for teaching students about the nature of historical interpretation. Like many other artists’ work, much of the Canadian-born Young’s music, especially from the 1960s and 1970s, serves as a time capsule of American history.

So why Young? I have found that Young’s historical-minded music can prompt engagement and discussion from students in my history, American studies, and Latin American Studies classes.

Musically, he follows his muse wherever it leads him, without regard for genre loyalty he has produced sounds ranging from the loud, lumbering hard rock of his work with backing band Crazy Horse, to the laid-back folk- and country-rock of his chart-topping Harvest LP (1972), to incomprehensible experiments like 2014’s heavily orchestrated Storytone album.Ĭertainly, there is no shortage of artists whose music can help to illuminate their respective times: Stephen Foster, Billie Holiday, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Odetta, Marvin Gaye, and Sam Cooke are just a handful.

Young is arguably one of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation. Lechnerįor teachers who wish to enrich their students’ engagement with the American past, allow me to recommend the catalog of Neil Young (b.

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