Jimi Hendrix's 18 August 1969 performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair has been characterized as an expression of transcendent political resistance as well as crude anti-U.S. drivel. Drawing on Hendrix's own archive of recordings, writings, interviews, stage banter, and especially live performances, this article analyzes Hendrix's artistic engagement with the United States national anthem by locating his Woodstock Banner as a central moment in a two-year fascination with the song, brought to a close only by Hendrix's untimely death. It presents the anthem as an artistic vehicle for Hendrix's political musings, a thoughtful engagement with current events, and as commentary responsive to Hendrix's immediate environment and expressive of his aspirations for the nation of his birth. Insights offered here include the roots of Hendrix's Banner performances as ornaments to the Civil War eulogy “Taps,” the plural construction of the Hendrix Banner and an account of the aesthetic development of his anthem arrangement, the value of his recorded stage banter for understanding Hendrix's Banner politics, the impact of the film Woodstock on Hendrix's renditions, and the use of the Banner during Hendrix's final 1970 “The Cry of Love Tour” as part of a closing anti-war set and call to action for the psychedelic citizen.

When the French military forces arrived in Newport in 1781, they brought with them not only music of a social nature, such as country-dances, but also music used in military ceremonies. Americans quickly adopted many French customs, melodies and traditions. A fife major's manuscript of 1781 is only one of many that evinces the importance of John Hiwell, the Continental Army Inspector of Music, in promoting this French influence on American military ceremonial music. This article also examines some aspects of fifes and drums in the Revolutionary War era.

The transnational character of the literate musical community in the United States created an environment in which language barriers, ideological biases, and other potential sources of misunderstanding caused print items to change shape quickly as they were transferred from one reader to the next. The aesthetic controversy between William Henry Fry and Richard Storrs Willis surrounding the 1853 premiere of Fry's Santa Claus: Christmas Symphony provides a rich case in point. The controversy at times seemed to draw from a parallel debate in Europe, often called “The War of the Romantics,” which concerned the future of symphonic composition and music's capacity for representation. At others, the controversy seemed to diverge from its European counterpart as central concepts were articulated in new intellectual contexts. The vagaries of print culture help explain these discrepancies. This article outlines the central arguments of the debate, situates them within their transatlantic contexts, and examines how print culture played a significant role in the controversy's unfolding as early as 1839, fifteen years before it took place. More broadly, it constructs a new framework for examining the function and meaning of nineteenth-century music periodicals by illustrating how an antislavery newspaper became an unlikely voice in a debate over program music.

During the mid-to-late 1960s, impoverished urban districts throughout the United States witnessed an influx of white middle-class youth who attempted to remake society and themselves against a backdrop of inner-city grit and decay. This article focuses on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to explore the significance of slumming in the creation and reception of 1960s rock. Lower East Side rock musicians drew little overt influence from their neighborhood's longstanding ethnic communities, which included eastern Europeans, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. Rather, these musicians were fascinated with the concept of the “slum” itself as a more abstract signifier of authenticity, adventure, and nonconformity. I propose that a “slum aesthetic” emphasizing dirt, obscenity, and willful amateurism, exemplified by local band the Fugs, was crucial to the Lower East Side rock scene. Examining this “slum aesthetic” helps paint a more nuanced picture of both the political significance of rock and the connections between popular music and urban life. As the Lower East Side's musicians sought both radical social change and a large audience, they represented their neighborhood in ways that combined thoughtful engagement with broad caricature, a contradiction that inspired both musical creativity and social tension.