Videos

Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns talked about his latest project for PBS about the history of country music.

Michael Lang talked about his memoir The Road to Woodstock: From the Man Behind the Legendary Festival (Ecco; June 30, 2009). A co-founder of the Woodstock Music Festival, he recounts the…

In August, 1969, Woodstock attracted nearly half a million people to a dairy farm in upstate New York. Wade Lawrence, director and senior curator of the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts…

University of Kansas History Professor David Farber, the author of The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s, talked about the 50th anniversary of Woodstock and the counterculture of the…

Indiana University history professor Michael McGerr talked about women and feminism in 1960-1970s popular music. This class was from his course titled “Rock, Hip Hop and Revolution: Popular Music…

Country Joe McDonald and Peter Yarrow talked about the role of music in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Mr. McDonald performed with “Country Joe and the Fish.” Mr. Yarrow was a member of “Peter, Paul and Mary.”…

Gerald Horne talked about the United States' involvement in Southern Africa and the roots and politics of jazz music, the topics of his two most recent books.

In his book, The Political World of Bob Dylan, Chad Israelson addressed some of the misconceptions about Bob Dylan’s political views and how the singer has dealt with them over the years. C-SPAN’s…

The Congressional Internet Caucus Academy (CICA) hosted a panel discussion involving the role of Congress in music licensing. Among the speakers were Future of Music Coalition Director…

Known as the birthplace of Motown, Detroit’s music history goes further back than the soul sounds of Smokey Robinson and Aretha Franklin. In his book Heaven Was Detroit, author M.L. Liebler chronicled the history…

Mary Wilson, formerly the Motown musical group the Supremes, talked about her book, Supreme Glamour, in which she discussed her career and weighed in on federal copyright protection for recording…

Rockin' in the Free World was one of the second-prize high school east winners in C-SPAN Classroom’s StudentCam documentary contest. Hunter Walterman, Isaac Newman, and Rekha Leonard, sophomores at…

Bo Crane talked about Palo Alto’s connections to rock and roll in the 1960's, and how a meeting between Grateful Dead musician Jerry Garcia and counterculture figure Ken Kesey lead to the psychedelic rock…

Authors Jesse Jarnow (Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America), Tim Mohr (Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the…

Established in 1957, Stax Records became synonymous with Memphis and southern soul music with acts such as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, and the Staples Singers. Executive Director Jeff Kollath tells the story…

The archives at Elvis Presley’s Graceland contain over 1.5 million artifacts from the singer’s personal life and music career. Archivist Angie Marchese showcased some of their more unique items.…

Known as the “Birth Place of Rock ‘N’ Roll,” Sun Studio ushered in future legends such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and B.B. King. Jason Freeman, of Sun Studio, recounted the studio’s founding and the…

Memphis has a rich musical history tied to blues, rock and roll, and soul music. In his book, Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South, author Charles Hughes talked about Memphis'…

President Trump signed the Music Modernization Act into law, which ensures artists who released records prior to 1972 are paid royalties from digital services. Accompanying him were several…

Buddy Holly, a native of Lubbock, Texas, was only 22 years old when he was killed in a plane crash. Jackie Bober, curator of the Buddy Holly Center, talked about his legacy and his early years in Lubbock.…