School of Rock: An Interview with Scott Walton

In the words of Neil Young, rock and roll can never die. But to find out how it was born, look no further than MUS-40060: History of Rock Music. Take a journey through the colorful and diverse history of America’s most defining and universal art form, examining both how society has shaped the genre throughout the years and how rock music has shaped society. Geared toward musicians and non-musicians alike, History of Rock Music encourages students to make valuable connections between rock music and their own identities.

We checked in with UC San Diego professor Scott Walton to discuss the course, the art of rebellion, and the ways in which rock and roll continues to impact our daily lives.

Q: What was it that drew you to teaching about the history of rock music?

Scott: In high school I was in several rock and blues bands and was completely absorbed with that music. So I’ve always had an interest, and as an educator, teaching rock history is not only a wonderfully engaging topic, but it’s also easy to connect musical developments with socio-political trends.

Q: How will History of Rock Music use the online medium to complement its subject matter?

Scott: Online teaching platforms such as Blackboard provide wonderful tools for sharing and collaboration. In an online setting, students are often more comfortable expressing opinions and engaging in in-depth conversations with their classmates, compared to a large, face-to-face lecture classroom setting. The lecture notes are PDF-based, and once students download the files from our course Blackboard website, they’ll have a useful resource rich with images, links to various websites, and streaming links to audio and video clips.

Q: Rebellion is a key theme of your course. How has rebellion manifested itself in rock and roll throughout the years?

Scott: Almost all popular music in the U.S. over the past century has served as a site for social or political resistance at some point. Early blues musicians were pushing back at Jim Crow, jazz musicians in the ‘30s were instrumental in desegregating the entertainment industry, and when rock emerged in the 1950s it was resisting the comfortable Eisenhower-era notions of American life. Everything opened up in the ‘60s with rock and soul musicians playing central roles in the civil rights movement, antiwar protests, and the sexual revolution. Activists viewed music as one of the most important emblems of their resistance to mainstream society.

Q: Do you think rock still has the power to affect social and political change?

Scott: I believe it does. One only has to look at the role musicians and actors played in the last presidential election, supporting presidential candidates and helping to get out the vote. Having Bruce Springsteen perform at a political rally gets a whole lot more people out to hear a message!

Q: The phrase “rock is dead” gets tossed around a lot. Do you agree with it?

Scott: People also say that jazz is dead. You can only make a statement like that if you think way too much, and listen way too little. 

Discover the musical, historical, and cultural context of this 20th century American art form and how it’s shifted our political and social attitudes as a nation over the decades in this engaging online course starting January 14th. Make sure to enroll on or before December 10^th to receive a $25 discount off of the registration fee.

Spring Arts Spree Presents “MLK: The Man Behind the Myth”

Join in on UC San Diego Extension’s annual Spring Arts Spree and attend a free lecture, March 21, 7 p.m., entitled Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Man Behind the Myth, presented by Rabbi Ben Kamin, a nationally-renowned expert on race relations and civil rights. Explore the conflicts and contradictions that plagued this extraordinary man, the guilt and anguish which haunted him even at the moments of his greatest successes, the darkness that oftentimes weighed down the man who shed such an intense light on what it means to be a human being. No matter how much or how little you know about MLK, you owe it to yourself to be there.

- Stan Walens, Program Representative, Humanities & Performing Arts, UC San Diego Extension

Dr. King and Me

by Ben Kamin

For some 44 years, I have carried a memory in my head, an ache, a yearning—to help fulfill, in some small way, the mission of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The intonation of his unique and historic ministry lives in every book I write, every sermon I preach, every time I eulogize, bless, name, or marry someone. All the emotional and doctrinal rivers of my life run into the sea of his plaintive oratory; his anguish for a nation in need of moral outrage, his unbridled disdain for war, and even his profound personal loneliness inform my life as a father, husband, community worker, and certainly as a rabbi.

People ask me, why do you care so much about this Dr. King—you are a Jewish leader after all and shouldn’t you have been inspired by a Talmudic sage or at least another rabbi? And I respond that Martin King was both of these and more. The power and vision of his rhapsodic journey transcend any denominational context even as God cannot be reigned down by any one religion.

The triumph of his painfully short duration as the conscience of this nation, from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to the Memphis sanitation workers strike of 1968, was that this reluctant “drum major for justice,” this rather small, almond-eyed man who was given to depression and who so feared death, converted the scripture into ethics. And so the morning after his assassination, when I was a 15-year old sophomore at Cincinnati’s racially-charged Woodward High School, I was changed forever. My black classmate and close pal, Clifton Fleetwood, skinny, mischievous, wickedly funny, literally pushed me away from a fiery demonstration by 400 grieving African American students—chastising me that “No, Ben, this is not for you.” But it was, and remains for me; I am inextricably locked into the essence of MLK.

Clifton would find out 36 years later, after I searched for and found him (and the reason he said such a thing), that this rejection led me to a path from which I have never strayed. My account of this quest, set against the background of the churning, frightening, yet redeeming 1960s, and the imprint of King’s life and death became my 2010 book, Nothing Like Sunshine. Having spoken about Dr. King in countless community and academic settings, made deeply personal pilgrimages to his tomb in Atlanta and the former Lorraine Motel in Memphis, having written about his legacy in The New York Times and as a regular columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, I was invited to launch this book at the National Civil Rights Museum—Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Next month, I return to the Museum, and its sanctified balcony where Dr. King was felled by a bullet, to launch my newest book, ROOM 306: The National Story of the Lorraine Motel. During these last several years, I have commiserated with so many of King’s closest colleagues and protégés—brave men and women, from Rev. James Lawson, the Gandhian leader of the Memphis garbage men’s strike to Maxine Smith, the indomitable NAACP director, to Clarence B. Jones, King’s personal attorney and drafter of the I Have A Dream preachment to Dorothy Cotton, the director of education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to Rev. Samuel “Billy’ Kyles, who was standing next to King at the moment of the assassination. I also value a close association and partnership with Prof. Clayborne Carson, director of the King Institute at Stanford University.

These remarkable people and others like have become my friends and teachers. They have allowed me to live a heartbeat away from my spiritual mentor. No, Clifton, this was for me.

Rabbi Benjamin Kamin (D.D., Hebrew Union College), author of Nothing Like Sunshine: A Story in the Aftermath of the MLK Assassination, is a nationally-known teacher, counselor, and author (7 books and over 250 newspaper articles), and a frequent presence on radio and TV. He serves on several national boards dealing with community affairs and interfaith relations.