Woodstock Music and Arts Fair
Counterculture
Between August 15 and August 18, 1969, an estimated 400,000 members of the counterculture generation descended on Max Yasgur's farm near White Lake, New York, to attend a series of sometimes rain-soaked concerts by 32 popular musical acts, including Janis Joplin, Santana, Canned Heat, The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Country Joe & the Fish, Ravi Shankar, The Band, Johnny Winter, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, Sha-Na-Na, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, and Jimi Hendrix, whose searing, cacophonous performance of the "Star-Spangled Banner" on the final day of the festival has become iconic in the years since the event. Woodstock - which billed itself as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" - is one of the primary historical markers of the Sixties counterculture. A 1970 documentary on the festival won an Academy Award and the accompanying triple LP record reached #1 on the pop music chart that same year.
Woodstock Music and Arts Fair
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
Button
Physical Object
Gotta Get Out of the Blues Alive
Counterculture
This poster features a poem reflecting on the deaths and loss off Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970
poster
An Aquarian Exposition Staff Pass
Billed as “3 Days of Peace & Music,” the Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place between August 15 and 18, 1969, in White Lake, New York. A seminal moment in the history of the Sixties-era countercultural movement, an estimated 400,000-500,000 people gathered peacefully in sometimes rainy conditions to listen to musical acts featured at the festival, including Santana, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, Country Joe McDonald, Joe Cocker, Creedance Clearwater Revival, She Na Na, Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Band, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Johnny Winter and others. The logo on the staff pass, which features a dove perched on top of a guitar bridge, was designed by graphic artist, Arnold Skolnick.
These passes were Roz Payne's. Roz was good friends with many of the organizers of the Woodstock music festival.
Woodstock Music and Art Fair
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1969
Ticket, Festival Pass
Physical Object
Cornell Daily Sun, Friday, May 2, 1969
New Left
The Cornell Daily Sun is an independent newspaper published by Cornell University students in Ithaca, New York. The newspaper was established in 1880 by William Ballard Hoyt to challenge the weekly Cornell Era. Of particular note in this issue is coverage of the Cornell SDS ROTC protest. Members of SDS and their supporters “broke into a restricted area of Barton Hall” and “painted slogans on a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps practice deck gun.” This protest was a part of a larger wave of protest against ROTC on campuses across the country during this period. Other articles focus on a Cornell Trustee meeting in the wake of campus protests; demonstrations on other campuses nationwide. Also, this issue includes advertisements for a film screening of The Beatles new film, “Magical Mystery Tour,” an upcoming concert at Cornell by Janis Joplin, an upcoming concert on campus by the Pharoah Sander Quintet and an upcoming concert at Syracuse by Jimi Hendrix.
Cornell Daily Sun
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
May 2, 1969
independent media
Janis Joplin in Concert
(1 image)
counterculture
Roz Payne took this photograph at an unidentified Janis Joplin concert.
Roz Payne
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s