Counterculture and its conflicts

the avant-gard and the pop 1960's rock

Abstract

With the advent of the counterculture in the 1960s, the motto of sexual freedom was in vogue and the music most consumed by young people was rock, with concerts, festivals and records released. However, the counterculture was not univocal during its existence, there were conflicts between different groups and in relation to their ideas and rock, intertwined with what happened in the countercultural society, also presented differences in their productions. Some bands remained close to the market and their listeners, others dared to experiment with sound, joining in with the musical avant-garde and, with this, tensioned the music market. In this article, having the compositions of John Lennon and Yoko Ono as objects of analysis, taking into account the imbrications between culture and society – following the works of Raymond Williams – and between the lyrics and music of a song – using of Marcos Napolitano's ideas – its analyzed the musical conflicts in rock, emphasizing that it is necessary to understand the historical moment of the counterculture as being dialectical, with losses and gains, advances and setbacks and not in a unilateral way. Thus, it was realized that at the height of the counterculture, rock productions were experimental, in line with the creations of the artistic avant-garde, and at the time of the counterculture crisis, the compositions became less experimental and more politically engaged.