ABSTRACT
The popular music of the 1960s and 1970s was nearly everywhere in Vietnam, reaching soldiers via albums, cassettes, and tapes of radio shows sent from home; on the Armed Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN); on the legendary underground broadcasts of pirate radio; or live via soldiers strumming their own guitars and Asian bands playing at clubs, or even through Bob Hope tours and visits by artists like James Brown and Nancy Sinatra. This chapter will show how and why US troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the world back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. It will also show that music was essential for every group of Vietnam soldiers—black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and “grunts.”
