A reflection of my time with rock and roll music at Indiana University

The full story with footnotes is available here.

It is bizarre to sit here and reflect on my time studying rock and roll music at Indiana University. Just the fact that this was something I did feels bizarre. It feels as if I’ve pulled a fast one over everybody. I remember sitting in a Bloomington hotel room with my mother after freshman orientation. We’d just been given access to the online database of every course the university offered. As a senior in high school a woman I looked up to spoke fondly of her time in a course she referred to as “rock history” with a long-haired man who reminded her of me. In that moment I was happy she thought of me at all and, while our friendship faded, she let me in on the greatest secret Indiana University had to offer, their rock and roll program. In the hotel room with my mother, remembering fondly my former friend, I stumbled across four words, simple and written in all caps, that altered the direction of my college career. “MUSIC OF THE BEATLES.” 

My mom didn’t share the excitement I did for this find but, to be fair, I was young and in love for the first time and she was footing the bill for my education. Together we settled on Z201. The first Rock ‘n’ Roll History course. Still in the college of Arts & Sciences, it was an accepted GenEd. She couldn’t say no. Over the next two years and with the help of Dr. Glenn Gass and Andrew Hollinden I found love, inspiration, and pieces of myself in Ballentine 113 and the classrooms that followed it.

Love. Gass’s first rock ‘n’ roll course was the first thing I loved about school. I remember excitedly calling my father after a particularly enthralling rock history lecture to try and explain the emotional ride I had experienced with “the coolest guy I have ever met.” Gass quickly became a hero. His lectures were raw and authentic. He was openly emotional in a way I hadn’t seen from any authority figure in any setting, but perhaps this is because he was not an authority figure. He was a friend. Time spent with Glenn and Andy was like therapy. An opportunity to rest. To learn music history, yes, but to learn about human connection. About myself. About love. The “social” element of my degree was already coming to fruition and I didn’t even know it. I fell in love with the Supremes and Martha Reeves & the Vandellas. With Booker T. and the M.G.’s and Mavis Staples. I played the Teter pianos like Fats Domino and I cried in the soundroom with Sam Cooke. I fell further in love with my partner to this music and, when our relationship didn’t work out midway through our sophomore year, life (and Gass) moved me away from Paul McCartney and towards John Lennon in Z202.

I arrived on campus junior year a nowhere man firmly cemented in a Rubber Soul phase. The days were few but they felt like years. I was hurting, unwilling to open up to the girl on the rug biding her time, drinking her wine. I had a problem with the word love. It was too wrapped up in past pain. Had it been some other day it may not have been like that but life had clouded my view. It was still the beginning, and I still misunderstood. Gass and Hollinden, through music, showed me that it was okay to love. In Andy’s Jimi Hendrix course he frequently encouraged his class to fall in love every day, as often as we could. When I look back today, I know that I’ve got it; the word is good. It’s so fine, it’s sunshine. It’s the word, love. 

This was not an overnight process. I needed a lot of help and it came to me in the form of these courses and friendships I found within them. My “Norweigen Wood” girl became my best friend. A fellow long-haired blonde man and I, connected by our love for these rock history courses, decided to start Bloomington Delta Music Club (BDMC). He would become my second best friend. We saw the example set by Glenn and Andy, two individuals who sought to do what they loved, and followed their lead. They were inspirations for each of us. It is the idea of doing what you love that ultimately pushed me into deciding on entering the Individualized Major Program. 

My journey in the IMP is unique in the sense that when I started it was just about over. I made the decision amidst a global pandemic when my priorities and values were rocked. What do we have in this life? What matters when you go to sleep at night? School did not. My parents' jobs did not. Love mattered. People I loved mattered. Things I loved mattered. I found myself looking at what was then a rock ‘n’ roll certificate and wanting more. “Why not make it a degree?” my “Norweigein Wood” girl encouraged. Through music Andy and Glenn taught me to open myself up to love and to trust that feeling. They taught me to follow my heart and to not conform, one idea a bit more rock ‘n’ roll than the other; each of them crucial to the creation of my degree.

I found my way to a rock ‘n’ roll degree, but that wasn’t enough. With my growing willingness to follow love, I found myself thinking back on my college career. When I started in Bloomington I wanted to be a teacher because I wanted to help people. I wanted to connect with others. The social element of my degree owes itself to this longing. I was well aware of the effect music had on me and I needed to know how it affected others. My degree aims to be an exploration of this relationship. As I took classes about rhetoric, social movements, and their relationship to music my perspective on the “social history” of rock ‘n’ roll changed. It became broader and explored how social movements function within (and because of) music. As my degree grew, so did I. I gained a deeper understanding of the experiences of other people. I found myself examining the common connections between individuals and music. As I learned about the troubled social and racial history of our country, I was continuously reminded of what mattered. 

I jumped into my IMP degree head first my senior year. Because my time was limited, I found myself completing the final project over the summer following graduation. This, again, was a lesson in love. I was hired full time and was significantly overstretched in completing my project. On multiple occasions I rolled in late to work after only getting a handful of hours of sleep the night before. It was worth it. Despite feeling stressed and occasionally run-ragged I remembered why I was doing this in the first place. I spoke with Al Bell and the two of us cried recounting his life with music. There was a special moment shared between the two of us that could only have been shared through love. While working a job absent in passion, I poured my heart into Booker T. and the M.G.’s and was reminded of how good it felt to do something I was in love with. 

In some ways, my IMP feels like a footnote at the end of my college experience because I spent well under a year in the program. At the same time, I was dreaming about my first IMP course before I was ever enrolled at Indiana University or knew what an IMP was. This program has been with me throughout the entire journey.  I’d like to tell you about how influential the readings of Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin King and Sojourner Truth were. And they were! I’d like to tell you about my newfound love for folk music because of its role in society in giving a voice to the outsider. I’d like to share with you my affinity for graffiti as a form of expression and, what I believe to be participatory democracy. When I think back on my degree, though, these things do not accurately sum up my time. 

All I can do is think about love. I’ll receive a journalism diploma as well but, to be honest, the only thing that gave me was an understanding of AP style and how to write a lede. No, the social history of rock ‘n’ roll is something greater. Perhaps it’s what it stands for; an act of independence fueled by creativity. Something I did under my own volition just because I wanted to. My own personal protest to the expectations of higher education. But in the end, it’s more than even those ideas. The IMP was my college experience. It was where I did my learning and growing as an individual. I discovered what was important and I followed it. My degree is tangible proof. The challenge that lies ahead is carrying these attitudes and lessons with me in life. I must continue to follow my passions. My project and time in the program have come to an end, but my exploration of music and its connection to people must not. The IMP taught me that I should be chasing these things. Thanks to this degree I learned how to open myself up to what I loved and to follow it. That is not a typical thing to get out of a college education, but rock history is not a typical college education. 

To my parents and my friends. To Glenn Gass, to Andy Hollinden, to Paul Aarstad. To Al Bell and Tim Sampson. To Dr. King and Malcom X. To Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra. To James Brown and Otis Redding. To Robert Terrill and Fernando Orejuela. To John and Paul, George and Ringo. 

Thank you.
With love, from me, to you,
Sam Boland