Presidential Campaign Songs w/ Robert Cohen.

Two hundred years of Presidential campaign songs tell us much about our political history — and about our music!  They reveal the jubilation that supporters often felt about their candidates — and the nastiness their opponents often heaped on those same candidates. We’ll hear what Americans heard during Presidential campaigns — from the turn of the 19th century to well into the 20th. But why don’t we have campaign songs anymore?

Robert Cohen has been lecturing on American and New York City folk, popular, and ethnic music, and on Jewish music, for over a quarter of a century He wrote the NPR documentary "One People, Many Voices: American-Jewish Music Comes of Age" (narrated by the late Theodore Bikel), and produced the compilation CD Open The Gates! New American-Jewish Music for Prayer.