From the editor
This is the first issue of SoR Magazine. Every month I choose one theme from the history of pop music, with stories, music and images. The first theme is the Cold War.
Why that theme? Because in those forty years music was much more than entertainment. Governments sent jazz musicians around the world as ambassadors. Behind the Iron Curtain, young people played rock 'n' roll on old X-ray photographs, and bands went to prison for playing what they wanted. And in the West, pop music sang about the fear that it could all be over at any moment. In the Netherlands, hundreds of thousands took to the streets against the cruise missiles, with Doe Maar at number one.
A lot has already been said about the Cold War and music. Everyone knows the images of the fall of the Wall, with Wind of Change in the background. For me, the best stories are the ones you hear less often: about a radio host who was almost unknown in America but a hero in Moscow, about records cut into old X-ray photographs, and about a cheerful Italian summer hit that is really about an atom bomb.
Listen along with every story: start the fragment and keep reading. Then you hear what is being described, and it sticks better than when you only read.
A magazine, like a mixtape, is a choice, and this one is mine. Do you miss a song that you think belongs here? Let me know.
Jan-Wolter SmitEditor-in-chief, SoR Magazine
After 1945, America and the Soviet Union faced each other with the whole world as their playing field. They never fought each other directly. But they competed over who had the most and the strongest weapons, spied on each other and tried to convince the rest of the world that their way of life was the best. Music played a surprisingly big part in this: as a weapon of governments, as contraband behind the Iron Curtain and as an outlet for the fear of the bomb.
In this issue
Cold War · story
Jazz as a secret weapon
The Cold War was not only about weapons and spies. America and the Soviet Union also tried to convince people that their way of life was the best. Jazz became one of America's strongest cultural weapons.
Cold War · story
Rock behind the Iron Curtain
Long-haired bands that went to prison, a singer who was not allowed to go home and a Bruce Springsteen concert in East Berlin: how rock became an act of resistance in the Eastern Bloc.
Cold War · story
Living with the bomb
For forty years, the world could end at any moment. Pop musicians sang about it, from Tom Lehrer and Bob Dylan to 99 Luftballons and Two Tribes.
Cold War · story
Dutch pop in the Cold War
Half a million people in The Hague, a ska hit about the bomb and birds flying over the Wall: how the Netherlands sang against the cruise missiles in the 1980s.
Cold War · story
We Didn't Start the Fire
Forty years of Cold War in four minutes: in 1989 Billy Joel strung together about 119 names and events. What is behind Sputnik, Panmunjom and the Rosenbergs?
Cold War · to finish
Timeline
From the division of Germany to the end of the Soviet Union: 25 moments from the Cold War, with the music that goes with them.
Listen and learn
Spotify playlist