English:Marvin Gaye - What’s Going on - 1971
Marvin Gaye - What’s Going on - 1971
Introduction
Marvin Gaye - What’s Going on - 1971 explores one of the most influential recordings in twentieth-century popular music. The course focuses primarily on the song “What’s Going On”, while also examining the album of the same name because the single became the opening statement of a connected nine-song work. You will investigate how Marvin Gaye combined soul music, studio craft, social observation, spirituality, and an appeal for empathy.
The song was released as a single in January 1971, and the album followed on 21 May 1971. The title looks like a question, but the original song and album titles are conventionally printed without a question mark. This small detail is useful: Gaye does not merely ask for information. He invites listeners into an urgent public conversation about violence, war, injustice, suffering, and the possibility of reconciliation.
This aiMOOC is suitable for upper-secondary school, vocational education, and introductory university study. It connects Music, History, English language, African American history, Media studies, Environmental education, and Ethics. You do not need advanced music theory. Careful listening, historical curiosity, and a willingness to support interpretations with evidence are more important.
Learning Goals
By the end of the course, you should be able to explain the song’s historical setting, identify major musical and rhetorical features, connect the title track with the album’s broader design, and evaluate why the recording still matters. You should also be able to distinguish observation from interpretation, compare different media presentations, and create your own evidence-based response to a socially engaged work of art.
| Area | What you will learn to do |
|---|---|
| Historical understanding | Relate the recording to the Vietnam War era, racial injustice, urban inequality, environmental concern, and debates about artistic freedom. |
| Musical listening | Describe groove, timbre, texture, vocal layering, instrumentation, transitions, and the relationship between musical warmth and serious subject matter. |
| Language analysis | Examine direct address, repetition, questions, conversational speech, kinship vocabulary, contrast, and appeals to shared humanity. |
| Media literacy | Compare an audio recording, an official music video, photographs, historical documents, and later commentary. |
| Creative transfer | Apply the song’s methods of attentive observation, empathy, and artistic argument to a contemporary issue. |
The Song at a Glance
“What’s Going On” was written by Marvin Gaye, Renaldo Benson, and Al Cleveland, and produced by Gaye. Benson, a member of the Four Tops, developed the original idea after witnessing police violence against protesters in California. Gaye reshaped the material, added his own perspective, and connected it to concerns raised by his brother Frankie’s experience as a veteran of the Vietnam War.
The recording was made at Motown facilities in Detroit, especially Hitsville U.S.A.. It combines the rhythmic precision associated with Motown, the expressive flexibility of gospel music, the harmonic color of jazz, orchestral arranging, layered studio vocals, and an unusually conversational atmosphere. Instead of sounding like a formal speech, the record begins as though you have entered a gathering where people are greeting one another.
The single reached number one on the United States R&B chart and number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Its success gave Gaye greater creative authority and made it possible for him to complete the album. The album became a landmark in the development of the concept album and in the history of socially engaged soul music.
Essential Vocabulary
| Term | Meaning in this course |
|---|---|
| Soul music | A form of African American popular music shaped by gospel, rhythm and blues, expressive singing, groove, and communal musical practices. |
| Motown | The Detroit-based record company whose artists, writers, producers, musicians, and engineers created a highly influential popular sound. |
| Concept album | An album whose tracks are connected by a narrative, theme, recurring musical material, or unified artistic design. |
| Protest song | A song that addresses injustice or public conflict and seeks to question, persuade, witness, mobilize, or encourage reflection. |
| Call and response | A musical or verbal pattern in which one voice or phrase invites an answer from another voice, group, or instrument. |
| Multitrack recording | A studio method that records elements separately so they can be layered, edited, balanced, and combined. |
| Timbre | The distinctive sound quality or tone color of a voice or instrument. |
| Groove | The organized rhythmic feel created through the interaction of drums, bass, percussion, guitars, keyboards, and vocal phrasing. |
| Segue | A continuous transition from one track or section into another without a full stop. |
| Rhetoric | The deliberate use of language, sound, structure, and emotion to shape meaning and influence an audience. |
Marvin Gaye and Motown Before 1971
Before “What’s Going On”, Marvin Gaye was already a major Motown star. He had recorded solo hits, duets, standards, and dance-oriented songs. His public image often emphasized elegance, romance, and vocal charm. Yet he was also a musician, songwriter, drummer, pianist, and studio participant who wanted more control over what he recorded and how it sounded.
Motown had developed a successful system in which specialist teams often separated songwriting, arranging, production, performance, and quality control. This system created many outstanding records, but it could limit an artist who wanted to make a personally directed statement. Gaye’s decision to produce “What’s Going On” therefore had artistic and institutional importance. He was not only changing his subject matter; he was changing his role inside the company.
The compact Hitsville environment encouraged close collaboration. Singers, session musicians, arrangers, engineers, songwriters, and producers could influence one another quickly. The house musicians later widely known as the Funk Brothers supplied the rhythmic foundation for many Motown recordings. On “What’s Going On”, their disciplined ensemble playing supports a looser and more reflective atmosphere than listeners might expect from a conventional hit single.
Artistic Independence
Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, was initially doubtful about the title track. The company had built a broad audience partly by avoiding direct political controversy in most of its mainstream releases. Gaye, however, believed that an artist should respond to the suffering and conflict around him. He reportedly refused to continue ordinary recording work until the song was released.
The single’s commercial success changed the balance of power. It demonstrated that a socially serious recording could also reach a large audience. Gaye then completed a full album under intense time pressure. The result expanded expectations for what a Motown album could be: not simply a collection of separate potential hits, but a unified artistic argument.
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Historical Context: The United States Around 1971
You will understand the song more clearly when you place it within the early 1970s. The United States was still deeply involved in the Vietnam War. Anti-war demonstrations were widespread, and returning veterans often faced trauma, limited support, unemployment, racial discrimination, and confusion about the society to which they returned. Gaye’s brother Frankie had served in Vietnam, and his experiences helped shape the album’s returning-veteran perspective.
The period also included continuing struggles over racial equality, police violence, housing, employment, poverty, and political representation. The achievements of the Civil Rights Movement had changed law and public life, but structural inequality remained. The song’s emphasis on mothers, brothers, communities, protest, and unnecessary death places public conflict inside a language of family responsibility.
Environmental awareness was also growing. The first Earth Day took place in 1970, the United States Environmental Protection Agency was created that year, and public discussion increasingly addressed polluted air, contaminated water, toxic chemicals, oil spills, and urban conditions. These concerns became especially visible on the album in “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”.
The album does not function as a newspaper report. It transforms social pressures into a personal and spiritual listening experience. Historical knowledge helps you identify what the music addresses, while close listening helps you understand how the record turns information into feeling.
A Responsible Historical Reading
Avoid treating 1971 as a single, simple story. Different Americans experienced war, race, policing, gender, poverty, religion, and protest in different ways. Gaye’s work presents a particular African American artistic perspective shaped by family experience, Detroit music, Christian language, popular speech, and the pressures of the recording industry.
A responsible interpretation separates three levels:
| Level | Guiding question |
|---|---|
| Evidence | What can you directly hear, see, or verify in a reliable source? |
| Context | What historical conditions help explain the evidence? |
| Interpretation | What meaning do you infer, and how strongly can you support that inference? |
When you make a claim, identify which level you are using. This habit prevents you from presenting an attractive interpretation as if it were an unquestionable fact.
Origins of “What’s Going On”
Renaldo “Obie” Benson first developed the song idea after witnessing police violence against protesters. He did not want merely to repeat a slogan; he wanted to ask why institutions and communities were allowing violence to continue. Songwriter Al Cleveland helped shape the early composition, and Marvin Gaye then revised the melody, language, perspective, and arrangement.
Gaye’s contribution connected the song to his own moral and artistic concerns. His brother Frankie’s accounts of returning from Vietnam contributed to the album’s veteran-centered viewpoint. Personal grief, frustration with the music business, religious reflection, and concern about racial injustice also formed part of Gaye’s creative environment.
This collaborative origin matters. Popular songs are often associated with one star, but they may emerge through conversation, observation, rewriting, performance, arranging, engineering, and collective musicianship. You should therefore distinguish between authorship, performance, and public identity. Gaye became the song’s central voice and producer, but the work grew from several people and a larger musical community.
From Observation to Artistic Question
The title’s central question works on several levels:
| Level | Function |
|---|---|
| Everyday greeting | It sounds like ordinary conversation between people who know one another. |
| Request for information | It asks the listener to notice conflict and suffering rather than ignore them. |
| Moral challenge | It questions why violence and division are accepted. |
| Invitation | It opens space for dialogue rather than presenting only accusation. |
| Refrain | Its repetition turns a simple phrase into the organizing idea of the song and album. |
The wording is accessible, but the question is not simple. It asks what is happening, why it is happening, how people respond, and whether love can become a public practice rather than only a private emotion.
Recording and Production
Marvin Gaye produced the song himself. That credit marked an important step in his movement from featured vocalist toward autonomous recording artist. Production includes decisions about tempo, arrangement, performance, microphone placement, takes, overdubbing, balance, effects, editing, and the overall emotional shape of a record.
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The recording begins with overlapping greetings and social chatter. This creates an informal public space before the main vocal statement fully emerges. The opening alto saxophone phrase, played by Eli Fontaine, sounds exploratory rather than ceremonial. The arrangement then brings together drums, percussion, guitars, keyboards, bass, strings, saxophone, and voices.
A central feature is Gaye’s layered lead vocal. Different vocal takes overlap so that he seems to answer, support, question, and harmonize with himself. Instead of presenting one stable narrator, the production creates a small community of Marvin Gaye voices. This technique intensifies the song’s conversational and collective character.
The bass line associated with James Jamerson is melodic, flexible, and rhythmically active. It does more than mark the root of each chord. It moves around the vocal line, connects phrases, and contributes to the record’s feeling of continuous motion. The drums and percussion remain controlled, while the strings add warmth and breadth without turning the song into a rigid anthem.
Musical Layers to Notice
Listen several times, concentrating on one layer per hearing.
| Listening focus | What to notice | Interpretive possibility |
|---|---|---|
| Opening voices | Greetings, laughter, overlapping speech, and a sense of people entering a shared space | The record begins as community before it becomes formal song. |
| Alto saxophone | A relaxed, searching phrase near the opening | The sound suggests reflection and uncertainty rather than triumph. |
| Lead vocals | Multiple versions of Gaye’s voice overlap and respond | An individual conscience becomes a dialogue. |
| Bass | Melodic movement, syncopation, and independent phrasing | Social seriousness is carried by an inviting groove. |
| Percussion | A steady pulse enriched by small rhythmic details | The music remains calm without becoming passive. |
| Strings | Long tones and soft orchestral color | Tenderness and scale coexist. |
| Background responses | Group-like support around the lead | The singer is placed within a community rather than above it. |
| Ending | The track does not feel completely isolated from what follows | The song acts as an opening chapter of a larger work. |
The Bass as a Second Voice
James Jamerson’s bass playing is essential to the track’s identity. The line is highly shaped but does not sound mechanical. It creates forward movement, leaves space for the vocal, and often approaches chord tones through passing notes and rhythmic anticipation.
When analyzing the bass, avoid the vague statement that it is “good” or “complex.” Describe evidence: where it becomes active, where it rests, how it approaches a vocal phrase, and whether it repeats exactly or varies. Then explain what those choices contribute to the listener’s experience.
Language, Voice, and Rhetoric
The song’s language is direct and conversational. It addresses close social relationships rather than abstract institutions alone. Terms of kinship turn political conflict into a family matter. The listener is not allowed to imagine that suffering belongs only to strangers.
Repetition gives the song clarity and emotional force. Repeated forms of address create urgency without requiring a complicated argument. Questions invite participation and imply that accepted explanations are inadequate. Contrast places violence beside love, public disorder beside intimate concern, and serious subject matter beside graceful music.
The vocal delivery also carries rhetorical meaning. Gaye moves between a smooth tenor, a higher falsetto, spoken-like phrasing, exclamations, and layered responses. These changes prevent the performance from sounding like a lecture. The singer can sound concerned, pleading, observant, intimate, and communal within a short span.
Call and Response
Call and response has deep roots in African and African American musical practices, including spirituals, gospel, blues, work songs, preaching, and popular music. In “What’s Going On”, response can be heard between lead and background voices, between one Gaye vocal and another, and between voice and instruments.
This structure has social meaning. A call assumes that someone might answer. Even when the response does not solve the problem, it confirms attention and relationship. The song therefore models a public ethic of listening: speak, hear, respond, and remain connected.
Warm Sound, Difficult Subject
A striking feature of the recording is the gap between subject and surface. The song addresses death, protest, conflict, and division, but the sound is inviting, elegant, and gentle. This is not a contradiction that must be solved. It is an artistic strategy.
The warm groove may draw listeners toward a subject they might otherwise avoid. The beauty of the arrangement can express the humane world the song seeks. The calm delivery can also refuse the idea that protest must sound only angry or harsh. At the same time, a pleasant sound can risk making serious issues feel comfortable. Your task is to examine how the balance works, not to assume automatically that beauty strengthens or weakens the message.
The Album as a Connected Work
The album What’s Going On contains nine tracks that frequently flow into one another. It is often described as a concept album or song cycle. The songs create the perspective of a veteran returning to a country marked by war, addiction, neglected children, environmental damage, spiritual need, poverty, and urban frustration.
| Track | Main focus | Connection to the whole |
|---|---|---|
| What’s Going On | Violence, protest, dialogue, and love | Opens the central question and creates the communal setting. |
| What’s Happening Brother | A veteran’s return, work, money, and social change | Moves from public question to personal homecoming. |
| Flyin’ High in the Friendly Sky | Addiction and loss of control | Shows how social pain can become private dependence. |
| Save the Children | Responsibility for future generations | Expands concern beyond the present adult community. |
| God Is Love | Faith and divine love | Connects social repair with Gaye’s spiritual worldview. |
| Mercy Mercy Me | Pollution and ecological harm | Extends moral responsibility to the natural world. |
| Right On | Solidarity, service, and moral recognition | Celebrates people who care for others. |
| Wholy Holy | Spiritual unity and collective possibility | Deepens the album’s religious appeal. |
| Inner City Blues | Poverty, taxation, inflation, war spending, and frustration | Ends with urban pressure and returns musically toward the opening. |
The sequence matters. A listener who hears only the title track receives a powerful appeal, but the album develops that appeal through several dimensions of social life. War, ecology, poverty, addiction, spirituality, and community are not treated as unrelated topics. They become parts of one moral landscape.
Segues and Circular Form
Many tracks segue into the next. This continuity reduces the sense that each social problem can be isolated and solved separately. It also encourages album-length attention. The return of material associated with the opening near the end gives the work a circular quality.
Circular form can suggest that the original question remains unanswered. It can also suggest that listening itself must begin again. After the final frustration of “Inner City Blues”, the listener is returned to the need for recognition, conversation, and care.
Major Themes
War and the Returning Veteran
The album does not describe military strategy. It focuses on human consequences: death, absence, disorientation, employment, money, and the difficulty of returning home. The veteran perspective gives the social critique a personal center.
Consider how public policy enters private life. A war fought far away affects brothers, mothers, neighborhoods, jobs, health, and memory. This relationship is one reason the recording can be studied in both history and ethics.
Racial Justice and Police Violence
The song’s origin in an observed incident of police violence connects it to debates about who may protest, whose pain is believed, and how authorities respond to public dissent. Gaye does not present a detailed legal case. He uses witness, grief, kinship, and moral appeal.
You should neither detach the song from Black history nor reduce it to a single issue. Its broad language helped it travel across audiences, but its creative roots remain connected to African American experience and the unequal social conditions of the United States.
Poverty and Urban Pressure
The album links emotional distress with material conditions. Work, prices, taxes, housing, and public spending are not background details. They shape what people can do and how secure they feel.
This is an important feature of socially engaged art: it can connect large systems to everyday experience. Rather than discussing “the economy” only as an abstract concept, the record asks what financial pressure feels like inside a family and neighborhood.
Ecology and Interdependence
“Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” was unusual in early 1970s popular music because it placed environmental damage at the center of a soul recording. Pollution is presented not only as a scientific problem but as a moral relationship between human beings and the Earth.
The album’s ecological concern fits its wider logic. War, racism, poverty, addiction, and pollution all involve damaged relationships and failures of care. The natural world is therefore not an optional extra; it is part of the community for which responsibility is required.
Spirituality and Love
Gaye’s Christian background shapes the album’s language of love, holiness, God, and human unity. Spirituality is not separated from public life. It becomes a source of moral vocabulary and hope.
You may evaluate this dimension from different positions. A religious listener may hear faith-based witness. A secular listener may analyze how sacred language organizes values. In both cases, interpret the work fairly and distinguish Gaye’s worldview from your own.
Empathy as Method
The song does more than announce that empathy is good. Its musical design practices empathy. Overlapping voices, communal greetings, warm orchestration, and direct address make listening feel relational.
Empathy does not replace evidence, policy, or justice. It can, however, affect whether people recognize suffering and remain open to dialogue. A strong interpretation asks both what empathy enables and what it cannot achieve by itself.
Reception and Legacy
The title track became a major commercial success despite initial resistance inside Motown. The album remained on the charts for an extended period and became one of Gaye’s defining works. In 2003, the album was added to the United States National Recording Registry, which recognizes recordings judged culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Its influence can be heard in later soul, rhythm and blues, hip hop, jazz, pop, and socially engaged songwriting. The album also helped expand the artistic possibilities available to Black popular musicians working inside major record companies. It demonstrated that an artist could unite commercial accessibility, formal ambition, personal authorship, and public criticism.
The recording continues to appear in films, documentaries, classrooms, public commemorations, cover versions, and debates about protest music. Relevance, however, should not become a vague compliment. When you claim that the song remains relevant, identify the precise issue, musical feature, or listening practice that connects past and present.
Questions of Canon and Reputation
Calling a recording a “masterpiece” can recognize achievement, but it can also stop inquiry. Canonical status is produced through critics, charts, institutions, reissues, museums, archives, educators, fans, and musicians. Ask who preserves a work, who teaches it, whose judgments gain authority, and what other works may receive less attention.
The album’s high reputation should encourage more detailed study, not automatic agreement. You may admire its artistry while still asking critical questions about gender, religion, commercial distribution, audience, representation, or the limits of its political vision.
Media Comparison
The original audio recording, the official 2019 music video, historical photographs, and later analysis videos do not communicate in the same way.
| Medium | Main strength | Critical question |
|---|---|---|
| Audio recording | Direct attention to sound, timing, voice, and musical structure | What can you infer without visual guidance? |
| Official music video | Connects the song with selected images and contemporary social references | How does the video direct or update interpretation? |
| Historical photograph | Preserves a visible moment, person, place, or protest | What lies outside the frame? |
| Documentary commentary | Adds narrative, interviews, explanation, and evidence | Which claims are sourced, and which are interpretation? |
| Music-analysis video | Isolates instruments, form, production choices, or performance details | Does technical explanation illuminate the social meaning or distract from it? |
Create a two-column note page while viewing. In the first column, record what the medium directly presents. In the second, record the meaning you infer. This practice helps you avoid confusing editing choices with historical reality.
A Guided Close-Listening Sequence
Use headphones or good speakers at a safe volume. Listen without reading lyrics during the first hearing so that your attention begins with sound.
- First hearing: Describe the overall mood using three precise adjectives and support each adjective with one audible detail.
- Opening space: Focus on the social chatter, saxophone, and first entrance of the groove.
- Rhythm section: Follow bass, drums, and percussion without trying to track every word.
- Vocal texture: Identify moments when Gaye’s layered voices sound like agreement, tension, echo, or inner dialogue.
- Orchestration: Listen for strings and saxophone, and explain how they alter the scale of the performance.
- Form: Mark changes of section and ask whether they feel abrupt, gradual, circular, or open-ended.
- Message and music: Decide whether the inviting sound intensifies, softens, or complicates the social critique.
- Album transition: Continue into the next track and describe what changes when the title song becomes part of a sequence.
Do not try to produce the “correct” emotional response. Your goal is to describe your response accurately and relate it to evidence in the recording.
Sources and Further Reading
- Library of Congress essay on What’s Going On: https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/Whats-Going-On_Howard.pdf
- Classic Motown history of the album: https://classic.motown.com/story/marvin-gaye-whats-going-on/
- Smithsonian Magazine historical discussion: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marvin-gayes-whats-going-relevant-today-it-was-1971-180977750/
- Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture object record: https://www.si.edu/object/whats-going%3Anmaahc_2015.189.29abc
- Wikimedia Commons category for Marvin Gaye: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Marvin_Gaye
Interactive Tasks
Quiz: Test Your Knowledge
Who were the three credited writers of “What’s Going On”? (Marvin Gaye Renaldo Benson and Al Cleveland) (!Marvin Gaye Berry Gordy and James Jamerson) (!Marvin Gaye Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson) (!Renaldo Benson Curtis Mayfield and Diana Ross)
Which experience helped Renaldo Benson develop the song’s original idea? (Witnessing police violence against protesters) (!Watching a championship football game) (!Touring a new recording studio) (!Reading a fictional detective novel)
Which role gave Marvin Gaye unusual creative authority on the recording? (Producer) (!Booking agent) (!Photographer) (!Radio announcer)
What does the opening social chatter mainly create? (A sense of entering a shared community) (!A formal military ceremony) (!A silent private room) (!A comic television advertisement)
Which musician is especially associated with the song’s melodic bass line? (James Jamerson) (!Eli Fontaine) (!Berry Gordy) (!Al Cleveland)
Why is the album often described as a concept album? (Its songs form a connected thematic and musical sequence) (!Every song uses exactly the same melody) (!It contains only instrumental tracks) (!It was recorded during a live concert)
Which album theme is most directly developed in “Mercy Mercy Me”? (Environmental damage) (!Romantic jealousy) (!Space travel) (!Professional sports)
What is a segue? (A continuous transition between sections or tracks) (!A sudden increase in ticket price) (!A written contract with a record label) (!A type of microphone stand)
What rhetorical effect does kinship vocabulary create in the song? (It presents public suffering as a shared family concern) (!It turns the song into a scientific report) (!It removes emotion from the argument) (!It limits the audience to music professionals)
What happened after the title track became commercially successful? (Gaye gained the opportunity to complete the album) (!Motown ended all album production) (!Gaye stopped recording music permanently) (!The song was removed from radio)
Memory Game
| Concept album | A unified recording in which tracks share a narrative or thematic design |
| Call and response | An exchange in which one musical phrase invites another |
| Timbre | The distinctive tone quality of a sound |
| Segue | A transition that connects tracks without a complete stop |
| Rhetoric | Deliberate choices used to shape meaning and influence an audience |
| Groove | The coordinated rhythmic feel produced by interacting parts |
| Multitracking | A recording method that combines separately captured layers |
Drag and Drop
| Match the correct terms. | Topic |
|---|---|
| Returning veteran | What’s Happening Brother |
| Environmental concern | Mercy Mercy Me |
| Urban financial pressure | Inner City Blues |
| Spiritual unity | Wholy Holy |
| Public dialogue | What’s Going On |
Match each theme with the album track that develops it most directly.
Crossword Puzzle
| Motown | Which Detroit record company released the song? |
| Ecology | Which environmental field appears in the title of a related album track? |
| Falsetto | What name is given to the high vocal register Gaye often uses? |
| Jamerson | Which bassist helped shape the title track’s groove? |
| Protest | What kind of public action influenced the song’s origin? |
| Segues | What continuous links connect several album tracks? |
LearningApps
Cloze Text
Open-Ended Tasks
Easy
- Mood Map: Listen once and create a one-page visual map of changes in mood, texture, and energy without quoting the lyrics.
- Historical Postcard: Design a postcard from 1971 that combines one verified historical fact with one question the song encourages listeners to ask.
- Instrument Detective: Choose one instrument or vocal layer, mark when you hear it, and describe its contribution in five evidence-based sentences.
- Question Poster: Create a poster built around a present-day social question, using typography and images that encourage dialogue rather than blame.
Standard
- Comparative Listening: Compare “What’s Going On” with another protest song and explain how each balances musical appeal with social criticism.
- Media Interview: Interview a person from a different generation about when they first heard the song, then separate memory, interpretation, and verifiable fact.
- Mini Documentary: Produce a three-minute video that connects one album theme with a carefully sourced historical image and your own narration.
- Studio Reconstruction: Draw or digitally model the recording’s layers and show how chatter, saxophone, vocals, bass, percussion, and strings enter the texture.
Advanced
- Archival Research: Compare accounts from the Library of Congress, Motown, and the Smithsonian, then explain where their emphases differ.
- Rhetorical Analysis: Write an essay on how questions, kinship language, repetition, and vocal layering transform the song into a public appeal.
- Community Soundscape: Record an original two-minute soundscape that represents a local issue through ethical field recording, layered voices, and instrumental texture.
- Curated Exhibition: Design a small museum exhibition with six objects or media items that place the recording in musical, political, environmental, and industrial context.
Learning Assessment
- Evidence-Based Listening Analysis: Explain how three production choices shape the song’s social meaning, using precise time references from the recording.
- Context and Interpretation: Evaluate how knowledge of 1971 changes an interpretation of the song, and identify one claim that remains uncertain.
- Album Structure Argument: Defend or challenge the description of What’s Going On as a concept album by analyzing sequence, themes, and segues.
- Media Comparison Assessment: Compare the original audio with the official 2019 video and explain how visual editing narrows, expands, or redirects meaning.
- Ethical Transfer Project: Create a response to a current issue that uses empathy and artistic form while avoiding unsupported claims or the appropriation of another community’s experience.
- Creative Authority Case Study: Analyze how the commercial success of the single affected Gaye’s relationship with Motown and what this reveals about art and industry.
- Counterargument Exercise: Respond fairly to the claim that the song’s beautiful sound makes its protest less effective, using both musical and rhetorical evidence.
Evidence of Learning
Knowledge: You can explain the song’s authorship, production, historical context, chart impact, relationship to Motown, and place within the album’s connected design.
Listening skills: You can identify vocal layering, groove, bass movement, instrumentation, timbre, call and response, transitions, and changes in texture.
Analytical skills: You can distinguish evidence, context, and interpretation; support claims with audible or documentary evidence; and recognize uncertainty.
Historical understanding: You can connect the work to the Vietnam War era, racial justice, policing, urban inequality, environmental awareness, spirituality, and debates about Black artistic control.
Products: Your portfolio may include listening notes, a rhetorical analysis, a media comparison, an interview, a visual project, a soundscape, a documentary, or a curated exhibition.
Transfer achievement: You can apply the course’s methods to another socially engaged artwork or current issue while maintaining accuracy, empathy, and ethical awareness.
Reflection: You can explain how your own position, prior knowledge, and emotional response influence interpretation.
OERs on the Topic
The related English Wikipedia article on the album provides additional context:
Linked Learning Areas
This topic links music analysis with twentieth-century history, English-language interpretation, social ethics, environmental education, Black cultural history, recording technology, and media production. It is especially suitable for interdisciplinary projects in which you listen closely, examine sources, create a product, and defend an interpretation.