Troubadours & Troublemakers: The Evolution of American Protest Music

Troubadours & Troublemakers is an examination of American protest music from the beginning of our republic to the rockers of the sixties. It begins with the protest music of the early American settlers and ends with the radical songs of hippies and yippies of the early seventies. In between we survey the music of slaves, abolitionists, soldiers, miners, unionists, wobblies, okies, and folkies. Troubadours & Troublemakers reviews American topical songs from the first revolutionaries to the radical rockers of the late Twentieth Century.This Second Edition contains new and expanded chapters!

Kevin Comtois has been teaching history and government since 1999. He has taught at Northern Essex Community College (NECC), Merrimack College, Quincy College and many other schools from kindergarten to college. Kevin earned his B.A. in Political Science from Westfield State College and his M.A. in American Civilization from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Kevin was a recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities grants. One in 2005 to study the history of jazz at Washington University in St Louis MO and the second in 2008 to study the Industrial Revolution in Lowell MA. While serving as a high school social studies department chairman, Kevin designed a course on the history of American music. In 2011 Kevin created and taught an Honors Colloquium at NECC titled the Social and Political History of American Music while participating in NECC's Speakers Bureau. He has been active in local politics since the 1990s, served as Chairman of the Tewksbury Board of Library Trustees in the early 2000s, served on the Tewksbury Historical Society Executive Board and continues as an amateur musician and writer. Kevin is currently teaching US History and American Government at the Academy of Notre Dame in Tyngsboro, MA and offers seven different audio-visual presentations on the history of American music to libraries and senior centers in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Kevin lives with his wife Maxine in Massachusetts.