Rick Watson 'didn't start the fire,
but he's fanning the flames

by PAUL LEE
Editor & Publisher

On a chilly winter’s day in early February, Professor Rick Watson begins the discussion in his History of Pop and Rock Music class at Minot State University. He is dressed casually in a black print t-shirt and blue jeans with a khaki jacket.

The class meets in a high-ceilinged classroom in Hartnett Hall next to Mr. Watson’s office. The topic this Tuesday morning is historical events that occurred in the nascent lives of these young college students.

The context of the discussion is Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” from his Storm Front album. The song is punctuated with brief mentions of names, events, facts, books, and movies in popular culture that chronicled Mr. Joel’s 40 years from his birth in 1949 to the 1989 release of the album.

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Joe DiMaggio, Richard Nixon, Marilyn Monroe, Brando, Catcher in the Rye, Joseph Stalin, Communist Bloc, Einstein, James Dean, Elvis Presley, Sputnik, Buddy Holly, Chubby Checker, Hemmingway, Bay of Pigs invasion, Malcolm X, Watergate, Palestine, Wheel of Fortune, AIDS… and the most shocking – JFK blown away.

It is the popular culture aspect of pop and rock music that Mr. Watson puts front and center in this class. He may provide the framework for the class, but it’s student participation that gives it the momentum.

To some, it may seem odd that Watson, a trained theologian, is teaching a class on pop and rock music history. It doesn’t seem strange to the professor who studied contemporary culture and comparative religions while earning a master of divinity degree at Wartburg Theological Seminary.

“I spent a lot of time on what the arts and popular culture have to do with religion – the way religion communicates,” Mr. Watson told Patron. “Of course, that led me to comparative religions.”

The dominant religions when Mr. Watson was coming of age were not Islam or evangelical protestant sects as contemporary studies would include but Eastern religions such as Buddhism and faiths of India. In addition, the self-described “music nut” wrote and played music, which he continues to do today.

And it’s not a stretch for him to pull structure from religion and apply it to pop and rock music. “The vocabulary, the framework was always theological, but it was historical, cultural,” he said.

The pop and rock music course, like most of the courses Mr. Watson teaches, is part of the general education curriculum. He calls it inquiry-based learning – learning by asking questions.

“You are constantly working with students to take them beyond (just) knowing information,” Mr. Watson said. “It’s not enough that we just look at this information, but to think about the information in ways that help you understand your own culture and other people’s culture, your own understanding of history and the history of the planet.”

Mr. Watson helps student explore the role rock and roll has played in popular culture in American history and how it influences world history. “We’re going to look far enough back that we can also end up looking far enough into the future,” he said.

Mr. Watson’s role in the classroom is creating the atmosphere for students to think about popular culture on their own – the spark, if you will. If that occurs, he will be there to fan the fire. In this case, maybe after all he did start the
fire.