Folk Music Stood For America

American Song

Today’s episode is all about the first of the two 20th century waves in the folk music movement and how that movement rallied people behind some big themes to help them fight for social justice.

As a people, Americans are inclined towards optimism and a belief that if things aren’t working, they can be fixed. How improvement is defined, which issues get the focus, and how those improvements are managed comes down to party philosophy. Practically speaking, America has been a two-party system with a number of other minor parties that represent the people that don’t line up with everyone else. On the ‘left’, we’ve had three parties, progressives, socialists and communists.
Woody Guthrie, and a number of ‘folkie’ musicians like Pete Seeger, Josh White, Burl Ives and others, did something that hadn’t been done before in American music; they used it as a weapon against the things they thought were wrong in the world. For instance, Woody Guthrie’s guitar had the words “This machine kills fascists” on it.
They taught a nation to sing powerful songs about hope – Woody Guthrie did that – and when you do, you may sow the seeds of change in future generations, like the way Guthrie stood as Bob Dylan’s musical mentor. But music is just the drum beat that the rest of us have to march to. If we don’t like how things are going, we’re still Americans. We can still change it. We need to act on it. Ghandi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
When we do, we’ll see that just like things improved in working conditions, and minimum wage laws, and many other ways, the world can become a better place. Our country belongs to the people, not the tiny fraction on top. And this is a country that promises equality, but that equality is something we have to continuously protect
Tracks

• Woody Guthrie: This Land Is Your Land
• Pete Seeger - Talking Union Blues
• Burl Ives: Wayfaring Stranger
• Josh White - Trouble
• This Train is Bound for Glory
• Woody Guthrie - Do Re Mi
• Woody Guthrie - 1913 Massacre
• The Almanac Singers - Which Side Are You On?
• Woody Guthrie - All You Fascists Bound to Lose
• The Almanac Singers - The Sinking of the Good Reuben James
• Pete Seeger - Deliver the Goods
• 60 Minutes with Charles Kuralt - Interview with Alan Lomax
• CBS Radio Network - Hootenany
• Alan Lomax Interviews Muddy Waters
• Muddy Waters - My Home is in the Delta
• Máire Ní Shúilleabháin, Ballylicky, Co. Cor - An Cailín Aerach (The Airy [Light-Hearted] Girl)
• Burl Ives - John Henry
• HUAC Hearings - The Hollywood 10 In Court
• Casablanca (Warner Bros.) - Play It Sam
• Victims of Hollywood Blacklist
• Earl Robinson - Keeping Score in ’44
• Rudy Giuliani - Trial By Combat
• Burl Ives/ Paul Newman - Mendacity Scene (From Cat On a Hot Tin Roof)
• Burl Ives - Funny Way of Laughing
• Josh White - House of the Rising Sun
• Josh White - In My Time of Dying
• Josh White - There’s a Man Going ‘Round Taking Names
• Josh White - The House I Live In
• Josh White - Free and Equal Blues
• HUAC Hearings - Paul Robeson’s Testimony (Excerpt)
• Pete Seeger - Goodnight Irene
• Pete Seeger Interview - The Power of Music
• Pete Seeger - Way Over There
• Pete Seeger with the Almanac Singers - The Strange Death of John Doe
• Henry Wallace 1948 Campaign Song
• The Weavers - If I Had a Hammer
• The Weavers - So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh’
• Pete Seeger Interviewed about HUAC Hearings
• James Taylor - You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught
• Henry Fonda - Grapes of Wrath Monologue
• Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad