Aaron M. Shelley
What the folk happened?

The myth of the American outlaw, the image resonates so deeply with in our psyche, our identity, values and heritage all summed up in a single symbol of our selves. The lone pilgrim standing along an old dirt road, outfitted in a Stetson, Levis and work boots covered in dust and determination, no longer carrying a smith and Wesson six-shooter at his side but a Sears six string with the inscription “this machine kills fascists”. Woody Guthrie humanizes the new Robin Hood in the consciousness of working class people, while contrasting him with those (other “outlaws) who might rob the common man “with a fountain pen”. In his song pretty boy Floyd:

“If you gather round me children a story I will tell,
About pretty boy Floyd the out law Oklahoma knew him well.
There is many a starving family, the same old story told
How the outlaw paid the mortgage and saved their little home.
Or there’s tell of stranger who stopped to beg a meal
And underneath his napkin left a hundred dollar bill.
Now as through this world you ramble there’s lots of funny men
Some will rob you with a six-gun some with a fountain pen.
And as through this world you ramble as through this world you roam
You wont ever find an outlaw drive a family from their home.” *(10)



I. “Tis A Song, A Sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times
Come again no more” -Stephen Foster

At the turn of the twentieth century most middle to upper class Americans were unaware of any traditional music genres unique to their country, they were still looking towards the Old World, for forms of art and culture and had no idea to look at the emerging styles and traditions forming just below their feet. New cultures and identities, a consequence of assimilation of the influx of “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and the rural outposts of multi-generation Americans, a true “heterogeneous populace” was forming and demonstrated that people were engaged in forming their own culture and did not wait for the ruling classes to hand them down a national heritage.

Just as the American frontier was “won” and the landscape was going through tremendous change caused by (what historians have called) the second industrial revolution*(8), so to was the American psyche. As technology was replacing farm hands and the “simple life” A mass exodus of rural working class folks made their way to the new urban metropolis springing up, mothers and fathers were torn from the home and placed in textile factories for sixteen hour shifts in horrid conditions, people had experienced the atrocity of modern warfare in World war one, they were seeing their children growing up in completely different contexts than they had. The new national identity that was being handed the new generation was that of producers and consumers, no myths, no traditional costumes nor colors. People longed for the simple times a pure homogenous culture that existed nowhere in history but only in people minds.

At the same rate the way life was being destroyed it was also being studied, lectured on, written about in academic journals and finally commercialized. In 1910 John Lomax, a failed banker and teacher had published a book compiled of songs he had written down from cowboys passing by his home near the Chisholm Trail in Texas. The book: Cowboy songs and other frontier ballads had lyrics and melodies transcribed for piano and voice, giving mainstream America for the first time a taste of white rural working class culture and music. It included songs such as “oh, bury me not” a prayer for a youth with his deathbed wish of not being left on “the lone prairie”, and also cautionary mythologies of folk heroes in battle with technology such as John Henry the steel driving man. *(3)

The music style was simple in form and chord structure, making the lyrics the center of attention and giving the importance to the singer, (the heart strings of our rugged individualism definition of freedom is tugged). The imperfections of structure and rhyme give humanity to the writer, and a sense that the listener would be able to do it just as well. The simple patterns and motifs were accessible to all and did not require a technically trained ear.

With inventions of radio and phonographs people had access to music’s they had never before heard. “Traditional music although marketed in the early 1920’s, did not rise to national prominence until the late 20’s and early 30’s”*. (5)The music that was “initially marketed to and consumed by rural and newly urban whites in the south and mid-west”, *(2) was now in the homes of most Americans as performances on the Grande old Opry were broadcasted nationally. Lomax had “discovered” and produced acts like the Carter family, Jimi Rodgers and Lead belly. As Lomax claimed to be interested in brining authentic Folk music to mainstream audiences he also packaged the artists in ways suitable to the public preconceived notions of what the were expecting. In 1933 the Lomax’s had found Lead Belly in a state Penn while they were traveling the South recording African American Folk songs. Lomax had helped Lead belly receive a pardon from the Governor for the murder sentence he was serving, but was forced to wear his prison stripes on stage for the next ten years, his first album produced by Lomax was titled “Negro Sinful Songs”. Jimi Rodgers was a working class brakeman from Mississippi when “discovered”, he performed in full working man attire, from cowboy hats, gas station attendant cloths to railroad worker uniforms. He was the beginning of what was to later be called Country music, and much of his songs spoke of the simple times and homogenous culture that his demographic (newly urbanized white working class) was pining for:

“In my dear old southern home
I was happy as I could be
In that dear old sunny south by the sea
As for my dear old mother and dad
When I left I know it made them sad
So im going back to that dear old shack
Where I spent my happy days as a lad”*(11)

This new music then known as “hillbilly” was now being produced and consume and marketed for more than just the white working class.

II. “The communists everywhere are the only people I know of that know how to make the right use of our own American folk lore, folk culture, folk songs, folk singers and folks.” – Woody Guthrie

In the early 1930’s the strikes in the coal fields of Harlan county, Kentucky were some of the first instances that America’s folk music was used as voice for social change. The organizing apparatus of coal workers was the formation of the National Miners Union with its battle cry of “strike against hunger”*(3). As the strike turned into months the violence escalated, Miners were constantly beaten by police and a local militia hired by the operators, miners wives were beaten while trying to bring food to the strikers, at one time the whole of the union organizers were jailed. A line was being drawn in the entire country, in an article about the situation in The New Republic: “its is a battle in which every one must take his stand, there is no compromise. What ever is black to one class is white to the other. Who ever brings relief to the miners is an enemy of the operators and is run out of town”. The songs of the area began to take on a social consciousness as never seen before in traditional music. Like a Florence Reece song wrote after news of an attack on the miners by buy the local sheriff:

“They say in Harlan County,
There are no neutrals there:
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H Blair”*(3)

The Songs “reflected a fusion of social movement technique, ideology, and traditional folk material”* (1). The songs were sung in a traditional folk style and evoked folk themes and ideology but had now begun to incorporate a “conscious message”. Like this Sarah Ogan song

“I hate the capitalist system
I’ll tell the reason why
They cause me so much suffering
And my dearest friends to die”*(3)

The role of the songwriter had now become somewhere between a journalist, political activist and sociologist. The most effective writer to do all these best was a mostly out of work hobo from the dustbowl.

In the dark and early hours of a cold April morning, the silence of a small village of tents set up just out side a mining town in Southern Colorado is broken by a torrent of bullets and the stench of burning kerosene. The occupants were coal miners, their wives and children, all forced from their homes for striking for rights they already had by law, but were not giving by the mine owners, the eight hour day, the right to unionize, the right to be paid in u.s currency instead of company script. The assailants were national guardsmen called in to break the strike and force the miners back to work. After the smoke cleared thirty three were dead including children. News of the 1914 Ludlow massacre was in competition for national headlines with “accounts of American troops splashing ashore Vera Cruz” Mexico in response to the Mexican revolution making it possible for electing General Huerta into power who did not promises to make American interests safe in Mexico, on April 21 president Wilson had deployed troops in order to (in his words) “to teach the South American Republics to elect good men”*(9). The American public only became aware of the scope of the situation through Woody Guthrie’s Ballad of the Massacre.

“You struck a match and the blaze it started
you pulled the triggers of you guns
I made a run for the children but the firewall it stopped me
13 children died from your guns”*(11)

The linking of the political left and folk tradition had begun to take root in the American psyche. It is not a hard conlusion to make, Folk music is the peoples music for the people as Pete seegar said, “If folks play it its folk music”*(1). “This art lives upon the lips of the multitudes and is transmitted by the grapevine, surviving sometimes for centuries because it reflects so well the deepest emotional convictions of the common man. This is truly a democratic art, painting a portrait of the people, unmatched for honesty and validity” *(6) after the Bolshevik revolution in the soviet union there was an explosion of traditional folk music and art, the people were making there own art and celebrating their own styles. “Many who have written of Woody (Guthrie) emphasize that his communism was instinctual, his concern for the common, working man or woman and his love of the Union transcended the communist ideology and constituted something of a moral, spiritual, or philosophical outlook”*. (6)

The I.W.W too used folk tunes as a tool for education. The Woblies would demonstrate in towns standing on the traditional soap box, usually just outside the local Salvation army to counter act the preachers telling the workers they will get their “pie in the sky” when the woblies were giving means for the workers to get fed here on earth. Spokane, WA reacted by passing an ordinance banning free speech on public property for any one but the Salvation Army. So the woblies defied the law by lining up to make a speech on the soap boxes, as one would get up on the box and say “fellow worker” he was arrested and another would take his place, get arrested and so on, to the point the jails, post office, high school gyms were full of these protestors, the city didn’t have enough money to feed every one of them so the tax payers demanded a repeal of the ordinance as oppose to a raise in taxes.

Another means the Wobblies got their voices heard is one member would be dressed as a affluent business man in a public area and begin screaming “ive been robed, ive been robbed” while the crowd gatherd to see what was going on he would then say “ive robbed by the capitalist system” and talk to the crowd for as long as he could hold their attention, just then a band of musicians would jump out from behind a corner and play a Joe hill tune, from the IWW little red song book:*(10)

“long haired preachers come out every night
try and tell you whats wrong and whats right
but when asked for something to eat
they’ll answer with voices so sweet:
you will eat by and by
in that glorious land above the sky
work and pray, live on hay
you’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”*(10)

By the time the depression ending, lifting the burden off of the working class, America was in the middle of world war two, all forms of dissent were not only deemed illegal but were also defined by the U.S government. Folk songs, Unions, and social unrest were all deemed un-patriotic.

III. “Solidarity for ever”…err.. for while any way.
At the end of World War II America was ready to reap the benefits of being the last world power standing in the after math. The American public felt the world was safe from Fascism and ready to return to business as usual, But the puritan tendency towards mass hysteria is never so far removed from are consciousness. In 1949 China’s revolution had ended with the communist forces defeating the nationalist army, later that year Truman had announced the Soviet Union had tested its first atomic bomb, the cold war had begun and the second Red Scare was underway.

September fourth at the Lakeland picnic grounds near Peekskill New York, A folk music Concert was scheduled with headliners Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger. The concert venue was filled with a mob demonstrating against the “pro-communist” politics of the singers, the demonstrators soon turned violent and began to throw rocks at cars of peaceable concertgoers and the car of Pete Seeger. At the end of the riot the mob had caused over 100 injuries of the concertgoers, one person stabbed and many badly beaten. The media reacted to “the Peekskill Riots” as a communist plot to gain sympathy for the communist cause. Newsweek had reported that it was “a smashing propaganda triumph” for the communists. In an editorial appearing in Life magazine on September 26 1949 went so far as to say communists orchestrated the riot in order to gain public sympathy, it outlined “the Peekskill formula” used to bait patriotic Americans:

“first find a community where Jews or Negroes have settled in considerable numbers. Then do everything possible to stimulate the resentments which are always latent when a community’s racial pattern is changing. Finally, at a carefully chosen moment fire hatred and touch off riot with some spectacular provocation”*(6)

As the McCarthy era fervor had begun to drive all subversive thought underground.Folk music too had to change shape or be extinguished. Songs like “Solidarity forever”:

“when the union’s inspiration, though the workers blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere underneath the sun,
Yet what force on earth is weaker the feeble strength of one
But the union makes us strong

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power gain freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong”*(3)

Though at the height of the depression was a popular song of striking labor were now deemed much too Red to be sung at union meetings. The folk artist had the tricky job of expressing ones views and beliefs without being deemed “pinko” and kicked off the airwaves. Songs like Pete Seegers new group The weavers tune “if I had a hammer”:

“It’s the hammer of justice
it’s the bell of freedom,
and a song about the love between
all my brother and sisters
All over this land”* (2)

Which expressed general ideals that fit in to the leftist utopian desires, but had no call to action, no face of an enemy.
The lyrics of the Weavers were relatively as sterile as “if I had a hammer” and though they did enjoy some mainstream success they were still deemed subversive because (in Seegers words) “in 1949 only commies used words like peace and freedom”. The Weavers became “the first musicians in American history to be formally investigated for sedition. The McCarran Committee which had received its power from the Internal Security Act of 1950, probed onto the weavers alleged violation of Title 18, sections 2383-85, rebellion, Insurrection, advocating to overthrow the government and seditious conspiracy”*(6). Though Seeger and the Weavers never did any jail time they were blacklisted from airwaves and television.

As a result of the black list Seeger started a sort of guerilla folk concert warfare, roaming from college campuses and coffee shops. His performances became sing a longs of thousands of people in unison singing “we shall over come”. keeping alive the momentum of the folk movement alive during the McCarthy era, for the next generation who was just about to realize their parents were all full of shit, in unison.

The Folk revival of the 1960’s was sparked a new type of hobo taking the reigns from Woody Guthrie’s legacy as he laid dying in a New York hospital, Bob Dylan began taking over “in the cafes at night” in Greenwich Village. His folk sons still had the poetic encoded messages like “ the answer my friend is blowing in the wind” as oppose to “let each labor knight, be brave in the fight, remember united we stand”*. And though Dylan’s songs had a definite leftist tint, he claimed a-politic to ward off the crucifixion he feared as he was being labeled the messiah of the then emerging counter culture.* One of Dylan most famous protest songs was less a protest or a call to action than a warning to the ruling class:

“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
don’t stand in the doorway
don’t block up the hall
for he that gets hurt
will be the one who has stalled
theirs is a battle outside and it’s raging
It will soon shake your windows
and rattle your walls
for the times they are a changing”*(7)

The “changing times” were marked by innovations in cultural and social movements. Other artists who used the folk idiom like Joan Baez and Phil Ochs, were more blatant in their political values and messages. Joan Beaz was a voice of the anti- war movement and Phil Ochs was in the middle of trying to keep labor and the liberal as one as the after effects of cold war hysteria had made most workers not dare to appear Red.

As rock and roll became ever more commercialized its influence began to extend into the folk genre. Bob Dylan appeared at a Folk Festival in New Port, with an electric guitar and a rock and roll rhythm section. It marked the end of an era for the folk enthusiast, the songs were different now with the electric instruments, they were mixed for the music as oppose to the words, only the feelings remained, the melodies became what was important and the messages an after thought.

IV. The desperate search for something authentic
The white public feels a sort of safe satisfaction listening to lead belly sing the frustrations of the poor and down trodden Black southerner as long as he is in his full prison striped attire, this could be one of three reasons, 1: this particular ungrateful discontent is safely behind bars and can not extend his influence to other trouble makers. Two: We are holding on to the image of the noble savage who by not being “civilized” is somehow more in touch with the natural world and is able to more clearly see the human condition, Or three: We might feel for the first time in our lives that we are actually receiving something real, something not market to our demographic or sold to us as a glossed over version of reality.

As the twenty first century dawned, the nation seemed to obsess with defining our national heritage; PBS ran documentaries by big names like Martin Scorsese and Ken burns on “roots” music, blues, jazz and baseball. We look back on them and talk about how they are products of democracy and a reflection ourselves. We rarely realize that most of these forms came from the voices out in the cotton fields, out of a cold ghetto night in Harlem, or in a deep dark well of the coalmines in west Kentucky. Folk music in memory is no longer a communist plot to subvert America’s youth or an organizing tool for education and direct action. We have now exalted the heritage as our own and not realize it came from the bottom rung of our class system and from those desperately fighting against the very ways we have come to define our selves and our freedom.

Perhaps we saw the millennium approaching, and new that we were almost out of indigenous cultures to exploit, we panicked and decided we should save some of this folk heritage. Or perhaps it came out of human need that simply was capitalized on, folk, blues, roots and “country music may have provided a commodity that could allow one to buy into an American identity”*. Since it is difficult to look back on our past and Identify our “roots” with those of the robber barrens and slave traders so we let the voices of “roots” music define us. With out knowing where the songs were coming from. So we taught our children the lyrics to “this land is your land” while omitting some of the more subversive verses, and let them assume that what was fought for had already been won and there was no need to do any more, no need to feel dissatisfied with the status quo, No need to feel at one with a group who is singing the same song you are while being drown a flight of stairs or off a dinner’s counter.

Meanwhile the choruses of people singing “we shall over come” in unison with thousands of others have dwindled into a single voice singing alone in his or her empty car driving through rush hour gridlock not realizing the person in front and in back of them is belting out the same choruses, not realizing the person in front and in back of them is doing the same, not realizing the person in front and in back of them.

Notes:
1. Great day coming, “folk music and the American left”, Denisoff, R Serge, illinios press. Ml3795.d34
2. Romancing the Folk, “public memory and American roots music, Filene, Benjamin, university of North Carolina press 2000ml355i.f55
3. American folk songs of protest, John Greenway, octogon books, new york, ml3551.g7 1953, 1970
4. Minsterls of the dawn, Jerome Roditzky, nelson hall Chicago, 1976. ml3561.p6
5. Country music as national culture, (article) http;//xroads.Virginia.edu/1930s/Radio/c_w/essays3.html
6. This land is your land (article) http://www.loyono.edu/history/journal/1996/spivey.html
7. the times they are a changing http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/times.html
8. the perils of prosperity, Leuchtenburg William, university of Chicago press 1958,19993
9. Changing the world, Dawley Alan, princton university press, new jersey
10. Making speech free (recording) Utah Phillips, phillidelphia general member branch I.W.W
11. Jimmie Rodgers (record) The essential, BMG