`New City Songster''s Volume 20 Editorial Revisited

In April 1985, volume 20 of New City Songster, a UK protest folk songbook, contained the lyrics to Colin Bargery and Graham Goffee's "Little Boxes," Sue Edmonds" "To Our Town," John Quiggin's "Bobby, I Hardly Knew You," Peggy Seeger's "If You Want The Bomb" and "Ode To A Scab," Andy Victor's "Tales of '81," Sandy Kreitzer's "The Storm," Ewan MacColl''s "Daddy What Did You Do In The Strike?","The Media," "Only Doing Their Job"  and "Miner's Wife," Clem Parkinson's "Temperance Shearers," Mike Waterson and Martin Carthy's "A Stitch In Time," Larry Penn's "Nobody Cares About That," Maria Tolly's "Wishes," Jack Purdon's "Blackleg Mining Man," Kerith Power's "Upwardly Socially Mobile," Ed Pickford's "Hamster Sid," Paul O'Brien's "The Divil's Advice," Craig Johnson, "Down Along The Soo Line," Jan Bessent and Bill Murphy's "My Kitchen and My Loo," Irene Scott's "Screen Printer," Stan Patman's "Anti-Nuclear Angels," Pete Seeger's "My Get Up And Go," Keith Power's "Liberation Road," and Dick Gaughan's "Which Side Are You On, 1984?".  And volume 20 of New City Songster also included an editorial which stated the following:

"It's so easy to give up these days, to get disillusioned, disenchanted, despairing. It is easy to blame the dream and say it is unachievable when it is really the dreamer at fault.

"We have heard it said by many that protest singers, and writers of topical songs, are just `singing to the converted.' Even if this were so, what's wrong with that?  Do not the converted need encouragement and sustenance as we batter our minds and bodies over and over again against the walls of the system? Whoever brings this accusation against those who gather weekly in churches to sing of their hopes and beliefs to one another (and, incidentally, to their god)? We strengthen each other by singing together, and express our single purpose in chorus and verse. The converted DO have the solace of group activity: demonstrations, meetings, jail.

"We also find ourselves alone and still needing reminders of that group. When you're on your way home, going shopping, taking a bath, putting the kids to bed, cooking, washing, standing by your machine, pen-pushing, whatever: it's good to remember that song, that chorus, to have music that reminds you of the ultimate goal and the road that leads to it.

"The converted need to remember constantly that the powers of creation are on OUR side, because it's those powers that are going to bring about the big change that is coming. If we can create songs we can create a good and fair society. If we can beat the sense of isolation we can beat Thatcher. Those who can sing together can fight together."

`New City Songster''s Volume 17 Editorial Revisited

In September 1981, volume 17 of New City Songster, a UK protest folk songbook--which contained the lyrics to Ted Edwards' "The Coal and Albert Berry," Don Minifie's "The Ballad of Pat Brady," Deborah Silverstein's "Draglines," Ewan MacColl's "Nobody Knew She Was There" and "What The Poet Called Her," John Pole's "Under The Leaves of Life,", Clem Parkinson's "Fishes Need--Bicycles," Ewan MacColl's "The Vandals," Yan Sharangparni's "Misfit's Story," Peggy Seeger's "Enough Is Enough," Ewan MacColl's "Kilroy Was Here," Paul Wilson and Marilyn Tucker's "Uni-Multi-Factors International," Jim Moreland and Keith Gregson's "I'm A Pneumo," Clem Parkinson's "Microbe's Picnic," Alan Lavercombe's "Laid Off," Ted Edwards' "Thy Fayther's Comin' Wom," Charlie King's "Taft-Hartley Song" and "The Dancing Boilerman," and Rod Shearman's "Is The Big Fella Gone?"--was published. And volume 17 of New City Songster also included an editorial which stated the following:

"...There has never been a greater need for good songs. We are standing on the brink of the Third and Last World War, at a crossroads that has no left or right turns, only forward and backward.

"The songs that are coming in reflect varying attitudes toward this cliff-edge, but they essentially all say the same thing: the human race is in trouble, there is alienation on all fronts. It is no longer just the boss against the worker, but male vs. female, old vs. young, city vs. country, big business vs. the people, first vs. second vs. third worlds, black vs. brown vs. yellow vs. pink vs. white. And of course, the nuclear threat hanging over the whole thing.

"It is hard to write hopeful songs these days, but we are doing it. That is the job of the artist, not to point the finger and say `Look at all that's wrong with the world' and then cut his throat. He/she must point to the way out. In all the songs in this volume, the huge issues of unemployment, race hatred, class war, ecological devastation, nuclear cataclysm are put into perspective as obstacles that we can overcome. This is done by personalising, by putting into detail the human response.

"It isn't only the comedy reactions of the characters in UNI-MULTI_FACTORS INTERNATIONAL, or PAT BRADY--nor the use of BIG  FELLA as an endearment to the whale--nor the detailed descriptions in NOBODY KNEW SHE WAS THERE. It is all these approaches at once, a total of individual human actions which is presented. Faced with nuclear annihilation, you feel mighty small. You may say, `What can one person do?' then, in despair at your seeming impotence, do nothing. But the bucket fills with water drop by drop until one mighty small drop takes the water over the top. No drop is indispensable to the final spillout. All the songs, all the constructive responses to the world situation are now not only important but vital.

"The first drop in the bucket is just as important as the last."

`New City Songster''s Volume I Introduction Revisited

In late 1968, volume 1 of New City Songster, a UK protest folk songbook--which contained the lyrics to Ewan MacColl's "Ballad of the Big Cigars," "Lament for the Death of a Nobody," "Brother Did You Weep?," and "Student Edward" protest folk songs, the lyrics to Peggy Seeger's "Song of Choice" and "I Support The Boycott" protest folk songs, and the lyrics to the Critics Group "Grey October" anti-Vietnam War protest folk song--was published. And volume 1 of New City Songster also included an introduction which stated the following:

"This is volume 1 of a continuing series. It is not a folk magazine as such, with articles, reviews and traditional songs, but is strictly devoted to circulating new songs: songs for tomorrow, today and possibly yesterday, but no further back. While realizing the value of placing new songs in a cultural context, i.e. publishing them side by side with their traditional predecessors, it is undoubtedly a fact that many new songs have immediate topical relevance and are often out of date before they are published: others may deal with burning issues, too burning perhaps for most `folk' magazines to handle. As a result, people do not see them, often till too late--and they do not get sung."

Matt Jones' `Remembering Brother Kirk' Obituary Article From 1986 Revisited

U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter and Movement activist F.D. Kirkpatrick in 1960's

Following U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter and Civil Rights Movement activist Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick's death on August 16, 1986, the also now-deceased 1960's Freedom Singers group member and late 20th and early 21st-century U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter and Movement activist, Matt Jones, wrote the following obituary, titled "Remembering Brother Kirk,"  (which first appeared in issue #176 of the now-defunct Broadside topical folk song magazine). 
"Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick or `Brother Kirk,' as he was affectionately called, was a major contributor to folk music in the 60s and an outspoken advocate of freedom and justice in America and abroad. Kirk was born in Haynesville, Louisiana on August 12, 1933, the first son of Rev. and Mrs. John L. Kirkpatrick. Before he became a minister, Kirk's father was a tenant farmer for a wicked landowner named Crump. After Kirk's mother died during childbirth, the landowner immediately confiscated the property and ordered them off the farm. `He took everything. We had no place to go,' Kirk said. The pain and anguish in his face made his account so vivid that it seemed as if it had just happened. `I was just a lad of a boy at the time,' Kirk told me. However, that incident was a major contributing force in the development of Kirk's fighting spirit, which we knew so well.

"In 1955, Kirk became an All-American fullback at Grambling College and later played professional football for the Kansas City Chiefs. As a pro-football player, Kirk found that all the positions of power and leadership were held by the whites. `It was our tenant farm all over again,' said Kirk. The burning desire to free himself and his people from injustice was constantly in his mind.

"Kirk was ordained by the Church of Christ in God in Jonesboro, Louisiana in 1964. He formed the Deacons for Defense, which defended the lives and homes of Jonesboro citizens on many occasions. This experience led him to join Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1967, at Dr. King's request, Kirk came to New York to organize the Poor People's March on Washington, which aimed to unite poor whites, blacks, Indians [Native Americans], Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans.

"I first met Kirk in 1968 at the home of Gordon Friesen and Sis Cunningham, where both Kirk and I were living. Gordon and Sis are the founders and creators of this very magazine, BROADSIDE. Hearing Kirk sing freedom songs reminded me of my experiences as the director of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers. I was overjoyed to know that the work was being continued. When Kirk and I met we became brothers immediately. We sang together and had the opportunity of watching Sis and Gordon, the most important collectors of topical songs in the 1960s and 70s do their work.

"Brother Kirk spread the philosophy of Dr. King throughout the East Coast and, as an outgrowth of his work, the `Hey Brother Coffeehouse' was formed at St. Gregory's Church in Manhattan. Here, hundreds of folksingers sharpened their talents and developed their political consciousness under Kirk's direction.

"He was also a leading force in the fight for justice for the Palestinian people and for the oppressed in Northern Ireland. In recent years, he dedicated his life to working with the homeless in New York City and in Philadelphia. He was also editor-in-chief of the Many Races Cultural Foundation's newsletter, The Freedom Press.

"Brother Kirk died on Saturday morning, August 16, 1986, in New York City, after a brief illness. He had turned 53-years old on August 12. Kirk had five daughters: Camilla, Alfreda, Brunella, Freddy (deceased) of Grambling, Louisiana and Sojourner Christy Damio-Kirkpatrick of New York City.

"On Monday, August 25, 1986, people gathered at St. Gregory's Church from around the country to pay tribute to Brother Kirk: Palestinians, Jews, Irish, Blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, the homeless and the elderly. They were all there. From Pete Seeger to Mother Clark. They were all there. Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) and Bernadette Devlin McAlisky could not come, but sent telegrams. Kirk was my right arm. I loved him. We dreamed the same dreams and fought the same fight. I felt obligated to give this tribute to Kirk. It was a great celebration and tribute to his life and work.

"Brother Kirk is dead, but his spirit lives on in each of us. He never compromised his principles, regardless of the consequences. He fought for freedom and justice at every turn. `We are all significant on God's keyboard,' was his statement to the world. He believed in humankind and never allowed anyone to denigrate any one branch. He worked for the rights of the least powerful of his comrades: the Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland and in the U.K.; the Palestinians, who have been persecuted and are now scattered all over the world; the homeless and hungry Americans who live in the alleys and gutters of our country; the freedom fighters of Soweto who now rise from the ashes of apartheid; the Native Americans who are a constant reminder of our government's most heinous crime--the extermination of a race of people for the gain of land." 

Freedm Singer-U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter-Movement organizer Matt Jones

Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick's Black History Protest Folk Song Video Revisited

The late 20th-century U.S. Civil Rights Movement activist-organizer and protest folk songwriter-singer, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, produced this educational folk song video, in the years prior to his death in the 1980's, which reveals some historical facts that many U.S. history textbooks have often failed to include.

Abbie Hoffman's 1969 `Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album" Book Revisited

In his classic Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album" book of 50 years ago, 1960's U.S. antiwar movement organizer/activist and Chicago 8 Trial defendant Abbie Hoffman indicated how the U.S. hip capitalist rock music industry entrepreneurs and rock capitalist musicians who put together the Woodstock Music Festival in August 1969 apparently failed to reflect the egalitarian values of the 1960s antiwar and anti-capitalist Movement's counter-cultural hippie youth culture:

"...The za-za world of rock is almost entirely an uptown plastic dome. Up at Woodstock it meant living at the Concord hotel or the Holiday Inn in Liberty and buzzing in stoned out of your head in a helicopter. It meant being hustled under guard to a secluded pavilion to join the other aristocrats who run the ROCK EMPIRE...

"I emerged exhausted, broke and bleeding from the WOODSTOCK NATION. It was an awesome experience but one that made me have a clearer picture of myself as a cultural revolutionary--not a cultural nationalist, for that would embrace a concept of hip capitalism which I reject...Cultural revolution requires people to change the way they live...

"The four promoters of Woodstock Ventures are Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts...Lang owned a head shop in Coral Gables until he got the idea for Woodstock Ventures. Kornfeld was a rock promoter for ...bubble rock groups...Rosenman and Roberts had the bread. Roberts' old man owned a multi-million dollar pharmaceutical firm...

"...Brothers and Sisters, we have a duty to each other to work out the problem of the vultures that prey on our culture and indeed on the rest of the world culture as well...The Big Boys are going to get together and sort of figure out how they can make some bread on the Woodstock Nation or, if not directly, how they can suck its energy. All that has to be fit in along with Columbia Records pulling ads out of the underground press in an effort to cripple them. A to P research firm had suggested two ways to prevent another Chicago from happening.

"1. Cancel the policy of youth fare on airplanes.
"2. Urge Columbia Records to pull out of the underground press...

"...These guys were prepared to do anything to stay in business, even grow their hair a little longer and put on some beads.

"Fit all that in with Love Food, Inc. selling sawdust burgers for outrageous prices on the highest hill in WOODSTOCK NATION and shoveling real money with real shovels into Wells Fargo Trucks, all the time guarded by cops who weren't holding flowers in their hands, no sir. These are things that weren't announced from the stage in that syrupy smooth groovy voice, nor talked about in the psychedelic hand-outs and press releases of Woodstock Ventures...

"What are you gonna do with your bread, brother rock stars? Are you gonna help build and defend the WOODSTOCK NATION NOW, or are you just gonna piss it all away?...

"...Revolution was becoming a saleable commodity and the only way to deal with that was to try and rip off the bread and spread it around like the manure it was...No real hip activist could just sit by and watch skilled promoters create events that gathered huge numbers of young people and made exorbitant profits without eventually taking an interest..." 

Joan Baez's September 1966 `American Folk Scene' Interview Revisited : An Excerpt

Joan Baez at a 1960's Anti-War Rally

Following are some excerpts from an interview with 1960's U.S. anti-war/civil rights movement protest folk singer/activist Joan Baez that was conducted by telephone on Labor Day, Monday, September 5, 1966 by David A. De Turk and A. Poulin, Jr., which first appeared in the 1967 book that they editied, The American Folk Scene: Dimensions of the Folksong Revival:

INTERVIEWER: On the basis of what you have been discovering for yourself in the past year or so, what is your impression now of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement?
BAEZ: Well, as I look back, that movement was--not bad, but they didn't really know much of anything. I didn't know much, either! But, it was what we refer to now as an "unviolent" movement; that is to say, they used nonviolence because it seemed the most intelligent, but they would have been happy at any moment to switch to something else if they thought it would work better.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think it was very effective?
BAEZ:  Well, in a way, except that if each of those students really knew what he was doing and really knew what he was asking--if he was saying, "We're not going to take any more of this gas,' then he had to be ready to leave school. The problem was that most of them, I think, were not ready to leave school.

INTERVIEWER: Would you agree that it would be virtually impossible to bring about any lasting changes at the university?
BAEZ: Ummm--not if they were ready to leave! And they should be ready to leave because I don't think they should have been there in the first place!...

INTERVIEWER: You have said that you think one of the basic problems with the traditional college setting is that it still "tends to assume that war is okay," that there are "justifiable" wars. Do you see this among the faculty as well? Normally, aren't faculty thought of as being "liberal"?
BAEZ: Oh, good Lord, that word "liberal" is just, I mean, practically meaningless. Most good liberals still think it's okay to kill people.

INTERVIEWER: Under certain circumstances?
BAEZ: Yes, and they insist everything depends on the circumstances and those circumstances exist all the time; we just manage to create them...

INTERVIEWER: You've implied previously when we've talked that what you sing reflects the state of your thinking at the time; you choose songs because they are saying something to you. What kinds of songs are you singing now and is there any particular reason for this?
BAEZ: Well, that's sort of funny because right now in this unquenchable search for some kind of reality that I'm involved in I'm not terribly interested in music right now and it occurs to me I hadn't really realized what was happening. I tried a rock'n'roll record this year--and I really ended up that I don't want to put it out, and I'll tell you why.

INTERVIEWER: Was that Dick Farina's "Pack Up Your Sorrows"?
BAEZ: Farina's, yes...I realized when I was listening to the tapes and trying to put the record together that something was wrong. And I never could figure it out until we were reading Gandhi and he said something about art. He said how you could never accept art for art's sake. Then he said he rejected it, he didn't say it was necessarily bad, he said he rejected it because it didn't represent truth, it wasn't involved with truth, and I realized that that was really what was wrong with that record. Not that it was false or lies or anything, but just that it had nothing to do with anything meaningful, most of it...The rock songs are not necessarily untrue, but what Gandhi also said was that art must elevate the spirit. Rock'n'roll does not elevate my spirit...

INTERVIEWER: Have you felt that Dylan's newer material still says something to you?
BAEZ: It says something to me when I'm feeling at my absolutely most destructive. I think it is very, very destructive music--and quite beautiful, some of it, you know, but for me it's when I feel mopy and very unspiritual, or whatever you want to call it.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you call it "destructive"?
BAEZ: Well, that's all he's saying. I mean, up to a point, Bobby and I said about the same thing. What we both said was that everything is completely screwy and there just doesn't seem to be much reason to anything, and then we split when I said you had to find out whether there was a reason and you had to give something to the people who are starving and you have to try to stop murdering even though it seems impossible, but what he said was--`Screw it.' I mean, you can't do anything and just forget it and I'll get my kicks while I'm here. I mean, that's what I get out of the music even though some of it is--I mean, he's such a musical genius that it's so beautiful to the ear, except that it's very discouraging. I mean, putting out a song like "Everybody Must Get Stoned," that's just the opposite of helping anyone to care. I mean it's just so destructive somehow.

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel there's a kind of "retreat" involved here?
BAEZ: Oh, complete, yes. I think he doesn't want to be responsible for anybody, including himself.

INTERVIEWER: He has said as much in various interviews.
BAEZ: Yes, he's pretty straight about that. I just think it's rather--I can't help thinking it's sad. Because he's so powerful.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think he would be happier if he could find the strength to go back to attempting to fight it rather than not?
BAEZ: Something like that, yes. I mean, it's hard to judge who's going to be happiest now, but he doesn't appear to me to be a very happy young man...
(end of excerpt)
 

Irwin Silber's 1965 Newport Folk Festival Program Booklet `Topical Song Revolution at Midpoint' Excerpt

1965 Newport Folk Festival Program Booklet

In an article that first appeared in the 1965 program booklet of the Newport Folk Festival, titled "The Topical Song Revolution at Midpoint," then-Sing Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber wrote the following:

"The profit-motivated formula songs that have been spoonfed to the American people by both Tin Pan Alley and Nashville for the last half a century make up, as a body of expression, one of the most flagrant insults to human intelligence in recorded history...

"But topical songs are not the invention of the twentieth century. The idea was not patented by Sing Out! or Broadside magazine. They are not the brain-children of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan or the civil-rights movement...

"The tradition of topical song is as old as human communication--for wherever art has been central to life and to the needs of society, artists have commented upon and attempted to affect the events of their time and the human condition...

"The tradition, no matter how dormant, had never died. Before World War I, the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World) had fanned the flames of discontent with their insurrectionary propaganda songs and ballads. In the Depression years, textile workers in the South and garment workers in the North put their protest into songs. The line of continuity embraced Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl. The Almanac Singers and the C.I.O. organizing drives of the late 1930's, the topical Broadway stage and the meaningful music of Earl Robinson and Marc Blitzstein and Harold Rome.

"In the postwar years, People's Songs was the rallying point for the topical song. Even in the intellectually barren decade of the 1950's, dedicated partisans of unpopular causes sang out for civil liberties and peace. And through it all, over all the decades of this century, the blues developed as a magnificent creative expression so based on the reality of Negro life in America it needed no categorization to define its status...

"Topical song has proved its worth and strength many times over these last years. But perhaps the time is due...for some careful evaluation of where it's all at right now. There are some signs of danger blowing in the wind.

"Not the least of these has been the emergence of cults of deification around our most popular singers. The personality cult is the very antithesis of a meaningful and continuing expression--for it cuts the artist off from his roots and his strength, the contact with everyone else's reality. The idolization of the `artist as hero' has been the ruin of more good poets than one would comfortably choose to name--and the application of this circumstance to the topical song movement of our own time is not hard to find...

"Another danger in the current picture is the process whereby listening to `protest' songs replaces the act of protest...

"The most urgent danger sign, however, is the dollar sign. What with hit records, TV appearances, major concert halls and folk-festival spectaculars--the financial worth of protest is only one step removed from being measured in the Dow-Jones average. It must strike some observers as ironic and odd that the most earnest endorsers of the `new' protest are Columbia Records and Time magazine...

"Let there be no mistake...Our artists, our singers, our writers who try to sing of life...are our voice, our conscience...But we must constantly be demanding of them else their art will rot and be turned against them and us.

"Perhaps by way of conclusion, we should abandon the concept of Topical song. It is not enough that a song's subject matter be of topical concern. We should demand insight and partisanship and protest and affirmation from our songs--no matter whether we call them topical or not. For, in the final analysis, it is not art that is our ultimate goal--but life."

Sing Out! Magazine Editor Irwin Silber with Pete Seeger

How Commercialism Affected 1960's Protest Folk Song Writers

In his 1965 book, Freedom In The Air: Song Movements of the Sixties, Broadside magazine Contributing Editor Josh Dunson indicated how the commercialism of the U.S. corporate media conglomerates' hip capitalist music industry subsidiaries apparently affected the artistic and political direction of 1960's protest folk and topical song writers, by writing the following:

"The years 1963-1964 proved in the breakthrough of `Blowin' in the Wind' that a great deal of money was to be made from songs of the protest movements. The fact that freedom songs and topical songs were, and to some extent still are, highly profitable, had a dual effect. It circulated the songs over a large area, but at the same time the meaning of many of the songs was toned down to suit the managers, agents and disc jockeys. As Barbara Dane said exaggeratedly: `Just like people who are not in love write love songs, now topical songs are the big thing, so people who don't particularly care about freedom are writing freedom songs.'

"There is some truth in this statement, especially in the case of commercial song writers. The difference in approach between the freedom singer who has risked his or her life while singing and the producer who sees a potential profit in these songs is too great to be ignored. Situations are not necessarily black and white, but the clash between the topical singer and the Artist and Repertoire man exists and is real...

"This situation...is more disastrous when in topical songs a singer who is writing essentially to express himself is swamped with `success.' Irwin Silber maintains this is essentially what interfered with Bob Dylan's growth as a song writer. With hundreds of kids wildly following him down the street for autographs, he could no longer remain an observer. Instead he became an idol, to be observed and followed. I think this explains a great deal, but even more cogent is the fact that there seemed to be no real alternative in the directions to which he turned for help. If there is nowhere to go, the only place left is one's self, and that is where Bob Dylan and his songs are now. Many of them are good, but not one of them measures up in breadth or beauty of form to his earlier writing...

"Song writers who are constantly traveling on tour to various folk-song night clubs and coffee houses are always in danger of thinking entirely in terms of their profession. They tend to lose contact with the movements and the emotional identification that inspired them to write songs during the years they lived in New York's slums..."

Revisiting UK Protest Folk Songwriter/Miner Tommy Armstrong

UK Miner/Protest Folk Songwriter Tommy Armstrong

As John McDonnell noted in the 1979 book, Songs of Struggle and Protest, which he edited:

"The songs of workers composed and sung sometimes in the workplace itself, are...different...They express the feelings of...workers...The mining industry has been particularly noted for its fine songs. Probably the harshness and isolation of the conditions of work, and the danger which fostered the spirit of comradeship among the miners, have contributed to this creativity..."

And in the same book, McDonnell explained why he thought a UK miner named Tommy Armstrong was considered to be a great writer of protest folk songs:

"The greatest songwriter among miners must surely be Tommy Armstrong born in 1848 who started work at the age of nine and spent most of his long working life at Tanfield Lea...He had a real sense of responsibility to the miners...and felt a deep obligation to record the landmarks in their history...He entertained at concerts given to raise money for the victims of pit disasters, for strike funds, for reading rooms and for the miners' union. He is one of the best of all worker poets and A.L. Lloyd has described his work as `characterized by a profound class consciousness and a notable faculty for criticism of society.' Most of Armstrong's strike ballads were made during the 1880's and 1890's..."

http://www.pitmanpoet.org.uk/TommyArmstrong/TommyArmstrong.htm

Hard-Hitting Labor Songs Revisited In Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore's `Working-Class Heroes' CD

If you were inspired by Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore's updated 21st-century musical arrangements for and spirited singing of protest folk songs (that IWW organizer/Irish socialist labor organizer and 1916 Dublin Easter Rising executed leader James Connolly wrote in the early 20th century) in their 2013 Songs of Freedom  cd, you're likely to also be moved and inspired by their latest cd, Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle In Song.

As the liner notes for their 2019 Working-Class Heroes cd (which is being distributed in the USA by both PM Press and Free Dirt Records) observes:

"The most essential music is conceived by real human beings: ordinary, anonymous, often poor-people who stood up and joined together to fight injustice and institutional oppression. This is the story of  Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song, a collection of American working-class, pre-World War II folk songs revived by Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore. Here the duo presents 20 songs written by both folk canon heavyweights and lesser known but equally gifted songwriters...The album is a collection of stories as much as songs--stories of the women and men who (sometimes literally) gave their lives to emancipate the working-class.

"Heroes featured in this collection: Sarah Ogan Gunning, Ralph Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, Ella May Wiggins, Joe Hill, Paul Robeson, John Handcox, Aunt Molly Jackson, Jim Garland, and several more anonymous proletarian songwriters, whose names have been long forgotten but their words immortalized."

Most of the labor movement songs written by working-class labor movement organizers and/or working-class songwriters featured on Working-Class Heroes were included in the Hard-Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People songbook compilation, of Wobbly and 1930's Depression Era protest folk songs, that Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger put together in the early 1940's--which didn't get published until 1967. But some of these featured songs may not have been heard much by either older 20th-century or younger 21st-century labor movement activists, labor union members and U.S. working-class protest folk music fans--like "Come All You Coal Miners," "Come On Friends And Let's Go Down," "I Hate The Capitalist System," "The Mill Mother's Song" and "The Commonwealth of Toil."

In her spirited and passionate singing of the songs featured on Working-Class Heroes at a June 2019 performance of the duo at Encuentro 5 in Boston, Yvonne Moore showed that she's able to sing labor songs in as moving and intense a way as Hazel Dickens, Barbara Dane, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Bev Grant were able to sing labor songs in the second half of the 20th-century. And, at the same event, Mat Callaghan was able to explain the historical context of the labor songs in the 21st-century that the duo sang as well as Pete Seeger did in the 20th-century; and  also to sing a great, entertaining version of Woody Guthrie's "Mama Don't `Low No Bush-Wahs Hangin' Around," that most Woody Guthrie fans in USA probably have never heard performed before.

Yvonne Moore and Mat Callahan

The duo has also edited an accompanying 96-page songbook for their new cd (that PM Press is also distributing), titled Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song: A Songbook. And as the blurb for this 2019 songbook notes: 

"Most of the songs collected here are from the early twentieth century, yet their striking relevance to current affairs invites us to explore the historical conditions that inspired their creation: deep, systemic crisis, advancing fascism, and the threat of world war. In the face of violent terror, these working-class songwriters bravely stood up to fight oppression. Such courage and heroism is immortal, such heroes should be celebrated and their songs can still lift our spirits, if we sing them today..."

http://www.matandyvonne.com/

`We Shall Overcome! Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement' 1963 Introduction: An Excerpt

In 1963, the introduction to the We Shall Overcome! Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement songbook (that was compiled by Guy and Candie Carawan for SNCC and published by Moe Asch's Oak Publications) indicated how non-commercially-motivated Freedom Movement protest folk songs, that working-class people of various racial backgrounds and Movement activist/organizers collectively created in 20th century, differ from most of the commercially-motivated pop songs that get played on corporate media conglomerate radio and television station programs in 21st-century, in the following way:

"Freedom songs today are sung in many kinds of situations: at mass meetings, prayer vigils, demonstrations, before Freedom Rides and Sit-Ins, in paddy wagons and jails, at conferences, work-shops and informal gatherings. They are sung to bolster spirits, to gain new courage and to increase the sense of unity...

"The freedom songs are of many kinds and range through many moods. The important ones are the old, slow-paced spirituals and hymns (some in the minor mode) that sing of hope and determination, and, the rhythmic jubilee spirituals and bright gospel songs that protest boldly and celebrate eventual victory. These are in the majority and usually have new or revised words to old tunes...Finally, there is a small miscellany of songs imported from the north, including a couple of revised union songs and a handful of newly adapted folk songs. These have come from exchange students, freedom riders, folk singers and hit records...The students have been responsible for making up most of the new lyrics and singing new life into the old songs...

"...No other songs have been able to express so closely the feelings of the participants or have been so easily adapted to fit current situations as some of the old spirituals. When sung with anything approximating the old time style and spirit, they are unbeatable..."

Irwin Silber's 1966 Foreward To `Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People' Book: An Excerpt

In 1966 Sing-Out! folk music magazine editor Irwin Silber wrote the following about the Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People book, whose text Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax first put together in the early 1940's, that was finally published in book form by Moe Asch's Oak Publications in 1967:

"...This book is all about--the despair, the struggle, and the dreams of the working people of the United States...as expressed through the songs the people themselves made up and sang.

"There aren't many professional song-writers represented in these pages. Mostly, the writers and composers, where we know their names, are people like Aunt Molly Jackson, Jim Garland, Ella Mae Wiggins, Sara Ogan, John Handcox. Or blues singers like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red. For these and all the anonymous picket-line poets of the time, there was no intellectual problem of `commitment' or whether or not `protest' was `art.' When you sing because your life depends upon it, when you sing out of the very bowels of your being with a scream of anguish or when you sing out with a yell that demands and proclaims and asserts your rights as a man or a woman and as a human being--when you sing this way, where the song is an extension of your own life as it is inter-connected with the lives of others, there is no need to weigh the advisability or artistic worth of songs of protest..."

John Steinbeck's Foreward To Text of `Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People' Book: An Excerpt

`Grapes of Wrath' Author John Steinbeck

In the early 1940's, the novelist who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, also wrote the following about the protest folk songs created by U.S. working-class people and about 20th-century protest folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie; in a Foreward to the early 1940's text of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax's Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People book:

"The songs of the working people have always been their sharpest statement...Working people sing of their hopes and of their troubles...You can learn more about people by listening to their songs than in any other way, for into their songs go all the hopes, and hurts, the angers, fears, the wants and aspirations...

"Woody is just Woody...He is just a voice and a guitar...There is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of a people to endure and fight against oppression..."

Did Hip Capitalist Multi-Millionaire Musician Dylan Sell-Out The Movement In 1965?

In his 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties, Elijah Wald described what apparently happened in the world of U.S. folk music, historically, in the summer of 1965--during the same year when the Democratic Johnson Administration ordered U.S. warplanes to bombard North Vietnam on a daily basis and sent over 200,000 U.S. soldiers to wage war in South Vietnam, in violation of international law:

"On the evening of July 25, 1965...Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival...carrying a Fender Stratocaster in place of his...acoustic guitar...The New York Times reported that Dylan `was roundly booed...' Many were dismayed and angry...

"In most tellings, Dylan represents youth and the future, and the people who booed were stuck in the dying past. But there is another version, in which the audience represents youth and hope, and Dylan was shutting himself off behind a wall of electric noise, locking himself in a citadel of wealth and power, abandoning idealism and hope and selling out to the star machine. In this version, the Newport festivals were idealistic, communal gatherings, nurturing the growing counterculture...and the booing pilgrims were not rejecting that future; they were trying to protect it...

"...1965 marked a significant divide...The weekend Dylan walked onstage with his Stratocaster, President Johnson announced he was doubling the military draft and committing the United States to victory in Vietnam.

"...Dylan...spent the rest of the decade making...albums that seemed willfully oblivious to the events...in the headlines...In 1968, pressed by an old friend to explain why he was not more engaged in the Vietnam protests, he responded: `How do you know I'm not...for the War?'...

"In 1965 Dylan was...24 years-old...When he turned from sharp topical lyrics, followers who had hailed him as the voice of a generation lamented...

"...Seeger and Dylan can stand for the two defining...ideals: Seeger for the ideal of democracy, of people working together, helping each other, living and believing and treating each other as...equals...

"...There is some truth in the simplification that Dylan was a cynical careerist..."

Revisiting BBC's 1983 Folk Music Series Episode with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger

Hip Capitalist Multi-Millionaire Musician Dylan's Albert Grossman Connection Revisted

One reason a 21st-century hip capitalist multi-millionaire musician named Bob Dylan apparently was able to personally enrich himself and his individual family during the Vietnam War Era of U.S. history was that a hip capitalist businessman named Albert Grossman was Dylan's manager during most of the 1960s.

Hip Capitalist Businessman-Manager Albert Grossman and Dylan in 1960s

 As Elijah Wald observed in his 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!--Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Split the Sixties:

"Grossman's talents as a promoter were more than equaled by his backroom financial savvy. He seems to have become interested in Dylan during the spring of 1962, and by most reports it was `Blowin' in the Wind' that caught his attention...

"...Folk agents tended to be fans first...which...preserved separation from the commercial mainstream. Grossman was another beast entirely: he had started one of the first folk night clubs, Chicago's Gate of Horn...He was...a...rapacious businessman who enjoyed distinguishing himself...with...displays of wealth and power...In 1962 most people on the folk scene were only tangentially aware of Grossman, but over the next few years he would become widely regarded as the snake in the garden.

"Bob Neuwirth, who was one of Dylan's closest companions in the mid-1960s, has argued that Grossman `invented' Dylan..: `Bob Dylan could not get arrested before Albert came along!...Albert made it possible to have a $50 [equal to around $415 in 2018 dollars]-a week allowance to have enough money to pay the rent.' Dylan had an album on a major label...before Grossman got involved, but the record sold badly, and paying jobs were few and far between..."

Revisiting `Sing Out!' Magazine's September 1964 Issue Cover

Revisiting another Sing Out! Magazine issue cover photo

Revisiting Sing Out! Magazine's First Anniversary Issue Cover

Revisiting Broadside Magazine's February 1962 Issue Cover