Joe Worker (Micki Grant)

Does Commercially-Motivated Pop Music Divert Working-Class Musicians and Music Fans from Class Struggle?

In their 2011 book, titled Playing For Change: Music and Musicians in the Service of Social Movements, Rob Rosenthal and Richard Flacks wrote the following:

"Music may work against the interests of a movement in the first place simply because most movements seek alternatives to prevailing values and arrangements, while much of culture--popular culture in particular--tends to reflect and perpetuate the values of the existing order, values that are typically indifferent at best and hostile at worst to the vision of the movement...The values expressed in much of the...music and scene of the 1960s and 1970s...encouraged a worldview that militated against collective movement activity. The charity megaevents of the 1980s were criticized...for embodying an ethnocentric worldview...that reinforced the First World dominance of other nations...

"...The idealization of the car, a central aspect of rock...through Bruce Springsteen and down to the present, reaffirms...love of auto culture, making environmentalists' challenge to that culture more difficult...Much of the popular culture...doesn't hold out the promise of resisting or overthrowing the dominant culture...Much of pop culture asserts that political and social questions are irrelevant...Music...can easily be a diversion from political and movement activity rather than an aid...

"Adorno feared that...popular art was diversionary `social cement' when created...as a commodity, including music that declared itself to be socially significant...Frank speaks specifically of the `commodification of dissent'...Politics as fashion replaces politics with content...The movement...will begin to reflect the values and direction of the `posers' (as they are often called)...rather than those most dedicated to the social and political changes sought by the movement...

"...Some activists fear that music...can become a replacement for necessary political activity...Music may substitute for actual experiences that might...lead to involvement with a movement..

"...To the degree that any individual--whether music hero, religious figure, or political leader--comes to represent...the movement, some democratic qualities of the movement are diminished, as collective power and responsibility are ceded to individual power and control...

"...Rolling Stone gleefully informed its advertisers that a majority of the subscribers to the magazine...had voted for Ronald Reagan for president in the 1984 election..." 

Paul Robeson - Rare TV appearance 1960

Woody Guthrie Interviews (1)

Making the Case for Labor Unions Post-WWII: "Deadline for Action" (1946)

Mike Gold

Rainbow Quest: Buffy Sainte-Marie - My Country Tis of Thy People You're ...

MILLIONS OF US (American Labor Films, 1935)

Detroit Workers Newsreel

Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special 1931 (1931)

Phil Ochs - There But For Fortune

`The Harry Smith' Of Left Vinyl Records--Conclusion

An interview with `An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels' Author Josh MacPhee

In a recent email interview for Protest Folk Magazine readers, New York City-based designer, artist and archivist Josh MacPhee responded to some questions related to the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, that he authored. MacPhee is also a founding member of both the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements.

Why do you think most of the vinyl records produced by the labels you describe in your encyclopedia have never received much airplay on U.S. radio stations, either historically or currently?

JOSH MACPHEE: First, a significant portion of the labels in the book released music in languages other than English, which almost immediately means no radio play outside of a small number of small stations like college and community radio.

Second, many of the records were released for specific political purposes, and don't make a lot of sense outside of their original context. For instance, a 7" released by the Italian Communist Party to get a specific politician elected in 1969 is not going to make much sense in the U.S. at that time, never mind twenty years later. Often the goal is not so much "timeless good music" but sounds that mobilize specific people in specific places during specific periods of time.

And finally, a large portion of music that is politically charged also takes challenging sonic qualities. A huge amount of jazz music in the 1960s and 70s by players like Archie Shepp, Max Roach, and dozens and dozens more was never played on the radio, even though it was released by major corporate labels.

One thing that's interesting about the third edition of your encyclopedia is that you chose to, as you write, be "ecumenical" and include labels that were self-defined as either anarchists, socialists, communists and anti-imperialist revolutionary left nationalists--rather than just describing labels that only self-defined themselves as anarchists, for example. Why did you decide to be so "ecumenical"?

JOSH MACPHEE: I'm interested in how music is used and distributed through social movements, and very few movements have a unified ideological position. This is part of why I wanted to focus on the apparatus around music, rather than its sonic qualities.

While many musicians are highly politicized, few are political organizers, so often it is the structure around them that provides political context as much as the music itself. Hugh Masekela, the South African trumpet player, was a huge advocate for the African National Congress, but I have no doubt that his music was popular with supporters of other factions of the anti-apartheid movement, and likely even with white South Africans who supported apartheid.

Why did you decide to focus on smaller, independent labels (like Paredon, etc.) and not include major corporate labels in your encyclopedia?

JOSH MACPHEE: As said above, the structure around the music is as interesting to me as the music itself, and I was really interested in how large groups of mobilized people—movements—were engaging with, producing, and distributing vinyl records.

While there is no question that Bob Dylan's records were very important to many politicized people in the U.S. and beyond, it would be a stretch to say they were organizing tools. This is in clear contrast to someone like Victor Jara in Chile, who not only played concerts for Salvador Allende's socialist election campaign, but recorded the election theme song, and worked with a group of like-minded musicians to create the DICAP (Discoteca Del Cantar Popular) record label, which was started by communist youth at the end of the 1960s, and by the fascist coup in 1973, had become one of Chile's most popular labels.

How can U.S. working-class music fans and U.S. university libraries and U.S. public libraries who wish to obtain a copy of the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels purchase a copy of your great, groundbreaking reference book? And how can they go about obtaining copies of some of the vinyl records mentioned in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels?

JOSH MACPHEE: The book is available from my publisher Common Notions (https://www.commonnotions.org/encyclopedia-of-political-record-labels), or should be easy for any local bookstore to order. As for the records, that can be a little more challenging.

Political records pressed by U.S. labels like Folkways, Rounder, and Paredon can often be found in used bins in shops across the country, but much of the international stuff is much harder to find. Online, Discogs.com is a great resource, sort of like mixing eBay with Wikipedia, but with only music content. Many international shops and record sellers are on there, and many are more than happy to make deals for clutches of political records that aren't that popular in their shops. While there are some really amazing political gems that are bursting with both musical and contextual richness, there is also plenty of political vinyl that is much more interesting as an object of a moment than as free-standing music. (end of article).

`The Harry Smith' Of Left Vinyl Records—Part 1

An interview with `An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels' Author Josh MacPhee

 In a recent email interview for Protest Folk Magazine readers, New York City-based designer, artist and archivist Josh MacPhee responded to some questions related to the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, that he authored. MacPhee is also a founding member of both the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements.

In the handbook that Harry Smith edited, which was included in the Folkways label's 1952-released Anthology of American Folk Music, Harry Smith provided listeners with "information on issues," "notes on recordings" and "discographical references", for each of the 87 folk song tracks he included in his anthology. In what ways do you think An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels might be considered similar to or different from the American Folk Music handbook which was included in Folkways's classic Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music mid-20th-century release?

JOSH MACPHEE: While I think my intentions follow in Smith's footsteps, my process is really different. I rarely focus on individual songs, and instead have used the record label as a way to try to peel back and look at the political context in which music is recorded and released into the world. Through looking at the origins and motivations of specific labels, their catalogs, and also how they operated, we can learn a lot about how music was connected (or not) to social movements and larger events in the world.

In addition, Smith's project was produced at the very advent of the vinyl record, while mine is about the parallel arcs of vinyl production and international political movements through the second half of the twentieth century. The U.S. Civil Rights Movement rises to prominence in the late 1950s just as the vinyl record becomes the dominant form for music distribution—and uses vinyl to great agit prop effect—through the use of recorded music during the anti-apartheid movement in Southern Africa at the close of the century and end of vinyl's dominance.

Prior to Moe Asch's Folkways label producing and releasing its Anthology of American Folk Music records in 1952, Harry Smith apparently had personally collected thousands of 78 rpm recordings before selling around half of them to Moe Asch (for 35 cents per disc) and half of his collection to the NY Public Library (where the records were later apparently stored in the stacks of its Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, on the Upper West Side). Before writing the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, did you collect many of the vinyl records, yourself, of the labels your encyclopedia mentions? And, if so, how were you able to find out about and locate the vinyl records produced by the labels you reference in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels?

JOSH MACPHEE: Absolutely. I spent a number of years collecting political records, and still do so.

Initial forays into record collecting were directed by friends and political acquaintances and happened at local record shops, but quickly jumped to online searches, and the Discogs website in particular. Discogs is an interesting and unique resource, sort like if you bred Wikipedia and eBay, merging the database of the former with the decentralized sales platform of the latter.

Once I started to get a sense of what was out there, I would reach out to record sellers in other parts of the world, let them know I was really interested in political records, and because many of these are not in high demand, they would sell me large collections of them relatively cheaply. At this point, I've amassed over 2,000 explicitly political records, released by about half as many labels and organizations, from at least two dozen countries and every continent (except Antarctica).

Around ten years ago (to obtain some money to purchase a new cheap acoustic guitar), I sold the vinyl albums I had collected from the post-1950's era of U.S. folk music history to some stores that sold used vinyl records to their customers. And, ironically, I found that the used vinyl record store merchants were more interested in purchasing and paying more money for the used vinyl records produced by Paredon and some of the other labels described in your encyclopedia, than they were in purchasing and paying money for the used vinyl records that had originally been purchased by many more music fans after the 1950's. Do you think there's a possibility that some of the vinyl records produced by some of the labels you describe (that received less U.S. distribution network access or corporate radio, foundation-sponsored radio or state-funded radio airplay, generally, in the USA than what the vinyl records produced by the music industry subsidiaries of the U.S. and UK corporate media conglomerates received) are now considered more valuable by collectors these days?

JOSH MACPHEE: "Value" is a strange thing in our society, especially when being defined by collectors. Often the more rare something is, the more valuable it us seen to be, regardless of its actually impact on the world. For instance, early pressings of popular records with misprints on the covers regularly are sold for a lot more than more common versions, even though the music is identical.

Paredon records that were produced in smaller numbers, or for some reason are harder to find, are definitely more expensive than ones that might have been much more popular when they were released. For instance, an album Paredon released by political Thai band Caravan is almost impossible to find and sells for $500-$1000 to U.S. collectors, while records by Bernice Reagon released around the same time sell for $5 or less.

Reagon was a central musical figure in the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Freedom Singers and went on to form the immensely popular Sweet Honey in the Rock, and undoubtedly made a much more important impact on the U.S. and music more broadly than Caravan--who are great, but pretty marginal outside of Thailand. (end of part 1. To be continued).

Politically Left Vinyl Record Labels Revisited

 

If you lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and wanted to listen to vinyl records that reflected the anti-racist, anti-war, anti-imperialist revolutionary left politics of the 1968 student rebellion on Columbia University's Upper West Side campus (but were not produced by the record company subsidiaries of corporate media conglomerates), you generally could not hear tracks from these vinyl records played on the airwaves of the Big Apple's FM radio stations.

So you had to successfully hunt for such vinyl records, in small vinyl record shops in the Village or around Times Square, in larger stores (like Sam Goody's, in Korvette's vinyl records department or at the Tower Records store on the Upper West Side) or in one of the few leftist party-run bookstores in Manhattan, and purchase them yourself. Or else hope that you could find copies of such vinyl records (at either the Donnell Public Library branch in Midtown Manhattan or in the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center branch on the Upper West Side) to borrow for free--to be able to listen to them.

What Josh MacPhee's ground-breaking, great book, An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, reveals, however, is that only a small percentage of the politically left-motivated vinyl records produced between 1970 and 1990, by record labels that weren't subsidiaries of U.S. corporate media conglomerates and which received little FM radio station airplay, could generally be found in Manhattan record stores, department store record departments and leftist party-run bookstores or on the vinyl record circulation stacks of the Donnell or Lincoln Center public libraries.  

In the third edition of his An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, which Brooklyn's Common Notions publishing house published in 2019, Josh MacPhee provides readers with one-paragraph capsule histories and the visual label logos of around 795 record labels that attempted to use music as a tool for revolutionary left democratic social change between 1970 and 1990, by producing many vinyl records.

Most fans of protest folk music and Movement-related music of the 1960 to 1990 era of U.S. history (especially Upper West Side residents who may have subscribed to Sing Out! magazine in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s or to the Upper West Side-based Broadside magazine in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s) would probably be familiar with some of the political record labels that are briefly described in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels. For in this book--which reminded me, somewhat, of the American Folk Music handbook that was contained in Folkways Records's early 1950s Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music vinyl record album set--capsule histories and descriptions of record labels like Folkways, Broadside, Paredon, Topic, Rounder Records, Flying Fish and Blackthorne, for example, are included. 

But most fans of protest folk music and Movement-related music who lived in the USA between 1950 and 1990 would likely not be familiar with most political record labels described in this book or with most of the vinyl records produced by these same political record labels.

Of the around 795 political record labels described in this book, around 365 were North American and European labels that produced and distributed politically left folk music vinyl records. And 320 of the labels that produced politically left-motivated vinyl records between 1970 and 1990 of all types of musical styles, mentioned in this book, were based in either the United States, the UK, Canada or Ireland; while 343 of the labels described were based in Southern Europe, Scandinavia or on the continent in Western Europe.

But, in addition, An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels also contains entries for 59 label which were based in Latin America and the Caribbean, 43 labels which were based in sub-Saharan Africa, 15 labels which were based in Asia and Australia, 13 labels which were based in the Middle East and North America and 12 labels which were based in Eastern Europe--that all, also, produced and distributed politically left-motivated vinyl records between 1970 and 1990.

Of the around 795 political record labels mentioned in this book, 147 were labels of leftist political parties, politically left Movement organizations or of leftist state organizations that produced and distributed vinyl records between 1970 and 1990; and 65 were the labels of international solidarity organizations that produced and distributed vinyl records between 1970 and 1990. In addition, 53 record labels which were union or labor movement-related that produced politically left-motivated vinyl records between 1970 and 1990 are described in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels.

MacPhee, a long-time New York City artist, curator, designer and activist, who previously edited the Feminist Press's 2010 Celebrate People's History: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution book and co-edited the book Signs of Change: Social Movement Culture, "grew up enmeshed in the do-it-yourself punk music scene of the late eighties and early nineties," according to his Introduction in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels.

But in 2014, MacPhee became interested in folk music and, in the summer of 2015, he organized an exhibition at the Interference Archive in Brooklyn related to political folk music. As a result, MacPhee writes in his introduction, "the exhibition launched me into a...collecting spree of political albums and singles released around the world;" and "this interest in socially conscious music has reengaged all the record-collecting switches in my head."

Although MacPhee chose to be "ecumenical" and non-politically sectarian in deciding which of the most active politically left record labels that produced vinyl records between 1970 and 1990 merited entries in An Encyclopedia of Political Records, he also chose to just focus on including entries for smaller, independent labels and omit entries or descriptions of the major corporate record labels that may have marketed or profited from the release of some vinyl albums which politically left music fans may have purchased.

Because MacPhee's book focuses only on labels that produced vinyl records, descriptions of labels that just produced politically left-motivated cds in the post-1990 period, following the end of the heyday of vinyl records, are not included in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels.

In the 21st-century, as MacPhee notes in his book, "sales of vinyl records," ironically, have again now continued "to rise" in recent years; "with 16.8 million" vinyl "LPs sold in the US in 2018...up 94.6 percent compared to 2006." But, as the An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels author reminds current vinyl record U.S. music fans, "while vinyl has returned, it feels strangely hollow without a connection to movements, unions, community groups, and music acts that privilege content over stardom."

An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels — Josh Macphee

Landlord - Josh White

Pity The Downtrodden Landlord

The Freedom Singers perform "We Shall Not Be Moved" at the March on Wash...

Phil Ochs interview on Folk Guitar in 1966 on N.E.T.

I've Got a Right - Laura Duncan

Seattle Hempfest 2011: Jim Page - Song for Leonard Peltier

Dick Gregory / Mr. Medgar Evers

Theodore Bikel remembers Bob Dylan's appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk...

Jim Glover - Ballad of the Cuban Invasion (Live at the Phil Ochs Memoria...

SUNDAY

Day at Night: Joan Baez, singer-songwriter

Peter, Paul & Mary - If I Had A Hammer

Carolyn Hester "Once I Had a Sweetheart" (1963)

Festival: The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem (WTTW Chicago, 1962)

JOAN BAEZ & MARY TRAVERS ( Peter Paul & Mary ) NEWPORT 1964

MERLE TRAVIS - Sixteen Tons

The Kingston Trio - MTA

Harry Belafonte "Water Boy" on The Ed Sullivan Show

13 MIN SAMPLE BARBARA DANE

Odetta - TV concert 1964, complete

Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem "The Rising Of The Moon" on The Ed Sulliva...

On `The Sad Truth' About Post-1970's `Rock Journalism'

 

In the 2003 book that Bloombsury published which former Mojo editor and Rock's Backpages Co-founder Barney Hoskyns edited, titled The Sound and the Fury, post-1970's "rock journalism" was characterized in the following way:

"The sad truth is that rock journalism has become little more than a service industry, with scant critical autonomy and even less responsibility to its readers. We have all, in our different ways, colluded with the entertainment machine in its canny efforts to dictate what music sells.

"...The major conglomerates have done their best to control and commodify rock rebellion.

"The music industry's greatest victory has been to make pop music--from boy bands to nu metal--a mere lifestyle choice, a disposable commodity...

"In this tame new world of fame for fame's sake...we are all living out Warhol's nightmare: an endless parade of pneumatic automatons who signify and celebrate nothing other than their own narcissism and greed...We cannot let capitalism erode our souls..."

Woody Guthrie's 1949 Prediction

 

In an April 12, 1949 letter to Mary Jo Edgmon and family, 20th-century U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie wrote the following:

"After you starve clean to the rim of death they call you a professional, and after you die off they call you a great genius. And when somebody steps in and buys up all of your diaries and scribblings and songs and poems they call you the greatest feller which ever lived, so's your debtors and loaners can get rich off the stink of your dead bones and yaller pages of ideas." 

More Civilians Died--Bob A. Feldman

Palestine Lives--Bob A. Feldman

Orlando Massacre--Bob A. Feldman

Community Control Of All Police

Did CIA Target John Lennon In 1980?--Interviewing `Drugs As Weapons Against Us: The CIA War On Musicians And Activists' Film Producer John Potash (Conclusion)

 

December 8, 2020 marked the 40th anniversary of John Lennon being killed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as he was returning to the Dakota apartment building in which he lived, at West 72nd Street and Central Park West.

Yet, over 40 years after the former Beatles super-star musician and rock songwriter was murdered, many U.S. music fans, who question the Establishment media’s “official story” of how and why JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and RFK were slain in the 1960’s, also question its “official story” of how and why Lennon and some other celebrity musicians ended up dying before they reached the age of 50 years.

So Protest Folk Magazine recently asked the producer of the documentary film (and book) Drugs As Weapons Against Us: The CIA War On Musicians And Activists, John Potash, to share his thoughts with readers in an email interview. Potash has discussed his work on C-Span’s American History TV, A&E, RT, The Real News Network, and The Reelz Channel, along with over a hundred radio programs in the U.S. and abroad.

In a 1993 book then-University of Massachusetts Political Science Professor and Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Archives Chair Philip Melanson wrote about the June 4, 1968 elimination of New York State’s then-representative in the U.S. Senate, RFK, titled Who Killed Robert Kennedy?, he noted that “William Turner and John Christian in their 1978 book The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy…say” that the convicted assassin of RFK, Sirhan Sirhan, “was programmed by an expert or experts working for, or in the shadow of US intelligence’.” And a former arts editor of the Santa Cruz Sun, Mark Zepezauer, wrote in his 1994 book, The CIA’s Greatest Hits: “There’s evidence Sirhan was treated by a CIA-linked shrink” and “the Los Angeles coroner’s report states that RFK was killed from behind, while everyone agrees that Sirhan Sirhan…was at least three feet in front of him” and “Sirhan claims to have no memory of shooting at RFK.” Do you think there’s any possibility that the person convicted of killing John Lennon, Mark Chapman, may have been “programmed by an expert or experts working for, or in the shadow of, US intelligence"?

JOHN POTASH: Drugs As Weapons Against Us has a section on Robert F. Kennedy. The book and film have more information on the focus on the CIA’s Project MK-Ultra which was the use of drugs for “unconventional warfare” against American and European dissidents. That RFK section and another section includes much evidence supporting that the CIA used drugs and hypnosis to turn Sirhan Sirhan into RFK’s assassin, with the help of other shooters.

As previously stated [in part 1 of this email interview], Fenton Bresler presented a book full of evidence detailing the support for his conclusion that the CIA used hypnosis and drugs to turn Mark David Chapman into an assassin. The U.S. Senate Church Committee’s investigative documents, and those found on MK-Ultra (though CIA Director shredded 90% of MK-Ultra documents), show their successful work with the use of hypnosis and drugs at creating hypnotized assassins. Law professor Alan Scheflin has published details on this topic in his book, The Mind Manipulators.

Another researcher, Professor Peter Dale Scott, also said that Mark David Chapman went through CIA-developed behavior modification at Castle Memorial Hospital when he lived for a time in Hawaii. A ‘former’ CIA agent, Angelo Galante, headed New York’s Bureau of Special Services and the CIA trained police units in various cities. Furthermore, Lt. Arthur O’Connor headed the New York police district of one million people, where Lennon had lived. He told Fenton Bresler that he studied Chapman intensely and he “looked like he could have been programmed, and I know what you’re going to make of that word! That was the way he looked and that was the way he talked.” O’Connor was the second police officer to make that assessment.

This supports some of Bresler’s other evidence, including a police officer training Chapman in shooting and then giving him the hollow point bullets with which he killed Lennon.

How would you respond to the claim, by one “CIA Conspiracy Denialist” and folk music radio show producer/host on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting-funded and corporate-sponsored WUMB radio station in New England, that “if our government had wanted to `eliminate’” Lennon, “they would have done it in the late `60s, when he was a powerful voice, loudly associating himself with radicals, like John Sinclair, who were calling for violent revolution;” but, “by 1980, he was almost entirely apolitical” and “he had never been saner, more stable, more domestic—or less political;” and this WUMB radio show host’s questioning whether there is “ANY evidence” that an `ex CIA operative’ had any involvement with Lennon, or his death”?

JOHN POTASH: I presented some of the key evidence regarding Jose Sanjenis Perdomo’s CIA work and aid in the murder of John Lennon above [in previously posted part 1 of this interview]. Regarding the use of the term "conspiracy", New York University Media Professor Mark Crispin Miller has presented the CIA document from the 1960s that outlined their plan to use the term “conspiracy” to try and smear anyone criticizing the absurd Warren Commission report on President John Kennedy’s assassination. Comedians, such as Mort Sahl and Woody Allen, talked about it as “a fine book”, but that they’d like to read the non-fiction report on the president’s assassination, too. Even the apolitical Seinfeld tv show was able to ridicule the Warren Commission’s magic bullet theory with the “magic loogie” incident regarding New York Yankee Keith Hernandez in “The Boyfriend,” episode. 

Regarding the idea, ‘why didn’t the CIA kill John Lennon when he was younger,’ that takes a longer explanation, which is done in my work. To try and paraphrase my book and film in a sentence or two, one of MK-Ultra’s major subprojects appeared to be the targeting of popular musicians in general. As one of the CIA documents stated as a tactic, “use narcotics” on them. 

I show the evidence that part of MK-Ultra’s use of drugs for “unconventional warfare” involved manipulating musicians to promote drugs to the burgeoning tide of activist young adults. They did this to accomplish what former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark told me was the government’s goal of “using drugs to sedate and divide the masses.” My work shows that it further diverted the masses of Civil Rights and antiwar protesters, while hurting their best thinking and organizing abilities. 

An example of this came from author A.E. Hotchner, a former editor for Ernest Hemingway, who stated in his book Blown Away, that MK-Ultra Assistant Director Robert Lashbrook came to London in January of 1965 and instructed his agents to get acid in as many musicians hands as possible. Lennon’s first acid trip came from having his coffee dosed without his knowledge by George Harrison’s dentist. Mick Jagger’s first hit came in 1967 from the “acid king” David Schneidermann, whom London’s Daily Mail said was both an FBI and MI5 undercover agent. 

I show the evidence that when many of these musicians, such as Lennon, Tupac Shakur, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain, started sobering up and getting more into leftist activism, they were murdered. I show evidence suggesting U.S. Intelligence involvement in all of these murders. 

Regarding John Lennon in particular, he reported having a hard time performing publicly when he had become most radical, in the early 1970s, stating that LSD had given him so many bad trips. I show the evidence that acid contributed to his intense panic attacks before performances. Lennon talked about this in interviews I found. By the late 1970s, he’d mostly sobered up, getting back into activism [as previously mentioned in part 1 of this interview], and he was about to get his full American citizenship.

When some New York City media outlets produced news show segments to mark the 40th anniversary in December 2020 of Lennon’s death on the Upper West Side, were you invited by many local NYC radio show producers or hosts of NPR-affiliated stations, like WNYC, or by the Democracy Now! radio and cable-tv show, to discuss what your “Drugs As Weapons Against Us” film and book exposed about “The CIA War On Musicians and Activists”? And if not, why do you think local NYC radio or tv stations might not want to encourage their listeners or viewers to watch your film or read your book in 2021?

JOHN POTASH: I was lucky to get a good public relations agent to help me when my book first came out. That helped me get onto some major syndicated radio programs, including, Coast to Coast, Pacifica Radio’s program hosted by Gary Null, and Alan Handleman’s Rock Talk. But mainstream media, and even purported alternative media, have become massively controlled, either by multinational corporations or massive foundations backed by the America’s wealthiest families. 

All of my work includes sections on this topic. I give examples that include the fact that Cal-Berkeley School of Journalism Dean Ben Bagdikian wrote the book, The Media Monopoly, exposing how virtually all of mainstream media has interlocking boards of directors with the top multinational corporations. He also said that by corporate law, the media company is not supposed to act in ways that hurt the profit of the interlocked corporation. Thus, the conflict with defense contracting companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. Senator Bernie Sanders held a press conference repeating Bagdikian’s work, citing how over six multinational corporations control over 90% of our information as of 2012. 

The U.S. Senate Church Committee had also published in their report how well over 400 members of the media lived dual lives in their work for the CIA. These included virtually all the owners of top media companies. Watergate muckraker Carl Bernstein published a seminal Rolling Stone article about this titled “The CIA and the Media.”

Are you planning to produce any future documentary films?

JOHN POTASH: My next documentary film project is on Eugenics and the Pandemic. It’s meant to have many dark comedy sections. For more information on all my work, feel free to see www.johnpotash.com. (end of interview)

John Lennon performing at Free John Sinclair concert and rally in 1971

Did CIA Target John Lennon In 1980?--Interviewing `Drugs As Weapons Against Us: The CIA War On Musicians And Activists' Film Producer John Potash (Part 1)

 

December 8, 2020 marked the 40th anniversary of John Lennon being killed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as he was returning to the Dakota apartment building in which he lived, at West 72nd Street and Central Park West.

Yet, over 40 years after the former Beatles super-star musician and rock songwriter was murdered, many U.S. music fans, who question the Establishment media’s “official story” of how and why JFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and RFK were slain in the 1960’s, also question its “official story” of how and why Lennon and some other celebrity musicians ended up dying before they reached the age of 50 years.

So Protest Folk Magazine recently asked the producer of the documentary film (and book) Drugs As Weapons Against Us: The CIA War On Musicians And Activists, John Potash, to share his thoughts with readers in an email interview. Potash has discussed his work on C-Span’s American History TV, A&E, RT, The Real News Network, and The Reelz Channel, along with over a hundred radio programs in the U.S. and abroad.

Was John Lennon ever under NY Police Department, FBI or CIA surveillance between the time the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan’s CBS television show in New York City in 1964 and December 8, 1980? And if so, why would either the NY Police Department, the FBI or the CIA be monitoring the activities of celebrity rock musicians like Lennon during the 1960’s, 1970’s and early 1980’s or of celebrity rap musicians like Tupac Shakur, in subsequent decades?

JOHN POTASH: British barrister (lawyer) Fenton Bresler worked as London's Daily Mail newspaper legal correspondent when John Lennon was murdered. Bresler spent seven years investigating Lennon's murder to come out with his book, Who Killed John Lennon?, in which he first published his evidence and conclusion that the CIA murdered John Lennon. They and the FBI had previously monitored and harassed Lennon for years. Bresler was able to attain 217 FBI documents from their file on Lennon, and only 4 pages of the CIA file on Lennon. Bresler said these pages alluded to many more pages the government wouldn’t release.

These documents clearly showed that Lennon was under surveillance by the FBI with CIA involvement. The FBI had agents who also worked for the New York Police Department’s Intelligence divisions, such as the Bureau of Special Services. Activists broke into an FBI office in 1971. These documents revealed their Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that targeted antiwar activists, Civil Rights activists, and other leftists. When the U.S. Senate Church Committee investigated U.S. Intelligence in the mid-1970s, they found and published the contents of documents detailing tactics for targeting political musicians. 

As to why these governmental agencies would be monitoring John Lennon, a page or two of the FBI documents on Lennon, as well as other FBI documents, tell some of that story. For example, a document dated 2/25/72, stated a “New Left-oriented group is being formed by British musician John Lennon.” This document also presented concern about Lennon’s planned activist concert at the Republican National Convention.

When Lennon toured the U.S. in 1964, he publicly refused to play segregated southern concerts in 1964. U.S. intelligence was spying on and attacking the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King for his anti-segregation work (which I cover in my first book/film, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders) and were concerned about this popular white singer doing the same. John Lennon proved a problem for U.S. Intelligence in 1966, when he said that he and his fellow band members were against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. 

By 1968, Lennon had written some of his most radical songs as a Beatle, such as “Revolution.” He followed it up in his solo career with even more radical political songs such as “Power to the People.” Around 1970, Lennon also supported activists ranging from antiwar activist Abbie Hoffman to Black Panther National Chairman Bobby Seale.  

Shortly before his death in 1980, John Lennon had sent out a press release announcing that he would be marching with a Teamsters protest action in California and playing music at their rally. Lennon also produced two albums in the year before he died, after having taken a 5 year break from music to raise his son.

Regarding musicians such as Tupac Shakur, he was born into the activism of his Black Panther family, and headed his own activist group, The New Afrikan Panthers at 17 years old. The New Afrikan Panthers tried to replicate The Black Panthers and were active in 8-10 cities. FBI agent whistleblower Wes Swearingen stated in his FBI Secrets: An Agent’s Expose,  that the FBI was forced to close its COINTELPRO units down in 1971, yet continued COINTELPRO work into the 1980s and ‘90s under different named units.

Were any former or current NY Police Department, FBI or CIA employees, assets or informants near the front of the Dakota apartment building in the moments immediately before or after Lennon was shot on the Upper West Side on December 8, 1980? And if so, has the NY Police Department, FBI or CIA fully disclosed what kind of work any former or current employees, assets or informants present when Lennon was killed had done in past or were doing in December 1980?

JOHN POTASH: Attorney and legal correspondent Fenton Bresler makes a very strong case that through their Project MK-Ultra, the CIA used drugs and hypnosis to turn Mark David Chapman into the assassin he became when he shot John Lennon. Since you ask more about this in the next question, I’ll follow up with the details there.

Another highly suspected shooter of John Lennon was his Dakota apartment building doorman Jose Joaquin Sanjenis Perdomo. Phil Stongman, a critically praised British music writer and author of 5 books, wrote John Lennon: Life, Times, and Assassination. Strongman found that Cuba’s Information Archives showed that Jose Joaquin Sanjenis Perdomo was an active anti-Castro Cuban. A CIA spy employee said Perdomo had been on the CIA payroll for at least ten years from the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion onwards, as part of Brigade 2056, at least up to the Watergate burglary. Strongman further claimed that one of the first policeman to arrive at Lennon’s murder scene, initially believed Perdomo, rather than Chapman, killed Lennon.

The best evidence supports that Jose Perdomo was a back-up shooter to Mark David Chapman, to ensure the murder of John Lennon.

The CIA is notoriously secretive. Only one CIA whistleblower admitted what I said above. The FBI, after giving some documents to Bresler through his Freedom of Information Act request, let some of those documents be public. Neither of those agencies nor the NYPD has admitted having anyone involved in Lennon’s murder. (end of part 1. To be continued)

John Lennon performing at Free John Sinclair! rally and concert in 1971

How Hoover's FBI Spied On John Lennon In 1970's

John Lennon performing at `Free John Sinclair! concert rally in 1971

During the 1970's, J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] spied on John Lennon, especially during the time when the former Beatles musician and songwriter became more politically active within anti-war Movement counter-cultural circles. As John Parker observed in his 1993 book Elvis: The Secret Files:

"The FBI file on Lennon expanded to over 500 pages of reports, of which, in 1992, only 196 pages were released to me under the Freedom of Information Act. The remainder are still classified [as of 1993], including the whole contents of one file running to 207 pages, which has been retained at FBI headquaters. A further 1,800 pages specifically relating to John Lennon are contained in the archives of the Immigration and Naturalization Services and are not available for public inspection [as of 1993]."

Elvis: The Secret Files also noted:

"...Lennon was spied upon, his phone was tapped, and he was followed at the peak of the [FBI] operation, 24 hours a day...From the moment of Lennon's entry into the United States [in July 1971], his movements were tracked, his television appearances monitored, his songs noted, and his comments taped and recorded for FBI files. Towards the end of the year, Lennon was witnessed as `associating with' a group...which had just renamed itself Election Year Strategy Information Center [EYSIC]...A new and separate Lennon file was opened under the heading: `John Winston Lennon, Revolutionary Activity'..."

A March 16, 1972 memo from then-FBI Director Hoover to all FBI senior agents stated the following:

"Subject: John Winston Lennon

"...A very real possibility exists that subject...might engage in activities in the U.S. leading to the disruption of the Republican National Convention...For this reason...locate subject and remain aware of his activities and movement." 

Why Did Vanguard Records Refuse To Produce Bev Grant's 1970's Album?

 

Bev Grant and The Human Condition band in the 1970's

In the Spring of 1975, U.S. anti-war protest folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs organized a concert in New York City's Central Park, at which he and other U.S. protest folk singers, like Joan Baez and former Newsreel Movement organizer and post-1975 long-time People's Music Network organizer Bev Grant, performed before tens of thousands of anti-war protest folk music fans; to celebrate the end of the War in Viet-Nam.

Vanguard Records had produced vinyl records of Joan Baez singing protest folk songs during the early 1960's. Yet in the 1970's, Vanguard Records apparently refused to produce a vinyl record album in which radical feminist blues, labor movement and People's Music singer Bev Grant and her band, "The Human Condition," recorded the protest folk songs that she wrote in the early 1970's.

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane (who also co-founded the non-commercially-motivated Paredon Records label that did eventually record a vinyl album of Bev Grant and The Human Condition in the 1970's, titled Working People Gonna Rise!, which included the protest folk songs that Bev Grant had written) indicated why Vanguard Records apparently refused to produce Bev Grant's album in the 1970's:

"Beverly...got signed with Vanguard. Vanguard run by Maynard Solomon. Maynard Solomon wrote a book called, something? What was it? Marxism and Culture. He considers himeself, you know, a political guy.

"And he's the one who put out Paul Robeson's records and Joan Baez and what have you.

"And he said to her: `Come by and bring your--I want your most outrageous, you know--your most political songs.'

"So she brought them over there. And she called me afterwards and said: `Well, he told me to bring my most outrageous songs. But when I got there he said, "`Oh! I didn't mean that far out."'

"So they didn't do a record for Vanguard. Did it for us. Okay..." 

U.S. Music Industry Tried To Stop Production Of Paredon Records' `Palestine Lives!' Album

 

In the 1970's, some executives of the commercially-motivated U.S. corporate music industry apparently attempted to stop the production and distribution of the Paredon Records label's vinyl album Palestine Lives!. As [the now-deceased] former Sing-Out! magazine editor and Paredon Records co-founder Irwin Silber recalled in a 1991 interview:

"...We really came under incredible attack... The music industry, especially in New York, is very heavily...pro-Israel. So, when word got around that we were doing this record, a campaign began to try to stop it. Literally to stop it.

"And the important figures in the music industry called our various suppliers, the people who made the masters, the plates, the pressing: `Listen!  We’re going to withdraw a whole lot of business from you if you cooperate with these people in putting out this record.'

"There really was such a campaign. And I don’t remember exactly how we solved it. But I know, in a couple of cases, we had to go to some outfits other than our usual supply...

"...It really was an insight into the depth of the emotions stirred by the Palestinian question...I mean I knew it. I mean I’m Jewish and you know I know...the community. But it really got brought home. Really got brought home. And it was, in a way, a provocation to the music industry, because of its particular character.

"But I have always felt that the Palestinian issue is sort of one these cutting edge issues, which it’s sort of like crucial litmus test. Because there’s nothing to be gained by supporting the Palestinians. Career-wise or anything else. Just nothing at all...to stick your neck out and get down in the line with them in the United States."

U.S. corporate music industry tried to stop production of this album in 1970's

And in a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer and Paredon Records co-founder Barbara Dane also observed that "somebody made a deliberate campaign calling all of our suppliers and the pressing plant and everybody," in an attempt to stop production and distribution of the Paredon Records label's Palestine Lives! vinyl album.'

Paredon Records Co-Founders Irwin Silber and Barbara Dane

 

 

Why Paredon Records Was Created

 

In a 1991 interview, the [now-deceased] former Sing-Out! magazine editor, Irwin Silber, indicated why the Paredon Records protest folk music recording label was created:

"...Well I guess where we were...talking about why Paredon Records and so on....I tried to look at these things both from the point of view of what our intentions were but also what I think it reflected objectively, independently of what we thought we were all about. When you’re lucky, the two coincide.

"But, and this isn’t just true of an enterprise like a record company. I think this is true of all events in history. People make revolutions thinking they’re going to turn out a certain way. It turns out the significance of that revolution was something that they didn’t have in mind, but what they did was still historically important.

"So that may sound kind of flamboyant. Never the less, that’s the way I try to look at it. And in that sense, Paredon was a reflection of a period in which ideas of revolutionary upheaval were extremely prominent in the world--especially acute in the third world, because I think what the world was experiencing, in Sixties and the Seventies, was the final stages of the overthrow of colonialism. And it’s more like where the bitterest holdouts who would not adapt to the changes, that’s where those struggles were taking place.

"Some of them happened a little bit before we went into business, but for instance the French in Algeria, which also produced an incredible cultural explosion. There was this incredible film that was made, Battle of Algiers. Which, in a sense, was in film the kind of thing that we were doing with Paredon Records.

"That is, it was produced by people who were trying to make a statement about that revolution. They weren’t just trying to document it. And it was propaganda in a sense. But it was propaganda reflecting a real struggle by a liberation movement.

"There was also the whole counter cultural thing and the New Left phenomenon in the United States which began to take an ideological turn toward revolutionary solutions. And that spirit of revolution, whether you wanted to call it the cultural revolution, the counter cultural revolution and so on, that was very much in the air.

"And the rhetoric of...the time, whether it was the Women’s Movement, the Black Movement, the Student Movement, was `Revolution.'

"And this was something that was happening in other Western countries as well, like what happened in France. And then you had the rumblings in the communist societies with the Prague Spree and so on.

"So that was the world cultural climate out of which Paredon came. It had particular, for us, and again I think it was reflective of the movement in the United states, its sort of the touchstones were Vietnam and Cuba.

"Vietnam for, obviously because of the war in Vietnam and the feeling on the part of so many young Americans that this was sort of the absolute damning evidence of the corruption of the system, and gave rise to a whole revolutionary outlook.

"And Cuba because of the particular antagonism toward the Cuban revolution by the United States government and the way in which Cuba had become a symbol of incredible defiance of the American monolith. So there was great identification with Cuba for those reasons.

"And especially among people who couldn’t identify with the Soviet Union. And with the eastern European counties, they’re sort of like, either they thought these weren’t really revolutions, so they were tired revolutions, or, you know, all of the different things that for different reasons turned people off.

"But they could identify with the Vietnamese and with the Cubans. And for a period with the Chinese revolution also.

"But Cuba and Vietnam were very much the touchstones of that movement’s international outlook, and of Paredon Records’ as well.

"And the seeming anomaly is that what we were doing was documenting these movements and at the same time our approach was quite partisan, and very often the two were looked at as mutually exclusive categories. `Well, if it’s propaganda it can’t be documentary' and vice versa.

"But our view was that so long as the movements were real, their propaganda was also real. And documenting what you might (and I don’t use the word `propaganda' in a pejorative sense) documenting what was their genuine cultural, ideological expression was a way of undemonizing the so-called enemies of the United States (the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and anybody else). Because that occurs every time we have to use our armed forces, the enemy has to be demonized and made less than human.

"So partially it was that, and that’s a part of propaganda. Saying `No these are real human beings, with a real culture and genuine expression,' and in the most simplest terms `They’re just like you and me,' one could say, or whatever.

"But that they were the bearers of traditions and of national heritages that were worthy of respect. And that those who would destroy the national cultures were guilty of a kind of cultural genocide.

"At the same time, these records were partisan in that they usually were made in cooperation with a particular political force in these revolutions.

"Now, in the case of Vietnam and Cuba,...there were no rival political forces. But in some of the other situations there were different political groups in different countries, and judgments get made at a certain point as to which groups have a genuinely popular social base and represent the interests of the people.

"And frankly, one of the measuring sticks was the degree to which the United States was antagonistic to these groups. And to the extent the United States would be promoting some groups, like `This was the real liberation... movement,' we, like many other people, would say `Now that’s a contradiction in terms. If the U.S. is promoting it, then there’s something wrong with that group because the interests of the U,S. government and these movements are too much in contradiction.'

"While a lot of this stuff was third world and heavily Latin America, it wasn’t exclusively that. We felt we should do stuff reflecting the different social movements in the United States, and I think a lot of the emphasis there was on Black Movement (we had the interview with Huey Newton, Bernice Reagan, things like that),and women singers, singers like the Red Star Singers and others who were very much in tune with the counter culture but expressed it politically, not just in counter cultural terms. And then we had other material coming from Western Europe and so on.

"So this is, that’s what Paredon represented, and we felt that it was important to do it, that this was part of our political agenda..." 

Paredon Records' Co-founders Irwin Silber and Barbara Dane in 1980's

How Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber Created Paredon Records

 

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane recalled how she and former Sing-Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber were able to create the non-commercially-motivated Paredon Records protest folk music recording label:

"Paredon Records, you know, basically came out of the fact that we saw the need, we saw the fact all these singers existed and nobody knew about each other...So I got the idea we gotta have a record label. And I talked to Irwin about it, and Irwin had had a lot of experience with Folkways...And we were actually perfectly suited team of people...

"...So then the question is how do you get the money to do it. So I was just bending everybody’s ear...A couple years go by. I’m telling everybody this great vision I have...

"And finally a friend of ours, who was also someone who had lived in Cuba for a while and was very sympathetic to the politics of it and everything, brought a millionaire friend of hers over to meet us. And he wants to be anonymous so we’re still not gonna give out his name.

"But he thought this was a great idea and decided he would give us, you know, one stock dividend to play around with....Actually, it was supposed to be an interest free loan, but he never came around to formalize any agreement or collect anything on the loan. And he said don’t contact me; I’ll contact you. And he never contacted us again. And so that’s the end of that.

"So we were actually capitalized. I’ll tell you what we were capitalized at. He gave us 17,000 dollars. Which is about enough to put out half of one record, you know, really. And so we just socked it in the bank and started doing it.

"And the concept we had was that we won’t take any salaries or any overhead. We did it out of the living room or the backroom. I had an extra bedroom just then. I did it out of that room or the kitchen table and Irwin did it out of his little home office.

"And...you know, you go rent studios. Nobody buys a studio. Record labels don’t own studios. That’s a different business. And all the other services could be contracted out...that needed to be done to manufacture something.

"So we didn’t have any overhead. It was no overhead involved except maybe some telephone calls and stationary and, you know, the cost of renting a studio or whatever. And all of the things that were involved with producing it....

"I got to be very good at convincing people to write me an essay....You know, `Okay, you’re expert on this. On what’s going on Ecuador. So write me brief little history of Ecuador today.'

"And getting things like that out of people on a volunteer basis. And when we had to pay, we paid.

"But the thing is the object was to not pay out anymore of this budget. So then whatever income came in, and whatever the budget had to use some combination, you go ahead and make more. So you keep reinvesting it. Each record pays for the next one. Basically that’s the way it is…."

U.S. Jazz, Blues, Protest Folk Singer and Paredon Records Co-Founder Barbara Dane

And in a 1991 interview, [the now-deceased] former Sing-Out! magazine editor Irwin Silber also noted:

"I felt that doing this record label was an opportunity to use skills that I had developed over the years in a way that probably, at that time, were not going to be utilized by anybody else...

"Early in the fifties, I actually started a little record label on behalf of People’s Artists called Hoot-N-Anny Records....They were just 78’s at the time. But I think the Weavers' very first recording was done on a Hoot-N-Anny record. I did the “Hammer Song” and the “Banks of Marble. This is before they were recording for Decca.

"And I don’t know, we only did about a half a dozen such records. And then, in the mid-Fifties, we did the first LP of a live folk music concert. It’s called “Hoot-N-Anny Tonight,” subsequently reissued on Folkways under that title. So I’d always been scrambling for that kind of stuff.

"And then in 1958 I went to work for Moe Asch in Folkways, and over the next number of years worked with Moe...I had very little to do with the actual recording. That’s not my thing at all. So Moe was always engineer, the one who dealt with the performers and so on.

"But I became responsible, ultimately, for everything else relating to the production of a record. In effect, Moe would finish a tape master and turn it over to me.

"And I would deal [with]...the metal master, the stampers, the record pressing company, the printers who did the booklet, the people who pasted up the booklet. I’d edited, one way or another most of the booklets, deal with the typesetting, deal with the artists who designed the covers. Coordinate all of the production, and deal with a lot of the distribution also, and a lot of sales promotion stuff.

"So I learned a lot of different aspects of the record business, which put me in a position to know how to get Paredon off the ground and skip over a bunch of stages that somebody with less experience would’ve had to go through in a very painful way. And, you know, took advantage of that experience.

"We started out using the very producers that Folkways use, some of whom I had brought around to Folkways. But the printers, the pressing plants, the artists, the people who made stampers and so on, we used the same ones. They already knew me from the Folkways days. So that helped us establish some credit. And we knew what we were talking about.

"So we were able to move into production in a relatively smooth way, fairly quick. And then, once we had the records, we were able to utilize the contacts I’d made in terms of distribution--in some cases. I mean a lot of Folkways distributors didn’t--you know-- didn’t know what to do with this type of material."

Paredon Records Coo-Founders Irwin Silber and Barbara Dane 

 

How Barbara Dane Organized 1965 Anti-Vietnam War `Sing-In For Peace' Concert

U.S. Jazz, Blues and Protest Folk Singer Barbara Dane in 1970's

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane recalled how she organized the first large New York City antiwar movement concert that protested against the Vietnam War, a "Sing-In For Peace," which took place at Carnegie Hall on September 24, 1965:

"...I was in New York and I was living there and I had produced together with [then-Sing-Out magazine editor] Irwin [Silber] something called the `Sing-In For Peace', which was at Carnegie Hall.

"It was the first big, it was actually the first big anti-war demonstration because it was conceived of as a demonstration of singers and their public against the war. And nobody really had mounted a, you know, a big street demonstration or anything.

"So this, we, being the kind of plotters we are, we figured this thing out that.

"And it’s funny. It was right at the time of the newspaper strikes. Lot of newspaper strikes were going on. Two or three papers. I don’t know. It was very hard to get anything in the newspaper. And we had to do it all by quarter-sheets pasted on walls....

"I got some leaflets together and, you know, we got different organizations to leaflet their people and mail it out or whatever we did.

"But anyway, very quickly we saw that, well, sixty some odd performers wanted to be on the thing...I sent a letter to everybody. I coordinated the whole thing out of the Sing-Out magazine office basically (and home) and invited everybody, including a lot of traditional singers…" 

U.S. Jazz, Blues and Protest Folk Singer Barbara Dane in 20th-century

 

Newport Folk Festival's Exclusion Of Barbara Dane Revisited

 

U.S. Jazz, Blues and Folk Singer Barbara Dane in 1960 (wikicommons)

In a 1991 interview, 20th-century and 21st-century U.S. jazz, blues and folk singer Barbara Dane recalled how some commercially-oriented U.S. folk music festival producers--like then-Newport Folk Festival Producer George Wein--apparently failed to invite her to perform at most commercially-oriented U.S. folk music festivals during the 1960's; and during the 11 years that she devoted to recording other protest folk singers or singer-songwriters on non-commercially-oriented Paredon Records' vinyl albums.

"I was never invited back to Newport except once....I’ll give you some documentation about that because it’s kind of interesting.

"But it basically was I went to the festival because I loved the music and I loved the people who perform it.,,So I went several times and just soaked everything up and reconnected with a lot of old friends and all that. But I--outside of being asked to get up and jam on somebody’s set--was never invited back there to sing.

"...I got an invitation one day via Bernice Reagon to be on a workshop...She’d sort of taken note that the festival was getting further and further from its glory days, when everyone stands on the stage and sings `We Shall Overcome.' And now we’re, you know, two three years down the line and...it’s all sort of a sham.

"And so she decided to propose a political song workshop. And it was going to be a one hour workshop, out on the edge of the...You know, in the tent during the day. Not on the main stage and all that kind of stuff.

"But anyway I got a letter inviting me to be on that. And I decided to turn that down because I decided that it was a mockery of the whole deal...I decided that this was made to marginalize...to a one hour workshop....I mean we’re talking...mid-Sixties, later Sixties. And they were going to marginalize it out to that...

"Boil it all down and have a little token thing. And then they can sit back and say `well we did it. Now we did our thing. We had political singers here.' I decided I wasn’t going to be a party to that.

"So I made a big todo about it. I wrote a big long letter explaining why I wasn’t going to do it and sent it to the board. Which then included quite a lot of people in the folk music field. And kinda quite a lot of key people. And then I also sent it to the Village Voice and they printed it.

"And as a result I was never, for twenty years or more--well let’s say dating from the first festival--which was what ’59, the first Newport festival? I was never invited to sing on a major folk song festival. Zero. You know.

"So I began to realize that this was happening. These things sneak up on you. Like this is not blacklisting in the sense of the McCarthy black list. This is, that’s that only term I can think of, is marginalization. You know, you’re just sort of pushed further out..."