The Same Old Faces

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

Revisiting Elie Siegmeister's `Folk Music: The Long View' Essay: An Excerpt

Included in The Joan Baez Songbook, that Ryerson Music Publishers published in 1964, is an essay by Sing Out Sweet Land musical composer Elie Siegmeister, titled "Folk Music: The Long View," in which he wrote the following about the historical origins of the 1960s era of U.S. folk music history:

"...What accounts for this astonishing growth of a new music in the short space of a single generation--or, more accurately, of the rebirth of a centuries-old music just when it was about to die out?

"The answer is not simple, but among other things, in the 1930's and `40's, there were the New Deal and the anti-fascist war--movements that awakened the human instincts of all of us. In a period when millions were deprived, disinherited, and then destroyed, there was a need for an affirmation of things basically human. It was a time when intellectual people felt drawn to a commonality with others whose lives and rights were threatened with extinction...

"The discovery of folk music by a generation of young musicians and composers was more than another fad--it opened up a new meaning for American music as a whole. For now those of us who were just starting out could feel part of a rich tradition; we could feel like new branches on an old tree--and this strengthened us...

"When, therefore, I first met Aunt Molly Jackson, the time was ripe; I was enchanted by her at once. It was after one of those concerts organized by a few indigent musicians calling ourselves The Young Composers Group, at the New School, New York, early in 1933...After the concert, our relatives, who comprised the majority of the audience, came back to congratulate us; but among them was this strange, raggedy woman with a hawk-like face: she came right up to me and said `You think you are writing American music--did you ever hear any real American music?' After trading a few insults, we each became fascinated by the ideas of the other. Result: Aunt Molly asked me if I would care to write down some of the few hundred songs she had `composed,' and I said I would.

"I did...

"Among the strongest folk musicians then beginning to be heard around in village cafes, anti-Nazi and pro-Spanish loyalist meetings were Josh White, Woody Guthrie, The Almanac Singers,...and of course, Leadbelly. After a certain amount of exposure, it was inevitable that a bit of audience appeal crept into the performances of some, but Leadbelly was solid as a rock. He neither could nor would be moved to do anything other than sing his repertory exactly as he always had sung it: deadpan, with a gravelly voice that was beautiful, and a guitar rhythm that shook the walls.

"Gradually the folk music movement spread out...In the post-World War II period there arose the deep need for a human affirmation in a time of anxiety. Without a clear ideal of life, the young people of our time have turned to the universal expression that is folk music.

"The elemental themes represented by the songs in this collection, ranging from old Child Ballads, newer Anglo-American ballads, mountain love songs, country and western tunes, hymns and Spirituals and topical songs of today bring the singer and listener closer to the sources of American music: the spontaneous creation of many generations of the plain people of our country.

"The eagerness of vast numbers of folk music enthusiasts to sing and play these songs is evidence of a reaction against the passivity induced by ready-made entertainment. The very roughness of folk performance speaks as a bulwark against the slickness of pre-fabricated commercial art..."

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

`American Folk Songs of Protest' Author John Greenway's Late 1940s Visits To Woody Guthrie Revisited

In his 1953 book, American Folk Songs of Protest, John Greenway recalled his late 1940s visits to U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie:

"When I first visited Guthrie in 1946 he was living in a crowded apartment in Coney Island with his wife and 4-year-old daughter, Cathy Ann...

"I asked if he agreed with a more famous contemporary who said that folk songs were gaining popularity because city people were bored with screen glamour and soap operas...

"He did not: `The unions started the boom,' he insisted. `The workers wanted to sing about their fight, but they couldn't borrow popular tunes because the moneymen who own the big monopoly on music would sock them with copyright laws. They had to go where they should have gone in the first place--to the old songs made by workers years ago...'

"He pushed a two-inch thick book of bound typewriter papers toward me. `Look,' he said, `there's more than 300 songs I've written, most of them to the old tunes. You won't hear the night club-orgasm girls singing these songs.'...

"Since that meeting Guthrie has been exceptionally prolific in song writing, and probably his stack of compositions now is three or four times as thick...His songs are likely to be...versified paraphrases of newspaper accounts of injustices perpetrated on individuals or groups...The inspiration and feeling of protest are still there in sufficient quantity...Of an estimated thousand songs in his manuscript collection, I found...about 140 whose basic theme was one of protest...

"...Like the IWW, which never copyrighted their songbooks, Guthrie...seems content to let them [his songs] fall into the public domain...

"...Guthrie never uses the tune of a popular song for his compositions."

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Conclusion

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is the conclusion of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

As far as the festivals you’ve been performing at in the Nineties. Is there any difference between the audiences and the performers, compared to the Eighties? In what people are singing about? What response you get?
Peggy Seeger: I’m not much of an authority on what’s happening in America. I really haven’t been here long enough. Ewan MacColl and I didn’t do festivals. Because we didn’t like the “stop-start,” “stop-start” thing that goes on in festivals. I compare it to greyhound racing. You know, the gun goes and you have 5 minutes to do your bit and that’s it. Generally, I prefer concerts. I’ve been doing festivals because I think it’s an important discipline to have. And, probably apart from anything else, it gives me a chance to hear other performers, which I love to do.

I am very impressed at what’s going on at a lot of the festivals. There’s a lot of young people. Quite a lot of children. And it’s an audience with a very catholic taste. They seem to be able to take almost anything that you give them.

Have they heard of you? The U.S. media doesn’t seem to give you much airtime?
Seeger: No. The U.S. media has not given me much airtime. I hope to remedy that. I don’t know that I’m popular stuff. My songs have a lot of words. And some of them take a lot of thinking about. I think I’m probably not “sensational” enough. I’m not “smooth” enough. I don’t know. There’s something that I’m “not enough of.”

What about public television? I know whenever they’ve needed to raise funds, they invite a lot of the folksingers from the Sixties who allegedly are excluded from the commercial stations because they have “no commercial appeal?”
Seeger: I don’t know that I’m excluded. When I do sing on television and radio I seem to get a lot of appreciation. There’s a lot of us out there, you know. There’s a lot of people vying for these spots. I’ve been on “Prairie Home Companion.” I’ve been on “Mountain Stage.”

I was out of the country for so long. And also my name was tied to someone else’s, as part of a duo. And people get used to saying “Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.” And when Ewan MacColl dies—I actually met people who said they didn’t know I was still alive. You know, I’m only 61 [in 1996].

So, it’s a very fickle audience. But there are a lot of people who have followed the stuff that I have done over the last 30 years. And I get quite a lot of nice pats on the back when I go to festivals and concerts. And I’m very happy getting concerts, as I have been doing. I’m getting a reasonable amount of work. And I’m learning also that I can teach. Which is something that I wasn’t aware of until Ewan MacColl died. Since then I’ve been teaching songwriting and been talking about the position of women in Anglo-American folksongs. And been giving seminars on ballad-singing and on what makes folks songs so powerful, and all these kinds of things.

Is that why you’re living in North Carolina [in 1996]?
Seeger: Oh, I just picked that out of a hat. Because I wanted a place that was in the South, that was in the mountains, that had good music and warm weather. And that wasn’t too near the rest of my family. Because I just wanted to see what would happen if I landed in a place by myself, without any connections.

If people want to get your cassettes or CDs, where would they go about getting them?
Seeger: My web page is open now—you might find it of interest. The best place…just go into a record store.

One of my records I like best is really hard to get. And you can really, I suppose, only get that from me. Which is one called Almost Commercially Viable. I made that with my friend Irene, when we were “No Spring Chickens.” Made it in England and never managed to get it sold to anybody over here yet. Mind you, I haven’t pushed hard. That’s one that I really like. Probably Internet, Worldwide Web.

In terms of the future. What’s your sense? What’s going to be happening in the United States and in England?
Seeger: England I can’t say very much about. Because I haven’t really been in contact with what’s been happening in England since ’89. I took a couple of years out to write a couple of books and I hardly sang at all in England.

What books?
Seeger: I finished a book of my own songs—140 of them. And a book of Ewan MacColl’s songs—200 of those.

Some readers might not have heard much of Ewan MacColl for some of the reasons you indicated, like blacklisting. From an artistic point of view, what is going to be his place in history?
Seeger: Well, in England he is regarded as one of the architects of the British Folk Revival. There was Alan Lomax, Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: who were largely responsible for starting the English revival as we know it. And he was one of the main singers and theorists, teachers, and critics in that. He was a superb unaccompanied singer. And he was a person who opened up the English and Scottish repertoire of songs. I would say he probably has recorded about 100 albums. And many of them were songs that he just literally revived out of books. Because if they died, nobody knew them anymore.

He was a theorist of the revival, in that he worked out ways by which singers who were, say, brought up in different musical traditions, could approach singing of folk songs without ruining them. He also kind of kept the British Revival’s nose to the grindstone, as far as understanding the relationship between folk song and the working-class.

So he was like a Woody Guthrie, right, for Britain?
Seeger: Kind of.

But what are the differences?
Seeger: He came from the same kind of background as Woody Guthrie did: a working-class man. He was also uneducated, like Woody Guthrie. I would say he was probably a more skilled songwriter than Woody Guthrie. Ewan didn’t write—now this is my personal opinion: I don’t think he wrote any bad songs. And I think Woody Guthrie did. And I think Woody Guthrie wrote some absolutely superb ones. But he also wrote some stinkers. And if Ewan wrote stinkers, he kept them quiet. He was lucky enough to keep them quiet.

Ewan was also in theatre, which Woody wasn’t. He was responsible with his first wife, Joan Littlewood, for forming Britain’s best recognized revolutionary theatre: Theatre Workshop—which in the late 1940s and right through the Fifties was regarded as a pacesetter for activist theatre. He left that to stir-up the folk revival, which he did. And made a lot of enemies.

If you were in England and were in the folk revival and spoke of Ewan MacColl, anybody would have heard of him. He also is known for writing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” And for writing a number of songs which many people in the folk revival over here think are folk songs. Like “Dirty Old Town.”

Is there an autobiography or biography of him [as of 1996]?
Seeger: There’s an autobiography of him. But it was published in England and then taken out of publication. I’m trying to get it done again. It was never released here. And I’m trying to get it released over here. I will get it done. It’s called Journeyman. And I think it’s a wonderful book. An excellent book.

He wrote plays. And then the two books that I’ve done are kind of historical surveys, telling what was happening at the time when the song was written, making comments about the songs. With discographies and prefaces. Oh, you know, the whole thing. They’re huge books.

Getting back to your own performances. What do you hope to achieve when you perform before a live audience?
Seeger: Oh, I want to entertain them and make them think. I firmly believe that I have a great deal to learn from any audience that I sing for. And the folk revival generally gets an awful lot of really thinking people to it. I would like to, if possible, move them on from where they are and to draw on their experience to move me on. I’m very much invigorated by most of the people that I meet at the concerts that I give.

I suppose you might say I probably appeal more to their thinking faculties then I do to their emotional ones. But I try to make a good combination.

Technically, you’re considered quite skillful compared to most musicians. How did you get so good?
Seeger: Well, I’m not as good as I used to be. Because I have arthritis in my left wrist, which is hampering me rather a lot.

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 2

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 2 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

Your artistic work seems to have reflected movements and cultural trends more than the stuff we hear on the radio more frequently. In what ways do you think your artistic work has been influenced by the movements of the last 30 years and the cultural trends—your songwriting, presentations, concerns?
Peggy Seeger: I think folk music has always reflected a very large spectrum of human activity. Chiefly, because the folk songs themselves are about so many different things. Popular songs have generally been about love and love lost, for the most part. I mean the really popular songs. The high-selling stuff. I’m not talking about music hall and background popular songs. I mean the stuff that really gets the main attention. It’s usually been sad love songs or things like that.

But folk music, right throughout its history—because it has come not as a commodity music, but as a music which has been produced purely and simply because people felt that they just had to make it—has been about so many different things that it has reflected what has been happening in the so-called “lower-strata” of society. And that is the industrial struggles and many of the subjects which aren’t mentioned at all in popular music: like violence against women, like child-beating. And like orphans and nagging wives, violent husbands. And happy love songs, too, I suppose. Folk music is very versatile in what it chooses to reflect. And I think many of the songwriters now, because they’re writing about things that are happening now, they choose an idiom which is already there—which is folk music. And there are some wonderful songs being written on the folk circuit.

You mentioned your drift away from old left kind of labor stuff, more turning towards a feminist orientation, green concerns. When did that start and to what degree has that reflected shifts in the world or your own personal shifts?
Seeger: Well, it definitely reflects shifts in the world. I began to get interested in it in the mid-Eighties. I began writing feminist songs—well, my first one was 1970, when I wrote “Gonna Be An Engineer.” And I wrote that for a stage play that we were doing. And it just rolled-out of me, although I’ve had a relatively easy life as far as gender-discrimination was concerned. I just literally produced that in an evening, which surprised me. Then I found that because of it I was being asked to sing at women’s functions. When I went along to sing at these functions I found that I didn’t have any songs that dealt with the issues that they were talking about: like abortion, like rape, like strife between mothers and daughters, women’s position in unions, contraception. Things like that.

So I started to write songs consciously about these issues. And that was in the mid-to-late Seventies.

So I guess that would answer the question why you started writing your own songs?
Seeger: Yeah. Now I ran this side-by-side with the left-wing politics at the time. Because I was a socialist-feminist. I’m moving over quite quickly to radical feminist and to feeling that the way politics are organized, what we recognize as politics, is something that is determined by the patriarchal structure that we have. And that many of the politics are really meant to bolster up the System that we have, which is a patriarchal one: heavily centralized, heavily industrialized, highly competitive and aggressive. And many of these are principles that feminists feel are not part of what women want to be part of or what women want to be like.

This patriarchy, and the industrial complex that goes with it, is what is responsible for the rape of the Earth. And so that is why I’m moving around to a different kind of politics and to a different activist sphere. It seems that many women and many men are also moving around to this.

A kind of drift towards eco-feminism?
Seeger: Yes.

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 1

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 1 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

I was in the bookstore looking at the magazine section, and I noticed a lot of glossy magazines featuring people who were singing folk music in the 1960s and 1950s. You know, an article like “Generation X and Joan Baez.” Also books. Like When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. What’s your explanation?
Peggy Seeger: Who was that by?

Robert Cartwell. So it seems like every decade there’s a revival of interest in the folksingers of the 1950s and 1960s and in folk music in general. How do you explain the cross-generational appeal?
Seeger: When you say “cross-generational appeal,” do you mean “why is it appealing now to younger people?”

Yeah.
Seeger: Are you sure that it is?

That’s what these articles are saying. In the early Nineties—no. But now, in the last few years—yes.
Seeger: Well, then the young people now are getting romantic about the Sixties. They’re not listening particularly to folk music now. You go to the festivals now and there aren’t all that many. Probably at festivals there are younger people. But at the concerts there are more older people, generally speaking. Although I went to a Joan Baez concert down in Asheville and there were a terrific number of women there—young and older women.

So maybe that’s where it’s centered? Among women.
Seeger: I think we’re hungering for a more innocent period, to be quite honest. I think many people feel that folk music has an innocence about it. That the music that we’re being presented with now, as pop music, doesn’t. It’s interesting that there wasn’t a folk music revival back in the Thirties and the Twenties when there was a lot of really innocent, quite joyful, music.

So many movements seem to run almost in pendulum-like form. Look at the way the working-class movement and the union movement spurs up every now and then. And look at the way feminism is spurred up every now and then. The ecological movement as well. Although I hope the pendulum is going to stay where it is and move even further over.

But I think, certainly, as far as the Fifties and the Sixties are concerned, it was a kind of glowing period. People kind of look on it as—even though it included things like the Vietnam War—if we still had a kind of innocence about us then.

You lived in both the United States and in Britain during the Fifties and Sixties?
Seeger: I lived in England for most of that. I was abroad for most of that time. From 1955 onward I was abroad.

You’ve been back in the States in the Nineties. Is it much of a culture shock?
Seeger: Yes. Although I had been back several times before then. I was blacklisted in early days, even though I hadn’t done very much. Or at least, if not blacklisted, it was very difficult to get in. You had to hire a civil liberties lawyer to kind of plead your case. And you had to get work permits and special visas and all those kind of things

But coming back now, despite the fact that I have come back about eight or ten times between 1960 and 1990, yes—quite a culture shock. But not as much as if I had been a foreigner. I’m quite comfortable with American people. Always have been. Not all. The ones that are the kind of people that I meet I’m quite comfortable with.

Why would you be blacklisted as a musician? I thought that was only political people. I thought artists weren’t blacklisted?
Seeger: No. No, no, no. My brother, Pete [Seeger], wasn’t allowed to leave the country for a long time in the Fifties. Or early Sixties. And to be a folk musician, was to be regarded as quite “left-wing” and “red,” in the Fifties and Sixties. Definitely.

In the 1990s, what have you been up to artistically?
Seeger: I performed by myself up to 1958 or ’59. And then I joined with Ewan MacColl and sang with him for over 30 years. And when he died in 1989, I swung immediately to singing with my old comrade, Irene Scott. We formed a duo called “No Spring Chickens.” And we sang together for 4 years. And then she decided she didn’t like touring life. And I decided to come back over here.

And so I have been learning to sing by myself again. And it was extremely interesting. Because working with Ewan MacColl it was very, very serious. And fairly static onstage. Working with Irene, she wanted to bring humor onto the stage. So I started using a reasonable amount of humor and being lighter onstage, in terms of presentation. Although not necessarily in terms of the kinds of songs being sung. And, of course, the big difference now is that I’m swinging over to ecological and feminism politics, rather than the old left-wing politics of the jobs and the unions.

This is not to say that I don’t find them important. Because they are. But I believe that the major push, the most important push now, is ecology. And feminism goes hand-in-hand with that, because so many of the feminist principles are ones that mesh in perfectly with ecological action. 

SNCC Freedom Singer Matt Jones: A 1994 Interview--Part 2

The Summer of 1994 marked the 30th Anniversary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]’s Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964, in which over 1,000 student volunteers from around the U.S. participated, after attending training sessions in Oxford, Ohio. But in 2017 a former chairman of SNCC, H. Rap Brown (n/k/a Jamil al-Amin), is still imprisoned for life in a Georgia prison.

In 1994, Downtown spoke with former SNCC organizer and Freedom Singers Director, Matt Jones (1936-2011) about the Freedom Summer, the Freedom Singers, SNCC and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Jones lived in Manhattan and for many years  generously donated his time to sing at many human rights and peace benefits. At The People’s Voice Café in Manhattan, a celebration of his 70th birthday took place in 2006. Following is part 2 of an interview with Jones, which first appeared in the September 21, 1994 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper, Downtown.

How was SNCC different from the other civil rights organizations? Why were the Freedom Singers involved with SNCC, as opposed to the other civil rights organizations?
Jones: SNCC was a student organization. When we decided to do something, we did it! Each state had at least one field secretary and several local SNCC workers. These local SNCC workers organized the community. Each area was autonomous and allowed to develop independently.

And we were very, very similar in the way we operated and, in a lot of ways, we were different. Some of us were a lot more demonstration-oriented. A “mass meeting” would be a way for you to connect yourself to the ministers and the people in the community.

We in the Freedom Singers always considered ourselves to be organizers first and singers second. All of SNCC was very action-oriented. We did a lot of demonstrating. We continuously went to jail. We confronted the Establishment in each town that we went to. That was the nature of SNCC.

Now, once we got into these areas, CORE would then come in. CORE had a lot of youthful civil rights workers, also. But not as many as SNCC had. SNCC did not operate only in Mississippi. We worked throughout the South. We in the Freedom Singers were responsible for raising money for Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas and Mississippi, and certain parts of Virginia. So we had a large area that we had to raise funds for and a large area that we had to talk to people about. We had to let people know that we had projects in all these different areas.

And we were just different from other groups. We just operated on the spur of the moment, very action-oriented. We’d move in an uncompromising kind of way. We didn’t have any national office, like the NAACP had, that would get upset because [Mississippi NAACP leader] Aaron Henry would make a move or [slain civil rights leader] Medgar Evers would make a move. We didn’t have to get a go-ahead from anybody.

So people in their different areas would make their own moves. If they got in trouble, the people from other areas of SNCC would come in and help them. So in Mississippi, [SNCC leader] Stokely Carmichael [a/k/a Kwame Ture] might have come over from Lowndes County [Alabama]. You might even have people who would come in from other areas. They’d come into Mississippi, and they might leave Mississippi and go into Virginia. Or go into Tennessee. Or go into Georgia. So that’s why SNCC could move in a moment’s notice. And it could immediately transfer its workers from one state project to another, just by a lady named Ruby Doris Robinson making a call, and people would just saturate themselves from one area to another.

The Freedom Singers was started by Jim Forman [SNCC executive secretary] with the help of Pete Seeger and song leader and field secretary Cordell Reagon. We already had good song leaders in the South. So we took the best singers to go around and sing freedom songs and talk about the Movement. We felt that music was the best way to reach people. So those of us in the Freedom Singers became ambassadors and fund-raisers, as opposed to field workers. Occasionally, we would go back into the field to work. But then we would return to the North and talk and sing about what was happening in the South and raise funds to send back.

I was one of those people who would send back pretty close to $5,000 [equal to around $40,000 in 2018 dollars]. And that was just the first amount of money we would make. After we would leave a town, people would send more money and more SNCC volunteers would be organized.

There were a lot of groups in music in the 1950s and 1960s. In terms of the music and the songs that the Freedom Singers sang, how would you characterize it?
Jones: Well, I would have to say you need to realize that the Freedom Singers were organizers first, and musicians second. It’s true that we could sing very well. But we, by and large, were organizers.

One or two of the Freedom Singers might have been primarily singers. But, by and large, you were talking about a bunch of organizers who talked about the Movement in terms of song. And documented the Movement in songs and sang the songs to people across the nation. And tried to explain what SNCC was about and tried to get them interested enough to give funds and get involved. And give some kind of resource: either their personal selves or money or supplies or whatever. And that made us sing with a kind of intensity.

I was listening to one of our old records and it sort of frightened me when I heard it. I said to myself “Is this really singing?” I heard an intensity and a purpose in my voice that I’ve tried to duplicate unsuccessfully. Because we all had a purpose and when we sang you could hear that purpose in our voices. It’s almost like I was listening to somebody else, and not listening to myself.

We were very dedicated people, and the words that we sang, and the songs that we sang—we believed in. We believed in the words of the songs. Because each song approached the Movement in a certain way.

For example, I wrote a song “Oginga Odinga,” which brought the African Struggle into the Civil Rights Movement, and was also a favorite song of Malcolm X. Other songs, such as “In The Mississippi River,” written by my brother, Marshall Jones, had more meaning after Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner (www.jecf.org/History.htm) were killed.

These songs would make us feel better and through these songs we could explain to people what happened. They could understand exactly what state-of-mind we were in.

So the Freedom Singers was a group that explained to the world-at-large what was going on in the South. People were always very receptive to us and our message. We could communicate thoughts and ideas that would be very difficult for somebody to speak about. Or to preach about. Through our music we inspired people to help and/or join the Movement.

Who were some of the other members of the Freedom Singers?
Jones: In the early days of December 1962, there was Bernice Reagon, Cordell Reagon, Charles “Chico” Neblett, Bertha Gober and Ruthie Harris. And in the Fall of 1963 I came on along with my brother Marshall Jones, James Peacock and Emory Harris. And Emory Harris was Ruthie’s brother. And we had a Venezuelan that came on later named Raphael Bentham. And very later in our career, we had a Jewish guitarist named Bill Pearlman. So we had sort of a cocktail of individuals who finally made up the Freedom Singers. And as we got new people in the Freedom Singers, it really changed our sound, and it made us incorporate more music as we traveled.

So the Freedom Singers had within it probably some of the most militant people in SNCC and also some of the most nonviolent people in SNCC. Because they were organizers, that gave the group a certain intensity. We weren’t just singers.

In December of 1964, we went into New York and sang with Malcolm X. And Malcolm X liked us very much. He was sitting down reading his notes and, when we started singing the song “Oginga Odinga,” he looked up. And he spoke to us and told us how important it was that we were singing about a Kenyan diplomat named Oginga Odinga, who was a freedom fighter. And he said that “Two or three years ago, you probably wouldn’t have been singing that song.”

But the reason we were singing the song is because I knew that the South was segregated and I loved the fact that we heard an African man had come to Atlanta on a State Department tour. We knew he was an important man and an international man. We wanted to let him know that Atlanta was not an integrated town. So I wrote this song. Malcolm X thought it was very significant.

At that time I wasn’t as political as I would later become. I gradually grew more political and wrote or arranged all of the Freedom Signers’ music. These songs were about different people who were in the Movement. For example, “Demonstrating G.I.,” is about a soldier who was thrown in jail for demonstrating in his uniform. In “The Prophecy Of A SNCC Field Secretary,” I talk about the lies that a grandfather would tell his grandson in the 1990s about work that he did in the Movement in the 1960s.

Some of the other important songs that we sang were: “We’ll Never Turn Back,” by Bertha Gober, which talks about the death of Herbert Lee, who was killed in Mississippi before Freedom Summer; and “Hartman Turnbow,” by Mike Killen. Turnbow was part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and a native Mississippian. After the death of Medgar Evers and the three girls killed in Birmingham, I wrote the “Ballad of Medgar Evers.” Thank god that Byron De la Beckwith was finally convicted after all these years. So the songs performed by the Freedom Singers always were about people and conditions that were in the SNCC projects in one form or another.

Did the Freedom Singers perform at the Newport Folk Festival?
Jones: Yeah. In the early days when Bernice and Chuck were in the Freedom Singers, when they first started in December 1962, Toshi Seeger booked them. It was in the Summer of 1963 they went to Newport. And later on in my life, we sang there a time or two with [U.S. folksinger] Rev. Kirkpatrick [a/k/a Brother Kirk]. But we had sung there and sung at a number of other folk festivals in the country.
(end of part 2)

Freedom Singer and Movement Activist Matt Jones

Pete Seeger's `Rainbow Quest' Folk Music TV Show Revisited: Episode 38 with Buffy Sainte Marie

https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest38

Pete Seeger's `Rainbow Quest' Folk Music TV Show Revisited: Episode 36 with Mississippi John Hurt, Hedy West and Paul Cadwell

https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest36

Pete Seeger's `Rainbow Quest' Folk Music TV Show Revisited: Episode 33 with Jim Garland and Hazel Garland

https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest33

Pete Seeger's `Rainbow Quest" Folk Music TV Show Revisited: Episode 31 with Greenbriar Boys

https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest31

Pete Seeger's `Rainbow Quest' Folk Music TV Show Revisited: Episode 17 with Roscoe Holcomb and Jean Redpath

Pete Seeger's `Rainbow Quest' Folk Music TV Show Revisited: Episode 14 with Political Folk Songs

https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest14

Non-Commercial Topical Protest Folk Songs vs. Commercial Pop Protest Songs

Non-commercially-motivated people who have felt enslaved, oppressed or economically exploited have always--either individually or collectively--created public domain, topical folk songs that protest against the System that enslaves, oppresses or exploits us. And non-commercially-motivated people--either individually or collectively--have always written public domain, topical protest folk songs that urge those who sing or listen to these non-commercial protest folk songs to collectively revolt and make a political, economic and social revolution.

Some commercially-motivated songwriters, professional entertainers and global corporate media conglomerates, however, sometimes made a lot of money by writing, singing or marketing some privatized/copyrighted topical protest songs to a mass audience of vinyl record or cd consumers in the 20th-century.

Yet despite the commercial success of some of the commercially-motivated individual professional songwriters and entertainers--who capitalized on the global corporate media conglomerates' transformation of some topical protest songs into commodities--most people on earth in the 21st-century are still enslaved, oppressed or economically exploited by the System.

Protest Folk Magazine believes, however, that a topical protest folk song should be a public domain tool for creating revolutionary social change--and not just an additional way for professional songwriters, professional entertainers or global media conglomerates to make a lot of money in the 21st-century, while most of us folk on earth continue to live in poverty, under the System's current global economic set-up.