A blog to encourage creation of non-commercially-motivated homemade, public domain, topical, politically left protest folk songs by non-professional working-class songwriters and musicians, that express a different consciousness than that expressed by most of the commercially-motivated songs that get aired in 21st-century on corporate or foundation-sponsored or government-funded radio stations..
In his July/August 1974 Sing Out! magazine column (that's included in the book Pete Seeger: In His Own Words which Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited), Pete Seeger criticized the way most music magazines cover the folk music scene for the following reason:: "What's good about folk music is that it is not show business. It should not be show business. "But the trouble with most `folk music' magazines...is that they tell me what professional performer is singing here, and why that one is better than some other one. And somehow millions of people have gotten the idea that folk music is somebody standing on stage with a guitar in his or her hand. I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with giving such a false impression..."
As the book Pete Seeger: In His Own Words that Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited indicates, during the 1970s Pete Seeger wrote the following about the negative effects of fame and celebrity worship on people in modern society: "...I feel very deeply that the whole feverish search to get close to `fame' is not only foolish but a symptom of something very bad in modern society around the world. "Modern technology, mass production, has made some people too famous and has left billions of people feeling that they are unimportant, that they are just cogs in a big machine...This is really false. Everybody is important in this world... "...I urge all autograph collectors to realize that the kind of fame people get in show business and politics is about the phoniest of all. To be in show business is to be in the professional publicity business. People are hired to send out releases to newspapers and to arrange for TV interviews..."
In a May/June 1975 Sing Out! magazine column that was included in the Pete Seeger: In His Own Words book that Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited, Pete Seeger wrote the following about Movement activists' failure to generally fight against the U.S. corporate entertainment media's celebrity star system: "You ask me, do I know `some big name performer' who can help your cause. Don't you realize that we all have to fight the star system? In this technological society, we have to oppose the cult of personality... "...Revolutionists have always had to teach the people that some of the greatest talents in the world have no reputation to speak of; they have just been sitting beside us all the time, and we didn't know about it."
In a letter that he wrote to Don West in the 1960s that was published in a book that Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal edited, Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, Pete Seeger made the following critique of the post-1960s "Folk Music Revival" in the USA and elsewhere:
"...The whole character and definition of the word `folk music' is being warped by the commercial image of the solo professional performer and the publicity surrounding (him or her)--and I think that you are right that magazines such as Sing Out are consciously or unconsciously contributing to this bad state of affairs by continually boosting the names of performers in articles rather than talking about the music and the unknown people who have created it and kept it alive. "...In our present commercial system the star syndrome is the regular thing and I believe among the biggest victims of it are the so-called stars themselves. I know that I feel a victim of it personally because for 10 years I have tried to persuade Sing Out to play down my name, but it keeps popping up in every issue. I keep sending letters to publishing companies and record companies, but the basic facts of economic life keep running against me and there goes my name up in huge letters. I consented to a normal interview with the Christian Science Monitor and suddenly see a headline, `A Folk Hero Is Born.' What are you going to do about this kind of shit? I can tell you for sure that many times I've thought of quitting the whole music business because of it..." In a March 25, 1986 letter that was published in the same book, Seeger also wrote the following: "...In the long run what the human race needs in the way of music is the ability and the confidence to sing a song, whether it is at the fireside, bedside, tableside, workside, sidewalk side, or anywhere side without having to think of it as a `performance.' And none of the `folk revivals' in any country nor any festivals, magazines, recordings that I know of have really attacked the problem and made much headway in solving it...Music seems still to be in hock to the experts, and most of the millions listen..."
And in a December 20, 1986 letter that was also published in Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, Pete also wrote the following: "What I wanted to do was try and get rank-and-file people singing again, whether parent singing to children or workers singing on the job or friends harmonizing in a car as they drove down the highway. But the prevalence of loudspeakers has defeated me and a lot of others and in the end our `Revival of Folk Music' seemed more like simply starting up another minor branch of the pop music business, especially appealing to middle-class whites..."
This protest folk song was written in March, 1967, in Furnald Hall dorm at Columbia University to protest the university's institutional membership in the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a weapons research think tank. Last verse of lyrics was added in 2010.
lyrics
Come, you Bloody Minds Look what I done find I done did research IDA exists Laugh between your walls Sit behind your desks Watch your missiles fall IDA exists.
The value-free school Your mask we see right through The weapons of the Pentagon Their brains procured by you.
Godly Grayson Kirk On the board he knits Smokes upon his pipe While his bombers bite Problems he assigns: “How to make men die?” Professors they plan Death for Viet Nam.
In ’56 to serve Defense Five schools they did combine Four years later Columbia It joined the bloody minds.
City slums they rot Homeless live in lots Atoms to destroy They’re your little toys Oh, they pay you well To create a hell Did you see the news? Twelve children they slew.
A division Its name Jason In summer they study They meet, they talk They plan, they plot Counter-insurgency.
Lovers they must part Lamps they now are dark Knowledge turned to swords Kirk sits on the board Schools changed into guns For the Pentagon Students now they learn: How to make kids burn.
You stand in class You spout your facts A noble scientist But then at night You join the fight You do secret research.
Wall Street banks collapse Workers get laid-off Laser beams command Bombs on Afghanistan Drones built by IDA In Pakistan they slay Robot war research Makes professors rich.
In 2010, scientists again They do space war research With DARPA funds in secret labs They threaten all the Earth.
Murder poor peasants With the tools you sent Orphan thin children Help the junta win Kill them with your mind Paralyze their spines Someday you will die And in slime you’ll lie.
The historical protest folk song, "Columbia," was written in the Furnald Hall dormitory on Columbia University's campus in late 1966 to protest the Columbia Administration's complicity with the U.S. war machine during the Vietnam War Era.
(lyrics) Oh, educate
Columbia
Pursue the truth
Columbia
Exalt the mind
Columbia
Research and find
Columbia
And "humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool."
Invite the spies
Columbia
The C.I.A.
Columbia
Give them a room
Columbia
To recruit spooks
Columbia
And "humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool."
Help the Navy
Columbia
R.O.T.C.
Columbia
Teach a course for
Columbia
"The Art of War"
Columbia
And "humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool."
Secret research
Columbia
You'd best not snitch
Columbia
At campus labs
Maybe some bombs?
For electronic war
Design lasers
And "humanize and civilize
With reason as your tool."
In an October 30, 1969 letter, Pete Seeger wrote the following in reference to the U.S. music industry's undemocratic "star system"--and its undemocratic influence on U.S. left-wing and left-liberal activists and organizers and in the world of U.S. folk music: "...Unfortunately, the average person that calls me is just as much a prisoner of the `Star system' as anybody else, and they always want to get someone with a well-known name who can help fill the hall..." ( from Pete Seeger: In His Own Words, selected and edited by Rob Rosenthal and Sam Rosenthal and published in 2012 by Paradigm Publishers)
