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..
Until around 5 years ago, most sports fans in the United States never questioned why "The Star Spangled Banner," rather than a labor song like "Solidarity Forever," was played or sung inside a stadium before a football or baseball game begins. And in 2020, after more people pointed out that the lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner" were written by someone who had owned some slaves in early 19th-century, Francis Scott Key, some more people in the USA began to question whether it still made sense in 21st-century for "The Star Spangled Banner" to continue to be the U.S. national anthem. According to the 2007 book, titled The Big Red Songbook, which Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont and Salvatore Salerno edited, it was only in 1931 that "Congress elevated `The Star Spangled Banner' to become the national anthem of the United States; and "The Star Spangled Banner"'s lyrics are sung to the tune of "To Anacreon In Heaven" (whose collectively-written tune has been attributed to a Brit composer named John Stafford Smith). And the same book also noted that in the early 20th-century an "unnamed author" wrote the following lyrics to "The Banner Of Labor" protest folk and labor song, that can be sung to the same "To Anacreon In Heaven" tune to which "The Star Spangled Banner" national anthem lyrics of the USA is sung: "Oh say, can you hear, coming near and more near The call now resounding: `Come all ye who labor?' The Industrial Band, throughout all the land Bids toilers remember, each toiler's his neighbor. Come, workers, unite! `tis Humanity's fight; We call, you come forth in your manhood and might. Chorus And the Banner of Labor will surely soon wave O'er the land that is free, from the master and slave. The blood and the lives of children and wives Are ground into dollars for parasites' pleasure; The children now slave, till they sink in their grave That robbers may fatten and add to their treasure. Will you idly sit by, unheeding their cry? Arise! Be ye men, see, the battle draws nigh. (chorus) Long, long has the spoil of labor and toil Been wrung from the workers by parasite classes; While Poverty, gaunt, Desolation and Want Have Dwelt in the hovels of earth's toiling masses. Through bloodshed and tears, our day star appears, Industrial Union, the wage slave now cheers. (chorus)
As the 2007 book, The Big Red Songbook, which Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont and Salvatore Salerno edited, noted, the Industrial Workers of the World [IWW] protest folk and labor song "Walking On The Grass," "represents IWW songs with authors unknown," was "probably composed in response to a Missoula, Montana ordinance prohibiting public assembly" in the early 20th-century and "addressed issues raised in free-speech campaigns waged by Wobblies in the Northwest and California." Following are the lyrics to the "Walking On The Grass" song, which can be sung to the traditional tune of "The Wearing Of The Green" Irish rebel protest folk song: "In this blessed land of freedom where King Mammon wears the crown There are many ways illegal now to hold the people down When the dudes of state militia are slow to come in time The law upholding Pinkertons are gathered from the slime. There are wisely framed injunctions that you must not leave your job And a peaceable assemblage is declared to be a mob. And Congress passed a measure framed by some consummate ass, So they are clubbing men and women just for walking on the grass. "In this year of slow starvation, when a fellow looks for work, The chances are a cop will grab his collar with a jerk; He will run him in for vagrancy, he is branded as a tramp, And all the well-to-do will shout: `It serves him right, the scamp!' So we let the ruling class maintain the dignity of law. When the court decides against us we are filled with wholesome awe, But we cannot stand the outrage without a little sauce When they're clubbing men and women just for walking on the grass. "The papers said the union men were all but anarchists, So the job trust promised work for all who wouldn't enlist; But the next day when the hungry hoard surrounded city hall, He hedged and said he didn't promise anything at all. So the powers that be are acting very queer to say the least They should go and read their Bible and all about Belshazzar's feast, And when mene tekel at length shall come to pass They'll stop clubbing men and women just for walking on the grass."
At the beginning of his book Ireland Sings: An Anthology of Modern and Ancient Irish Songs and Ballads, which Essex Music Limited published in 1965, Irish rebel folk singer-songwriter Dominic Behan included the following "Note To Young Singers:" "Historically, collectors of folk material, like Sharpe, Herd, Ord, Child etc. have made significant contributions to the preservations of folk-lore. But, to imagine--as some people would have us believe at present--that balladry is in itself worth of study in an abstract art sense, is a foolish and undesirable premise. That everything in relation to folk song must be limited to the purely `Ethnic', with no allowance for the day to day changes which are a feature of any society is tantamount to asking us for our signature on a death warrant for folk-lore. Above all, it is asking us to sing with an academic tongue in cheek, and, before we bawl our heads off, we must find out why. It is enough to prevent young people from making their own songs... "All this emphasis on `Folk knowledge,' `Ethnic approach' etc. is hindering the young singer. It is educating him/her into the phony accent, the idiomatic restrictive, and the world where song is no longer something to have on one's lip, but a kind of mysticism related only to the professorial and ultra academic. Forget the `Folk pundit'. Open your mouth, and, whatever your voice is like, sing! And to hell with the `Ethnicists'. Folk-song is not the special preserve of the few, but the undeniable heritage of the many."
And in the "Notes On Some Song Makers Of The Past," that he included in the same songbook, Dominic Behan also wrote the following: "In this collection of traditional and contemporary songs the urban may tend to outweigh the rural tradition somewhat. This is because I have deliberately tended to include only songs from the countryside written earlier than the nineteenth century. Poor, wailing songs, and songs of love, inspired chiefly by Thomas Moore's success as a 19th-century court jester, are not for me. If you put your hands up to Heaven in despair at my occlusion of `Maire my Girl' or `My Mary of the Curling Hair', I can only suggest that there are plenty of recordings of this type of song made by the type of lyrical tenor likely to sing them... "When Tomas Moore was eighteen years of age he was nearly charged alongside Robert Emmett with sedition in 1798. He wrote two pieces--anonymously--for `The Press', a highly revolutionary paper, and his Mother heard about it. She made Tom promise never again to do the likes. He kept his promise; indeed, he went further, he made a point of dedicating his translation of the `Odes of Anacreon' to the Prince of Wales... "Before [Lord] Byron died, he entrusted his memoirs to Moore for posthumous publication. That Byron had given them to Moore's care as a friend no more worried Tommie than the sanctity of the songs he took from Ireland's folklore and so bowdlerized. At the behest of Lord Byron's relatives he burned the manuscripts in their presence. Emmett had been hanged drawn and quartered and his headless remains dumped, forty-nine years before Moore died peacefully in 1852..."
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..."
Although former Rolling Stone writer Hunter Thompson claimed that Rolling Stone magazine "began its slide into conservatism and mediocrity in 1977," by 1989 its then-parent company, Straight Arrow Publishers Inc. "was worth perhaps $250 million [equal to over $533 million in 2020]--over thirty thousand times its value twenty-two years before," according to the 1990-published book, Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History by Robert Draper. According to the same book, Rolling Stone magazine's founder and then-owner, Jann Wenner, was personally worth over $100 million in 1990 [equal to over $203 million in 2020] and had used his youth market profits from "Rolling Stone Incorporated" to maintain "an ostentatious lifestyle of private jets, country villas and choice social connections to match." According to Draper's Rolling Stone Magazine book of 1990, at that time Wenner spent about four months out of the year at his three-story country manor in East Hampton, Long Island and employed servants there. Wenner also then owned a five story Manhattan townhouse and a Mercedes limousine which was driven by his chauffeur. In 1985, Wenner also had spent $2.5 million [equal to over $6.1 million in 2020] of his surplus wealth to purchase and own US Magazine, for awhile. Although much of the music that Rolling Stone magazine has covered and profited from since the late '60s is rooted in African-American rhythm and blues, ironically, its pre-1990 "reluctance to cover Black music" was "infamous" and "not coincidentally, Rolling Stone" had "never employed a single Black writer," prior to 1990, according to Draper's 1990 Rolling Stone Magazine book.
As late as the 1990s, hip capitalist rock music industry establishment publications like Rolling Stone and Spin magazines apparently still operated in an institutionally sexist way, in relation to women music journalists. As music journalist Lucy O'Brien wrote in her 1996-published She-Bop: The Definitive History Of Women In Rock, Pop and Soul book: "Being a female music journalist has its particular obstacles, too...Like many female journalists, I found that `serious' long articles inevitably went to the male writers, while too often we were kept to writing reviews, short pieces or doing interviews with women artists. Women are not considered heavy-weight enough to comment on the top male acts of the day--be it Public Enemy or Iggy Pop. Women rarely get staff positions with power to commission other writers. In 1994, for instance, the senior editorial team of Rolling Stone consisted of 10 men and two women, while among their contributing editors (including Kurt Loder, Greil Marcus and Robert Palmer) there were three women and 27 men. Spin did marginally better with six female and 27 male writers on the masthead, plus one woman among six top editors..."
By 1970 the hip capitalist establishment Rolling Stone magazine of Wenner was also being criticized by U.S. women's liberation and radical feminist movement activists and women rock music critics like Ellen Willis for its sexism. As Joe Hagan's 2017 Sticky Fingers book recalled: "Ellen Willis, a pioneering feminist and the first rock critic at The New Yorker, wrote to Ralph Gleason in 1970 saying she refused to write for Rolling Stone because it was `viciously anti-women.' `RS habitually refers to women as chicks and treats us as chicks; i.e. interchangeable cute fucking machines,' she wrote, adding...that Jann Wenner's bias against revolutionary politics fed the oppression of females: `To me, when a bunch of snotty upper-middle white males start telling me that politics isn't where its at, that is simply an attempt to defend their privileges'..." And according to the same Sticky Fingers book: "Around the offices of Rolling Stone, Wenner was known for his jovial sexual harassment. He didn't discriminate between men and women...`He was hitting on every girl and every guy,' said Lynn Hirschberg. `He once grabbed me around the hips and said, `Ten more pounds and you'll be perfect.' This was in front of everybody at a meeting and I wanted to die. It was like this schoolboy crap.'..." As a long-time member of the Hip Capitalist Establishment since the late 1960s, Rolling Stone magazine's owner and publisher between 1967 and late 2017, Wenner, apparently accumulated over $700 million in personal worth according to the Celebrity Net Worth website, during the 5 decades between 1970 and its sale to Penske Media Inc. in late 2017. And in 2020, the Hip Capitalist Establishment's Rolling Stone magazine website still apparently doesn't encourage most U.S. music fans who still bother to read Rolling Stone magazine to get more into non-commercially-motivated, anti-establishment protest folk music very much during the 21st-century.
For as Rolling Stone magazine's long-time hip capitalist former owner and publisher Jann Wenner said as long ago as 1977: "I think Rolling Stone is establishment. I think that rock culture...has become establishment in this country, and is the leading cultural establishment in this country right now."(end of article)
