Woody Guthrie famously had a sign on his guitar reading “This Machine Kills Fascists.” The slogan neatly sums up the philosophy of the ’30′s and ’40′s American left when it comes to the relationship between folk art and progressive politics. Leaving aside, just for the moment, the support that Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and others in [...]
Posts Tagged ‘music’
This Machine Kills Fascists: Woody Guthrie, meet Radovan Karadzic
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fascism, left wing, liberals, music, Pete Seeger, Radovan Karadzik, Woody Guthrie on March 7, 2011 | 4 Comments »
“The Cuckoo”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged American independence, banjo, music, traditional song on June 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
oh the cuckoo she’s a good bird and she warbles and she flies and she never hollers cuckoo till the fourth day of July I’ve been making the somewhat unconventional move of introducing my talks on Declaration with a few verses of an old song, “The Cuckoo,” accompanying my singing (or maybe let’s call it [...]
Der Bingle and the Lucy Poems
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Bing Crosby, music, poetry, pop, William Wordsworth on May 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
According to the Romantic Circles blog (not what it sounds like, but a site dedicated to scholarship on the English Romantic period), Bing Crosby’s final album is to be re-released soon, with formerly unreleased bonus material, including settings of works by well-known poets, including Wordsworth’s “Lucy Gray.” Weird, yet for some of us (or one [...]
The HoundBlog and John Lee Hooker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blues, music, rock and roll on May 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The Hound hears more in John Lee Hooker’s best work than I do, and this has got to be right: …he was not only one of the most famous blues singers of all time, he really was probably the most primitive artists to sell a lot of records. Well observed, that, based on a deep [...]
Rock and roll can never die
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 1940's, music, rock and roll on April 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I’m happy to see not-especially-penetrating historical descriptions of rock and roll now casually defining it as arising in the 1940′s. (Here, for example, and here, and here.) Because that’s right. History helps clarify. Everybody admits that Alan Freed started talking about rock and roll in ’51 — but doesn’t that sort of have to mean [...]
