The Folk and Protest Movement

  1. Ballads and popular song in America - see "Origins of Country Music" from the University of Kentucky History of Country website (use the "back" button to return)
  2. Early Protest Songs - Excerpted from from http://www.coe.ufl.edu/Courses/EdTech/Vault/folk/1900-1950s.htm
    1. 1900-1930
      1. Protest songs were used regularly by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as "Wobblies") as one way of fostering solidarity among the workers.
        1. Songs served as a means of building morale, recruiting new members, and garnering publicity. Their music also functioned as a continuing oral history: many of their major strikes, campaigns, and martyrs were recorded in song.
        2. Other songs were written as protests to World War I. Thirty editions of the IWW "Little Red Songbook" were printed between 1911-1961 with the inscribed motto, "To Fan the Flames of Discontent."
        3. By the 1920s, most folk music had become apolitical, focusing on indigenous American prairie and mountain songs.
    2. The folk revival of the 1930s and 1940s
      1. Charles Seeger, John and Alan Lomax and others again employed folk music to address social, moral, and political issues. Conservatives of the era called this the "left-wing folk song conspiracy."
      2. Unions began using folk songs in their rallies. The music was so powerful as a left-wing tool in the mid- to late 1930s that "many Americans believe to this day that folk music is a subversive art and that all folk singers are bomb-carrying Reds."
      3. Popular folk singers of the period included Molly Jackson, Woody Guthrie, Huddie Ledbetter ("Leadbelly"), and Pete Seeger.
      4. John Jacob Niles' publications of folk songs made the music accessible to the art music community.
      5. Mass media also helped disseminate the music – the Grand Ole Opry in 1925, “The Wayfaring Stranger” with Burl Ives & the Lomaxes in the 1930s. In the 1940s, Alan Lomax produced two radio shows, "Folk Music in America" and "Back Where I Come From.”
      6. The protest song became an art form in Greenwich Village around 1939-40.
        1. Guthrie was considered the "father of the contemporary protest ballad," but he had also a large repertoire of folk music with every kind of theme including songs for children, railroaders, cotton pickers and other migrant workers, and others.
        2. Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and John and Alan Lomax, made a huge impact on folk music in America, one which is still felt today. It is likely that their joint efforts with each other and many others fostered that sense of community which is still present in modern folk music circles. Seeger, Guthrie, and Alan Lomax collaborated on a number of projects, including a book of protest songs that Alan had been collecting. His father, John, had considered them "too protesty" for his own publications. In 1940, Alan passed the songs on to Seeger and Guthrie who compiled them and wrote introductions and copy for the book, "Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People." Unfortunately, the songs were considered so radical that they were unable to find a publisher. The book eventually was published in 1967.
      7. After the war, Seeger formed the Weavers with Fred Hellerman, Ronnie Gilbert, and Lee Hays. They were ready to break up in 1949 due to lack of funds when they accepted a gig in a nightclub. That gig led to a recording contract with Decca.
      8. Folk music was becoming more popular in the late '40s anyway, and this fortuitous relationship with Decca helped Seeger and the Weavers push folk music right into the '50s.
  3. The 1950s
    1. The Weavers continued to be important on the music scene, especially on college campuses, despite their lack of radio and television appearances due to the House Un-American Activities Committee blackout.
    2. The McCarthy hearings and the “Red scare” caused many of the folk performers to fall into disrepute.
    3. The Kingston Trio's “cleaned-up,” apolitical version of folk helped set the stage for the 1960s revival. Ironically, the commercial folk boom led to the discovery of traditional folk music, particularly by college students dissatisfied with Don Kirshner's teen hits.
  4. The 1960s
    1. Civil rights and the Kennedy optimism
    2. Bob Dylan – excerpted from http://www.hiponline.com/artist/music/d/dylan_bob/index.html
      1. Bob Dylan is one of the very few most influential performer/songwriters in the history of popular music.
        1. variety of song-writing styles (confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives).
        2. forced a rethinking of the role of technical ability.
      2. Early years
        1. born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941 in Duluth MN.
        2. Began performing in coffeehouses in college; influenced by both country artists (Hank Williams) and folk artists like Guthrie. Bluesman Jesse Fuller is credited with the inspiration behind Dylan's signature harmonica rack & guitar.
      3. The 1960s
        1. moved to NY in Jan. 1961 and made an early impression on the Greenwich Village folk community.
        2. Recorded debut album in March 1962, mostly folk and blues standards.
        3. Began writing political protest songs, many of which appeared on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Recorded tracks that included a backup band were not used, nor did songs such as “Talkin' John Birch Society Blues.” The album was released in 1963, and its popularity among the folk crowd prompted other artists to record his material.
        4. In the next years Dylan expanded his musical boundaries, adding more blues and R & B influences, going electric, and (to some) turning his back on folk.
        5. The pop audience discovered Dylan in 1965 with “Like a Rolling Stone.” Over 100 artists covered his songs between 1964 and 1966.
        6. After a motorcycle accident in 1966 (July 29), Dylan secluded himself in Woodstock for a time. He and the Band recorded several demos at “Big Pink” which were circulated to generate cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the '60s; it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially released in 1975 as the double-album The Basement Tapes.
        7. John Wesley Harding, released in Dec. 1967, was possibly the first significant country-rock recording. Nashville Skyline followed the next year (“Lay, Lady, Lay").

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