York.”
The New York branch of the folk revival was strongly influenced by the Communist outlook, and one of the effects of this was that, along with performing traditional material, a lot of singers began composing topical songs based on folk models. Such urban, folk-styled creations were essentially a new music, consciously and often carefully crafted, politically motivated, and in many ways a quite different animal from anything that had come before. (The Industrial Workers of the World—IWW, or “Wobblies”—had done something similar back in the teens, but with the difference that singers like Joe Hill and T-Bone Slim were of the folk and generally set their lyrics to pop melodies or church hymns rather than to anything self-consciously rural or working-class.) It was part of the birth of “proletarian chic”—think about that the next time you slip into your designer jeans.
The urban folksingers acquired their repertoires from books, records, collecting trips, and one another, and unlike the traditional singers, they made their commitment to folk music consciously, for political and aesthetic reasons. As a result, they generally had to adopt personae not their own, singing and writing about experiences they knew only secondhand. This made for a very unstable synthesis, full of internal contradictions, but in the late 1930s such complications were ignored in the heat of political
battle and the joy of musical discovery. (Besides, introspection was a petit bourgeois luxury.) Those were urgent times, and the song for tomorrow night’s rally had to be written now, at once, immediately.
By 1939 this movement had its nexus in a sort of commune on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village called Almanac House. The residents included at one time or another, Pete Seeger, Alan and Bess Lomax, Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell . . . the list is long and impressive. All were songwriters to one degree or another (many collaborations and collective efforts here), but Guthrie was by far the most talented and influential of the lot. Taking pains to conceal his considerable erudition behind a folksy facade, he became a kind of proletarian oracle in the eyes of his singer-songwriter associates, who were, of course, incurable romantics. With Guthrie exercising a very loose artistic hegemony (Seeger and Lampell seem to have done most of the actual work), Almanac House became a kind of song factory, churning out topical, occasional, and protest songs at an unbelievable clip, as well as hosting regular “hootenannies.”
While the Communist Party played a notable role in midwifing this musical movement—Guthrie even had a regular column for a while in the Daily Worker— it also presented a few problems. For one thing, there were the political shifts that found the Almanacs singing things like “Plow Under Every Fourth American Boy” and the other songs they recorded opposing U.S. entry into World War II during the Hitler-Stalin pact, then having to throw those songs out the window and replace them with “It’s that UAW-CIO that makes the army roll and go,” once Germany invaded the Soviet Union. However, I do not want to overstate the old bugaboo about “singing the ‘party line.’” While the folksingers were certainly responsive to party positions, the Central Committee not only failed to exercise tight control over them but showed a discouraging lack of interest in the whole business. The main obstacle to musical growth presented by the CP was not a matter of committee directives or party discipline but a matter of attitude. Among Progressives of the time, personal expression in music was discouraged. Art was considered to be a tool. (Or a weapon: the famous sign on Woody’s guitar, “This machine kills fascists,” is a perfect example.) As odd as it may seem to us now, many of these people were embarrassed to write a love song, because the Spanish Civil War was going on, or the steelworkers were on strike,
The New York branch of the folk revival was strongly influenced by the Communist outlook, and one of the effects of this was that, along with performing traditional material, a lot of singers began composing topical songs based on folk models. Such urban, folk-styled creations were essentially a new music, consciously and often carefully crafted, politically motivated, and in many ways a quite different animal from anything that had come before. (The Industrial Workers of the World—IWW, or “Wobblies”—had done something similar back in the teens, but with the difference that singers like Joe Hill and T-Bone Slim were of the folk and generally set their lyrics to pop melodies or church hymns rather than to anything self-consciously rural or working-class.) It was part of the birth of “proletarian chic”—think about that the next time you slip into your designer jeans.
The urban folksingers acquired their repertoires from books, records, collecting trips, and one another, and unlike the traditional singers, they made their commitment to folk music consciously, for political and aesthetic reasons. As a result, they generally had to adopt personae not their own, singing and writing about experiences they knew only secondhand. This made for a very unstable synthesis, full of internal contradictions, but in the late 1930s such complications were ignored in the heat of political
battle and the joy of musical discovery. (Besides, introspection was a petit bourgeois luxury.) Those were urgent times, and the song for tomorrow night’s rally had to be written now, at once, immediately.
By 1939 this movement had its nexus in a sort of commune on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village called Almanac House. The residents included at one time or another, Pete Seeger, Alan and Bess Lomax, Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, Millard Lampell . . . the list is long and impressive. All were songwriters to one degree or another (many collaborations and collective efforts here), but Guthrie was by far the most talented and influential of the lot. Taking pains to conceal his considerable erudition behind a folksy facade, he became a kind of proletarian oracle in the eyes of his singer-songwriter associates, who were, of course, incurable romantics. With Guthrie exercising a very loose artistic hegemony (Seeger and Lampell seem to have done most of the actual work), Almanac House became a kind of song factory, churning out topical, occasional, and protest songs at an unbelievable clip, as well as hosting regular “hootenannies.”
While the Communist Party played a notable role in midwifing this musical movement—Guthrie even had a regular column for a while in the Daily Worker— it also presented a few problems. For one thing, there were the political shifts that found the Almanacs singing things like “Plow Under Every Fourth American Boy” and the other songs they recorded opposing U.S. entry into World War II during the Hitler-Stalin pact, then having to throw those songs out the window and replace them with “It’s that UAW-CIO that makes the army roll and go,” once Germany invaded the Soviet Union. However, I do not want to overstate the old bugaboo about “singing the ‘party line.’” While the folksingers were certainly responsive to party positions, the Central Committee not only failed to exercise tight control over them but showed a discouraging lack of interest in the whole business. The main obstacle to musical growth presented by the CP was not a matter of committee directives or party discipline but a matter of attitude. Among Progressives of the time, personal expression in music was discouraged. Art was considered to be a tool. (Or a weapon: the famous sign on Woody’s guitar, “This machine kills fascists,” is a perfect example.) As odd as it may seem to us now, many of these people were embarrassed to write a love song, because the Spanish Civil War was going on, or the steelworkers were on strike,
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