Transcript Urban Folk Movement

Folk Music as an Advocacy
Chapter 6 – Interdisciplinary Studies
Learning Targets
To study ways in which music has influence
the use of advocacy in the service of a
cause.
To study representative songs of advocacy
dealing with the plight of the farmer
historically in labor disputes, and civil
rights.
To identify key individuals who
contributed to the development of musical
influence representing advocacy.
Key Terms
Protest Songs
Folk Consciousness
Ostinato
Lining Out
Listening
“The Farmer is the Man that Feeds
Them All”
“I Am a Union Woman”
“Masters of War”
“We Shall Overcome”
Folk Music as an Instrument of
Advocacy
The predominant method for the use of music in the
service of a cause?
Adaptation: Taking an existing song, or song
style and
transforming it into an instrument of
advocacy.
These songs are referred to as Protest Songs
Today, songs in this category are often used to bring an
awareness about issues facing society.
Example: The Farmer Is The Man
We Are One
Folk Music as an Instrument of
Advocacy
Read p. 69-70, we will listen to these two examples:
Comparative Analysis:
How are these two songs different?
How are these two songs similar?
John Carson “The Farmer Is The Man”
Alicia Keys – “We Are Here”
Folk Music as An Instrument of
Advocacy
Pete Seeger
 Folk musician who wanted to bring an awareness about
the plight of Coal Miners
 “Which Side Are You Own”
 Written by Florence Reese, an American folk activist and
performed by Pete Seeger to advocate for developing
unions for coal miners.
 Adaptation of this song in 2014 – Requiem for Mike
Brown
Folk Music as an Instrument of
Advocacy
John Carson: A violinist and vocalist.
•
•
1st musician to record “old-time music” later
referred to as Country Music
What was his cause?
Alicia Keys – Musician, performer
What was her cause?
Urban Folk Song Movement
1930s and 1940s
The 1930s spurred a new era of
American folk song as an instrument
of advocacy.
The Great Depression
Urban Folk Song Movement
1930s and 1940s
Folk Consciousness: An awareness of
folk music and its use in urban
environments primarily for social,
economic and political action.
Urban Folk Song Movement
1930s and 1940s
Folk Consciousness:
 Idealization of folk singers as artists “of the
people”
 Emulation of rural attire.
Urban Folk Song Movement
1930s and 1940s
1930s Northern Labor Organizers
•
Went to the South to organize
textile-mill workers.
• Significance:
 Discovered that folk singing was
vital in the rural South.
 Brought singers and songs with
them when they returned to the
north.
Urban Folk Song Movement
1930s and 1940s
Read p.72
• Listen to Aunt Molly Jackson
from Kentucky as she sing an
excerpt from “I Am a Union
Woman”
Urban Folk Song Movement
1930s and 1940s
I Am a Union Woman
• What is the main function of this
song?
• To rally the workers and
encourage them to join the
union.
Folk Music as an Instrument of
Advocacy
Listening: “The Farmer is the Man That
Feed Them All”
Violinist and vocalist on the
recording?
John Carson
First musician to record “ old-time music”
Folk Music as an Instrument of
Advocacy
Railroad Monopoly
Railroad charged farmers high fees to
transport crops to market.
Urban Folk Song Movement
Folk Conscouness
An awareness of folk music and its
use in urban environments for social,
economic and political action.
Urban Folk-Song Movement
1930s Northern Labors

Discovered that folk singing was still vital
in the rural south
.
They brought both songs and singers with
them on their return north.
Urban Folk Movement
“I Am a Union Woman”
Primary function of this song:
To rally the workers and encourage them to
join the union.
Author of this song: Aunt Molly Jackson
Urban Folk Movement
Individuals that began the early phase of the
urban folk song movement:
Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter, 1885 – 1949)
blues singer
discovered and recorded by John
and Alan Lomax
Pete Seeger (b. 1919)
activist; Harvard dropout
son of Charles Seeger,
ethnomusicologist
Urban Folk Movement
Individuals that began the early phase of the
urban folk song movement:
Woody Guthrie (1912 – 1967)
Personify urban folk movement
----Oklahoma (dust bowl) background
----Many of his songs had a hard edge
protest
----His life experiences provided much
contact with the common people.
Woody Guthrie
Songs written by Woody Guthrie:
“This Land is Your Land”
“So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya”
“Hard Travelin”
“Gypsy Davy”
Pete Seeger
• Son of ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger
• Formed the Almanac Singers in 1941
Protest and Folk Song in the
1960s
• Bob Dylan
• Woody Guthrie
• Two preeminent songwriters
of the last half of the
twentieth century.
Contrasting Differences
Bob Dylan
Adopted his style
Changed his style
many times
Absorbed many
influences
Woody Guthrie
Never adopted a
style
Not “stylistically”
aware
Did not change his
style
Musical Influences
Musical influences on Bob Dylan’s
Dylan’s include African American blues
and Anglo-American ballad tradition.
Masters of War
Read the lyrics to Masters of War, this
song has:
A strained vocal quality
Ostinato in the guitar accompaniment
Clear projections of the lyrics.
Masters of War
What is ostinato?
Repeating in a pattern
Masters of War
This song was written in response to :
 The nuclear arms race
The Vietnam War
Recent Wars in the Middle East
Freedom Songs and the Civil
Rights Movement
In the 1960s, African American
civil rights advocates drew their
songs from:
 a southern tradition of African
American religious singing
 African Americans who often
adapted traditional songs for
advocacy.
Freedom Songs and the Civil
Rights Movement
In the 1930s, labor sympathizers who
went into the South to help organize
miners found a sturdy singing tradition
established for workers.
Freedom Songs and the Civil
Rights Movement
In the early 1960s, protest folksingers
from the North who went into the South
at the time of early civil rights struggle
also found a southern tradition.
These songs were used for:
marches
sit-ins
prayer vigils
for those in jails
Freedom Songs and the Civil
Rights Movement
We Shall Overcome became a song of the
Civil Rights Movement because of many
events:
• African-American hymnodist C.
Tindley based We Shall Overcome on
the church song I’ll Overcome Some
Day.
• This song was used for protest in 1945
by union workers in Charleston, South
Carolina
Freedom Songs and the Civil
Rights Movement
We Shall Overcome became a song of the
Civil Rights Movement because of many
events:
• This was the theme song of the
Highlander Folk School in Tennessee
• This song was introduced into the civil
rights movement.
Freedom Songs and the Civil
Rights Movement
“We Shall Overcome” is very
similar to Bob Dylan’s “Masters of
War” because it seems to arouse an
immediate response to the listener.
Chapter 6 Assignment
Chapter 6 Assignment:
Complete Assignment # 1- 24
today and turn in before you leave
class.