Here’s an interesting article about the same musician: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-21/why-woody-guthries-guitar-was-a-fascist-killer.html
Relevant paragraph:
Woody Guthrie’s guitar didn’t kill fascists because it fired bullets. It killed by neutralizing the fascists. Music, like culture, has the power to defeat right-wing extremists and their antidemocratic ideas rooted in xenophobia, racism, homophobia and sexism. Guthrie fought using ideas, language, music and the shared desire to build a better future together.
Never heard of this guy, but I have a desire now to check out his music. He’d be sickened by life in 2025.
Probably, but definitely not shocked. Woody and the Cheeto’s old man go way back.
I see Donald takes after his father.
here’s pete seger singing guthrie’s this land is your land, which was written as a smackdown response to the absurdly nationalistic god bless america
I’d recommend all Americans to check out the verses they don’t teach you in school.
There’s several versions, but they go something like this:
One Sunday morning in the shadow of a steeple By the relief office I saw my people As they stood hungry, I stood there asking Was this land made for you and me? There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me Sign was painted, saying "private property" But on the back side it didn't say nothing That side was made for you and meNo more than he was by life in the 1930s and 40s. He watched the uncovering of the first Republican/oligarch coup plot. Then watched the man they plotted to assassinate wheel and deal with them to get legislation passed. Instead of trying and hanging them all.
Woody, a socialist, supported the Leninist revolutions. Only to watch their natural evolution. Stalin helping Hitler invade Poland. As well as exterminating ethnic polish in their own borders. Exterminating their own people etc. And all the atrocities of other individual vanguard parties.
He would be disappointed, but not surprised.
I mean, he WAS a Stalinist and supported the joint Soviet-Nazi invasion of Poland.
Check out Utah Phillips while you’re at it.
It’s hard to be nice about this. But I’ll try. Assuming you’re from the US, start with indigenous music, I’m particular to rock and rap from the northwest. Move on to spirituals or work songs from the deep south, then jazz, particularly in Chicago during the Great Migration, then move on to folk music like Guthrie, then maybe skip another few decades and you’ve got rage against the machine and others.
How is it hard to be nice about this? What a weird take. Sharing music is so great it’s hard not to be nice about it.
Wow u r very smart