From WMOT News
(2005-10-08)
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Winkler Commentary on Folk Music
Miami University Distiguished Professor of History, Allan M. Winkler, PhD
The concert was wonderful, and I left singing songs I still sing to this day. The next summer I bought my first guitar, taught myself to play, and strummed along - without a whole lot of improvement - over the next forty years. Then I was invited to play together with Dennis Sullivan, my friend and colleague at Miami, and I figured that I had better take lessons if I wanted to feel comfortable appearing in public. Adrian Martin here in Oxford became my teacher, and over the past few years, singing and playing have become more enjoyable than ever before.
Over the years, I also learned a lot more about how important folk music has been in twentieth century American life. Long ago, I had heard Woody Guthrie's powerful Dust Bowl ballads, telling the story of the horrific dust storms that devastated Oklahoma and surrounding states in the 1930s, and led to the exodus that author John Steinbeck chronicled in the novel The Grapes of Wrath.
Woody Guthrie's wonderful song This Land Is Your Land - a tribute to America - has remained one of my all-time favorites. But then I began to find out about the role he and Pete Seeger played in the union movement in the 1930s and 1940s, and the political trouble it caused them. Seeger, a member of the phenomenally popular group the Weavers in the 1950s, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthite Red Scare, and even indicted and convicted for contempt of Congress when he refused to testify. The Weavers were blacklisted, and could not perform in public for several years.
As I began to teach about the Civil Rights movement, I discovered that it was Seeger who took an old gospel tune sung by striking tobacco workers in North Carolina, rewrote the words, added verses, and taught it to other singers helping train volunteers in the techniques of non-violent protest. We Shall Overcome became the marching song of the civil rights movement and resonates to this day around the world every time a protest occurs.
And I began to enjoy the songs of other artists - Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Joni Mitchell, and, of course, Bob Dylan, featured in the Martin Scorcese film just shown on TV last week.
This coming Friday, October 7th, at 8 PM, Dennis and I will be performing together at the Oxford Community Arts Center up at the corner of College and High, in a benefit for the center. He's a superb guitar player, who knew some of the singers we'll be including, and we'll offer a glimpse at some of the great songs that are part of our collective past. Folk songs are meant to be sung, and we invite you to come join us, sing along, and have a good time.
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