Okay folks I'm back with part two! In the interim between my first installment and this one, Powell St. John has offered up a much deeper look at what happened with Folk music through American history. So we're backing up to way before where I started my article so as to examine the political strife in the working class and how it translated into inspiring lyrics in their songs. Inspiring lyrics in songs is really the crux of the matter; what happened here is that our very own AUSTIN TEXAS produced the band that wrote the most meaningful of all the songs written by anyone in the psychedelic era i. e. SLIP INSIDE? THIS HOUSE...POSTURES...THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN YOU...MAY THE CIRCLE REMAIN UNBROKEN. So THANK YOU Powell ST. John for you contribution and I'll return with installment number three directly.
?????? In the early part of last century there was a great push pull between those of wealth and power who favored capitalism and a very large number of people who did not have wealth and power who tended to favor a socialist model for government.? The Socialist Party actually fielded viable candidates for president into the 1920s.? The successes of the powerless in electing anti capitalist candidates struck fear into the hearts of the industrialists and the power elite.? The excesses of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1918 and the installation of the Communist regime there gave the powerful a brutal dictatorship they could point to and warn that the same thing would happen in America if the Socialists were to come to power.? This daubing of red paint on otherwise quite reasonable and patriotic individuals was very effective.? It served to marginalize the Socialists and with the help of their politicians and the army were able then to oppose labor movements and anyone who spoke out for civil rights and equality for the poor.? The cry Socialism=Communism was parroted right up into the 60s and even today.? Music fit perfectly into this struggle of the people vs. the bosses.? Songs about the strikes and the injustices were composed almost spontaneously for the rallies and the strikes.? This material became what is known as protest music, composed by the people, frequently anonymously and passed from person to person by word of mouth.
?????? As an example of the connection between folk music and the people's side of the struggle, groups like the Almanac Singers and the Weavers were blacklisted in the 1950s because they sang protest music and were therefore dangerous subversives to the likes of Senator Joe McCarthy and his minions.? In the 1960s with the intensification of the Civil Rights Movement and the advent of the Viet Nam war protest music got a new lease.? Enter Bob Dylan, a song writer from the ranks of the young, also a suspect group in the eyes of the wealthy and powerful.? Dylan, with songs like Blowin' In The Wind and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol put the protest side of folk music on the front burner of pop culture.? Dylan was influenced by Woodie Guthrie, one of the greatest protest song writers of the century.? During World War II? Woodie's guitar had a sign on the front-"This Machine Kills Fascists".? An earlier writer, Joe Hill, also of great influence, was hanged on trumped up charges in?large part because his songs inspired the working people to oppose their masters.? So you see. folk music and protest music grew up together.? They both go back a long ways.? No one really knows how far back, the beginnings are obscured by the mists of time.
