contemplativeThe plan is that it will come out on Dreambox, the label in Philly run by people who spend their reading hours alternating between DOWNBEAT and THE NATION. Jim Miller's MILLERTIME disc is as political a jazz record as I've heard lately, right up with Charlie Haden's recent (and utterly incredible) NOT IN OUR NAME.
Left wing thinking being represented on record (the sound kind) is hardly a new concept. And the naming of songs for public figures and political events is an ancient practice. Fans of old fiddle tunes are no doubt familiar with "Bonaparte's Retreat" and "Grandmammy Look At Uncle Sam". Fans of ska music will recognize instrumental songs with titles such as"Christine Keeler" (kind of the Monica Lewinsky of London in the sixties) and Fidel Castro. Jamaicans were not exactly famous for pro-England sentiment, then or now.
For those of you not familar with the concept of BROADSIDES, let me hip you to one of the more incredible chapters in the history of postwar people's music. BROADSIDES was a mag started in 1962 by Gordon Friesen and Sis Cunningham, a couple of Reds living in a Manhattan housing project. They had a mimeograph machine and some friends who wrote and sang great folk/topical songs. BROADSIDES was like SHEET MUSIC MONTYHLY for radicals, and they were the first to publish sheet music of "Blowin' In The Wind", "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore", "The Ballad Of Ira Hayes", among others. They also periodically put out albums of the best of these songs, sung by their authors. If you ever wondered where Bob Dylan used the pseudnym "Blind Boy Grunt", it's on the LP BROADSIDE BALLADS VOLUME 1. Bob, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Janis Ian, the Fugs (!), Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and the unimpeachable Pete Seeger were among those who recorded for and submitted songs to BROADSIDES. A box set is available, and it's all that. A life lived without hearing Peggy Seeger song "I'm Gonna Be An Engineer" is a life not wholly lived.
BROADSIDES worked closely with the venerated folk mag SING OUT (for which Pete Seeger wrote his invaluable APPLESEEDS column, a body of writing which has been a terrific source of strength and inspiration for me since I was old enough to check out library books), and with Moe Asch's label Folkways, a label that probably influenced more musicians more ways than can ever be estimated. As a kid, I collected many a Folkways record, and I lived for the cheap acquisition of one, with it's mimeograhed liner booklet and thick black album cover with the art glued on like some kind of sticker. Not quite sure how that worked but I'm deteremined to reproduce it. The labels were blue with silver print-- FOLKWAYS RECORDS AND SERVICE CORP., 121 W. 47 (sic) ST., N.Y.C. -- and the artists were always a mystery unto themselves. Some of the records weren't even of artists per se. There were field recordings, ambient recordings, compilations of music that had long since gone the way of all flesh. I had several releases by each of the Seegers, the Harry Smith Anthology Of American Music's SOCIAL MUSIC volume (the least favorite among the hardcore, but I loved it, especially the Cajun music), and the first anthology of klezmer music, which was put together by Henry Sapoznik.
For a time in the 60s, Folkways hooked up with Verve Records, and among the many fine recordings they issued jointly was THE BLUES BOX, a compilation that hit me like rifle fire.
But Folkways will largely take its place in history for its having recorded all that Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie stuff. The music that found its birth in the left of the 1930s and created a bridge to -- and an ancestory of -- the left of the 1960s.
Right now, we need musicians to take that initiative. The First Amendment has spent the last five years systematically taking it in the shorts. We can blog all we want, but if we fall afoul of a relatively small bunch of people who make decisions about who gets to be on your radio, iTunes, TV etc, it's Welcome To The NEW Siberia. Let's ask Natalie Maines if there's a blacklist, huh? It's just more subtly implemented than when it ruined the lives of Pete Seeger, Zero Mostel, and a number of our greatest American voices.
Mark Twain is credited with the quote "Heaven for the climate, hell for the society."
If enough cool people end up together in hell, it's only a matter of time before P-Funk is heard over the loudspeakers of Hades.
I think we need to seriously look back at the last sixty years of American history, of media, of censorship, of labor, of witch hunts, of singing what needs to be sung. Real working people in this country deserve something better than Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson's anthems of praise to WalMart. It's our job to SHOVE IT OUT THERE. Less Gretchen Wilson, more Penn & Teller already.
I think we really need to go back to the expression of freedom that earlier period of folk music -- Louis Armstrong to Woody Guthrie to Naftule Brandwine and beyond -- gave us. We need to stand up for American jobs, American ideals (the Bill of Rights ones, not the Fox News ones), and good old American fist-pounding dinner table arguing. We need to reclaim our roots as a people who think, read, argue, express, make art, work hard, play harder, and know a hosejob when we see it.
We're eye-deep in the big muddy, and the big fool says to push on.
