(Racism, misogyny, poverty, war, environmental disaster, and extraordinary military waste make this July 4th difficult for many of us to celebrate. However, we too have our history and our promise for a better future. HT)
(Originally posted on Sunday, April 26, 2009)
Creator: Carolyn
Kaster | Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Social movements are defined in several ways; their leadership, their
membership, their vision, their strategies, their resources, and their
successes and failures. We often forget, however, that each of these elements
are woven together by a culture. This culture can be poetic, dramatic,
pictorial, or musical, or some of each. The culture provides a way for people
in all different places, engaged in all different parts of the mass movement,
to experience a common sense of themselves and what they share with others. It
may be the case that a movement without a culture is a movement without a sense
of vision, of shared purpose, of passion.
It is these thoughts that come to mind this week as we remember Pete Seeger, a
man who brought song to our hearts and minds for 70 years. Pete and those
musicians who were inspired by him helped influence many of us to join the
great twentieth century movements for social change: labor, civil rights,
feminist, ecology, anti-war. It was through his practice, getting sometimes
thousands of fans to sing together in unison about building a better world,
that people learned that working together is how change occurs.
And when progressives look back at the twentieth century and see a very mixed
record of successes and failures, glorious victories and tragic defeats, it is
the culture that reminds people of the nobility of the goals that social
movements pursued and what still needs to be achieved. And no greater symbol of
redemption of twentieth century progressive movements and cultures was
evidenced than Pete’s leading 500,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial two
days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama in singing Woody
Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Pete included the verses that delegitimized
private property and celebrated the continued struggle for fundamental social
change.
That performance reminded older people of the fundamental justice of the old
movements and the need to create new movements with new cultures in the 21st
century. Vital to that brief sing out also was the message that the old
political culture should not be forgotten even as new politics and culture is
created. The old and the new are like links in a chain.
A few additional words:
Paul Robeson: “Continued study and research into the origins of the
folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is
a world body-a universal body-of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic
(five tone) scale. Interested as I am in the universality of (hu)mankind-in the
fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another-this idea of a universal
body of music intrigued me, and I pursued it along many fascinating paths.”
Woody Guthrie: “I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood….”
