Hello all! This is the first proper rotating mega for /c/music. Please check out the week's theme, share what you've been listening to, and make yourself at home!
This week's theme: American folk music revival
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. It was first spearheaded by the Weavers, formed 1948, who's cover of Goodnight, Irene was a top-of-the-charts hit for months in 1950. Lead Belly was the one to bring it to attention twenty years prior; he died in 1949.
The Weavers' career ended abruptly when they were dropped from Decca's catalog because Pete Seeger had been listed in the publication Red Channels as a probable subversive. Radio stations refused to play their records and concert venues canceled their engagements.
Red Channels was a pamphlet listing "151 actors, writers, musicians, broadcast journalists, and others in the context of purported Communist manipulation of the entertainment industry." It was published in a paper that existed during the Red Scare years and promptly ceased, founded by three 'former' FBI agents.
Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955.
The beginnings of the folk revival was in New Deal-era cultural programs and groups like the Almanac Singers, where pacifism, anti-racism, and unionism were key themes. Their cover of Which Side Are You On? with Seeger's banjo picking is definitive. As outlined in Aaron J. Leonard's book The Folk Singers and the Bureau, this musical-cultural moment was seen as representing subversion. To that end, the FBI worked to blacklist folksingers and instill 'apolitical' messaging in popular music. Pete Seeger's personal file had over 1,800 pages, some still classified to this day.
Here are just a few songs, singers, and albums that symbolize the revival:
- Pete Seeger (Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, If I Had a Hammer, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, We Shall Not Be Moved, Down by the Riverside)
- Bob Dylan
- Woody Guthrie (I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore)
- Lead Belly (Goodnight, Irene, Midnight Special)
- Joan Baez
- Phil Ochs (The Power and the Glory, Love Me, I'm a Liberal)
- Reverend Gary Davis (Harlem Street Singer)
- Tom Paxton (The Last Thing on My Mind, Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation)
- And, from the image, Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1
Pete Seeger also covered Cuban patriotic song Guantanamera and music of the International Brigades, in Spanish.
Aaron Leonard was interviewed on Trueanon (episode 502), where they discussed the effects of the Red Scare on American music.
Want to contribute a theme?
We're considering basing the weekly theme off the top post from the last 7 days. Recommendations also welcome; please message /u/buhbyelittlegumshoe@hexbear.net. Artists, genres, eras, albums, etc. are all viable candidates.
