Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. This music is also referred to as traditional music and, in US, as "roots music".

Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, electric folk, and others. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two.

Traditional folk music

Definitions

A consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms ''folk music'', ''folk song'', and ''folk dance'' are comparatively recent expressions. They are extensions of the term ''folk lore'', which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes." The term is further derived from the German expression ''Volk'', in the sense of "the people as a whole" as applied to popular and national music by Johann Gottfried Herder and the German Romantics over half a century earlier. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music

However, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music (or folklore, or the folk) is. Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of "old songs, with no known composers", another is that of music that has been submitted to an evolutionary "process of oral transmission.... the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character." Such definitions depend upon "(cultural) processes rather than abstract musical types...", upon "''continuity'' and ''oral transmission''...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'."

For Scholes, as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, there was a sense of the music of the country as distinct from that of the town. Folk music was already "seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived)," particularly in "a community uninfluenced by art music" and by commercial and printed song. Lloyd rejected this in favour of a simple distinction of economic class

Characteristics

From a historical perspective, traditional folk music had these characteristics:

It was transmitted through an oral tradition. Before the twentieth century, ordinary farm workers and factory workers were usually illiterate. They acquired songs by memorizing them. Primarily, this was not mediated by books, recorded or transmitted media. Singers may extend their repertoire using broadsheets, song books or CDs, but these secondary enhancements are of the same character as the primary songs experienced in the flesh.

The music was often related to national culture. It was culturally particular - from a particular region or culture. In the context of an immigrant group, folk music acquires an extra dimension for social cohesion. It is particularly conspicuous in the United States, where Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans and Asian-Americans strive to emphasis differences from the mainstream. They will learn songs and dances that originate in the countries where their grandparents came from.

They commemorate historical and personal events. On certain days of the year, such as Easter, May Day and Christmas, particular songs celebrate the yearly cycle. Weddings, birthdays and funerals may also be noted with songs, dances and special costumes. Religious festivals often have a folk music component. Choral music at these events brings children and non-professional singers to participate in a public arena, giving an emotional bonding that is unrelated to the aesthetic qualities of the music.

The songs have been performed, by custom, over a long period of time, usually several generations.

As a side-effect, the following characteristics are sometimes present:

The is no copyright on the songs. There are hundreds of folk songs from the nineteenth century which have known authors. However, they have continued in oral tradition, to the point where they are classified as "Traditional", for purposes of music publishing. This has become much less frequent since the 1970s. Today, almost every folk song that is recorded is credited with an arrangement.

Fusion of cultures. In the same way that people can have a mixed background, with parents originating in different continents, so too music can be a blend of influences. A particular rhythmic pattern, or a characteristic instrument, is enough to give a traditional feel to music, even when it has been composed recently. It is easy to recognize the presence of a bagpipe or a tabla in a piece of music. The young are usually much less offended by the dilution or adaptation of songs this way. Equally an electric guitar can be added to an old song. The relevant factors may include instrumentation, tunings, voicings, phrasing, subject matter, and even production methods.

Origins

Throughout most of human prehistory and history, listening to recorded music was not possible. One origin is the work of economic production which was often manual and communal. Music was made by common people during both their work and leisure. Manual labor often included singing by the workers, which served several practical purposes. It reduced the boredom of repetitive tasks, it kept the rhythm during synchronized pushes and pulls, and it set the pace of many activities such as planting, weeding, reaping, threshing, weaving, and milling. In leisure time, singing and playing musical instruments were common forms of entertainment and history-telling—even more common than today, when electrically enabled technologies and widespread literacy make other forms of entertainment and information-sharing competitive.

Opinions differed over the origins of folk music: it was said by some to be art music changed and probably debased by oral transmission, by others to reflect the character of the race that produced it. Traditionally, the cultural transmission of folk music is through playing by ear, although notation may also be used. The competition of individual and collective theories of composition set different demarcations and relations of folk music with the music of tribal societies on the one hand and of "art" and "court" music on the other. The traditional cultures that did not rely upon written music or had less social stratification could not be readily categorized. In the proliferation of popular music genres, some traditional folk music became also referred to "World music" or "Roots music".

The English term "folklore", to describe traditional folk music and dance, entered the vocabulary of many continental European nations, each of which had its folk-song collectors and revivalists. The distinction between "authentic" folk and national and popular song in general has always been loose, particularly in America and Germany - for example popular songwriters such as Stephen Foster could be termed "folk" in America. The International Folk Music Council definition allows that the term "can also be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten, living tradition of a community. But the term does not cover a song, dance, or tune that has been taken over ready-made and remains unchanged."

The post–World War II folk revival in America and in Britain started a new genre, contemporary folk music and brought an additional meaning to the term folk music. The popularity of "contemporary folk" recordings caused the appearance of the category "Folk" in the Grammy Awards of 1959: in 1970 the term was dropped in favor of "Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording (including Traditional Blues)", while 1987 brought a distinction between "Best Traditional Folk Recording" and "Best Contemporary Folk Recording". After that they had a "Traditional music" category which subsequently evolved into others. The term "folk", by the start of the 21st century, could cover singer song-writers, such as Donovan and Bob Dylan, who emerged in the 1960s and much more. This completed a process to where "folk music" no longer meant only traditional folk music.

Subject matter

Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of traditional folk music, especially dance music traditions, much traditional folk music is vocal music, since the instrument that makes such music is usually handy. As such, most traditional folk music has meaningful lyrics.

Narrative verse looms large in the traditional folk music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often their ''in medias res'' plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant ''Song of Deborah'' found in the Biblical ''Book of Judges'', these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of traditional songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some traditional song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths.

Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Traditional songs such as ''Green grow the rushes, O'' present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form.

Work songs frequently feature call and response structures and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. They are frequently, but not invariably, composed. In the American armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls ("Duckworth chants") are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of traditional songs.

Folk song transformations and variations

Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community will, in time, develop many variants, because this kind of transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. Indeed, many traditional singers are quite creative and deliberately modify the material they learn.

For example the words of "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (Roud 975) are known from a broadside in the Bodleian Library. The date is almost certainly before 1900, and it seems to be Irish. In 1958 the song was recorded in Canada (My Name is Pat and I'm Proud of That). Jeannie Robertson made the next recorded version in 1961. She has changed it to make reference to "Jock Stewart", one of her relatives, and there are no Irish references. In 1976 Archie Fisher deliberately altered the song to remove the reference to a dog being shot. In 1985 The Pogues took it full circle by restoring all the Irish references.

Because variants proliferate naturally, it is naive to believe that there is such a thing as the single "authentic" version of a ballad such as "Barbara Allen". Field researchers in traditional song (see below) have encountered countless versions of this ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. None can reliably claim to be the original, and it is quite possible that whatever the "original" was, it ceased to be sung centuries ago. Any version can lay an equal claim to authenticity, so long as it is truly from a traditional singing community and not the work of an outside editor.

Cecil Sharp had an influential idea about the process of folk variation: he felt that the competing variants of a traditional song would undergo a process akin to biological natural selection: only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each traditional song to become aesthetically ever more appealing — it would be collectively composed to perfection, as it were, by the community.

A literary interest in the popular ballad was not new; it dates back to Thomas Percy and William Wordsworth. English Elizabethan and Stuart composers had often evolved their music from folk themes, the classical suite was based upon stylised folk-dances and Joseph Haydn's use of folk melodies is noted. But the emergence of the term "folk" coincided with an "outburst of national feeling all over Europe" that was particularly strong at the edges of Europe, where national identity was most asserted. Nationalist composers emerged in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain: the music of Dvorak, Smetana, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Liszt, de Falla, Wagner, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Bartók and many others drew upon folk melodies.

Regional forms

While the loss of traditional folk music in the face of the rise of popular music is a worldwide phenomenon, it is not one occurring at a uniform rate throughout the world. While even many tribal cultures are losing traditional folk music and folk cultures, the process is most advanced "where industrialization and commercialisation of culture are most advanced". Yet in nations or regions where traditional folk music is a badge of cultural or national identity, the loss of traditional music can be slowed; this is held to be true, for instance in the case of Bangladesh, Hungary, India, Ireland, Latvia, Turkey, Portugal, Brittany, and Galicia, Greece and Crete all of which retain their traditional music to some degree, in some such areas the decline of traditional music and loss of traditions has been reversed.

Fieldwork and scholarship

19th century Europe

Starting in the 19th century, interested people - academics and amateur scholars - started to take note of what was being lost, and there grew various efforts aimed at preserving the music of the people. One such effort was the collection by Francis James Child in the late 19th century of the texts of over three hundred ballads in the English and Scots traditions (called the Child Ballads).

Contemporaneously with Child came the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, and later and more significantly Cecil Sharp who worked in the early 20th century to preserve a great body of English rural traditional song, music and dance, under the aegis of what became and remains the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Sharp also worked in America, recording the traditional songs of the Appalachian Mountains in 1916-1918 in collaboration with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell. Campbell and Sharp are represented under other names by actors in the modern movie ''Songcatcher''. Throughout the 1960s and early to mid-1970s, American scholar Bertrand Harris Bronson published an exhaustive, four-volume collection of the then-known variations of both the texts and tunes associated with what came to be known as the Child Canon. He also advanced some significant theories concerning the workings of oral-aural tradition.

Similar activity was also under way in other countries. One of the most extensive was perhaps the work done in Riga by Krisjanis Barons who between the years between 1894 and 1915 published six volumes including the texts of 217 996 Latvian folk songs; the ''Latvju dainas''.

Around this time, composers of classical music developed a strong interest in traditional song collecting, and a number of outstanding composers carried out their own field work on traditional song. These included Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England and Béla Bartók in Hungary. These composers, like many of their predecessors, incorporated traditional material into their classical compositions. The ''Latviju dainas'' are extensively used in the classical choral works of Andrejs Jurāns, Jānis Cimze, and Emilis Melngailis.

North America

In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon, Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible.

People who studied traditional song sometimes hoped that their work would restore traditional music to the people. For instance, Cecil Sharp campaigned, with some success, to have English traditional songs (in his own heavily edited and expurgated versions) to be taught to school children.

One theme that runs through the great period of scholarly traditional song collection is the tendency of certain members of the "folk", who were supposed to be the object of study, to become scholars and advocates themselves. For example, Jean Ritchie was the youngest child of a large family from Viper, Kentucky that had preserved many of the old Appalachian traditional songs. Ritchie, living in a time when the Appalachians had opened up to outside influence, was university educated and ultimately moved to New York City, where she made a number of classic recordings of the family repertoire and published an important compilation of these songs. (See also Hedy West)

National and regional forms

Africa

Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from Sub-Saharan African music traditions.

The music and dance forms of the African diaspora, including African American music and many Caribbean genres like soca, calypso and Zouk; and Latin American music genres like the samba, rumba, salsa; and other clave (rhythm)-based genres, were founded to varying degrees on the music of African slaves, which has in turn influenced African popular music.

Asia

Many Asian civilizations distinguish between art/court/classical styles and "folk" music, though cultures that do not depend greatly upon notation and have much anonymous art music must distinguish the two in different ways from those suggested by western scholars. For example the late Alam Lohar is a good example of a classical South Asian folk singer of great repute.

Australia

Folk song traditions were taken to Australia by early settlers from Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales written in the form of bush ballads often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia in The Bush, and the authors and performers are often referred to as bush bards. The 19th century was the golden age of bush ballads. Several collectors have catalogued the songs including John Meredith whose recording in the 1950s became the basis of the collection in the National Library of Australia. The songs tell personal stories of life in the wide open country of Australia. Typical subjects include mining, raising and droving cattle, sheep shearing, wanderings, war stories, the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters (landowners), and outlaws such as Ned Kelly, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking. The most famous bush ballad is "Waltzing Matilda", which has been called "the unofficial national anthem of Australia".

Indigenous Australian music includes the music of Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, who are collectively called Indigenous Australians; it incorporates a variety of distinctive traditional music styles practiced by Indigenous Australian peoples, as well as a range of contemporary musical styles of and fusion with European traditions as interpreted and performed by indigenous Australian artists. Music has formed an integral part of the social, cultural and ceremonial observances of these peoples, down through the millennia of their individual and collective histories to the present day. The traditional forms include many aspects of performance and musical instrumentation which are unique to particular regions or Indigenous Australian groups; there are equally elements of musical tradition which are common or widespread through much of the Australian continent, and even beyond. The culture of the Torres Strait Islanders is related to that of adjacent parts of New Guinea and so their music is also related. Music is a vital part of Indigenous Australians' cultural maintenance.

Europe

Celtic traditional music

Celtic music is a term used by artists, record companies, music stores and music magazines to describe a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic peoples of Western Europe. These traditions include Irish, Scottish, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Breton traditions. Galician music is often included, though significant research showing that this has any close musical relationship is lacking. Brittany's Folk revival began in the 1950s with the "bagadoù" and the "kan-ha-diskan" before growing to world fame through Alan Stivell's work since the mid-1960s.

In Ireland, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (although its members were all Irish-born, the group became famous while based in New York's Greenwich Village), The Dubliners, Clannad, Planxty, The Chieftains, The Pogues, The Irish Rovers, and a variety of other folk bands have done much over the past few decades to revitalise and re-popularise Irish traditional music. These bands were rooted, to a greater or lesser extent, in a living tradition of Irish music and benefited from the efforts of artists such as Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy.

Eastern Europe

During the Communist era national folk dancing was actively promoted by the state. Dance troupes from Russia and Poland toured Western Europe from about 1937 to 1990. The Red Army Choir recorded many albums. A female choir from Bulgarian State Radio recorded "Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares" which was promoted by British DJ John Peel.

The Hungarian group Muzsikás played numerous American tours and participated in the Hollywood movie ''The English Patient'' while the singer Márta Sebestyén worked with the band Deep Forest. The Hungarian ''táncház'' movement, started in the 1970s, involves strong cooperation between musicology experts and enthusiastic amateurs. However, traditional Hungarian folk music and folk culture barely survived in some rural areas of Hungary, and it has also begun to disappear among the ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania.

The táncház movement revived broader folk traditions of music, dance, and costume together and created a new kind of music club. The movement spread to ethnic Hungarian communities around the world. Today, almost every major city in the U.S. and Australia has its own Hungarian folk music and folk dance group; there are also groups in Japan, Hong Kong, Argentina and Western Europe.

Balkan music

The Balkan folk music was influenced by the mingling of Balkan ethnic groups in the period of Ottoman Empire. It comprises the music of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania, Slovenia, Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Turkey, the historical states of Yugoslavia or the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and geographical regions such as Thrace. Some music is characterised by complex rhythm. An important part of the whole Balkan folk music is the music of the local Romani ethnic minority.

Nordic folk music

Latin and South America

Andean music comes from the general area inhabited by Quechuas, Aymaras and other peoples that roughly in the area of the Inca Empire prior to European contact. It includes folklore music of parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela. Andean music is popular to different degrees across Latin America, having its core public in rural areas and among indigenous populations. The Nueva Canción movement of the 70s revived the genre across Latin America and bought it to places where it was unknown or forgotten.

Nueva canción (Spanish for 'new song') is a movement and genre within Latin American and Iberian music of folk music, folk-inspired music and socially committed music. It some respects its development and role is similar to the second folk music revival. This includes evolution of this new genre from traditional folk music, essentially contemporary folk music except that that English genre term is not commonly applied to it. Nueva cancion is recognized as having played a powerful role in the social upheavals in Portugal, Spain and Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s.

Nueva cancion first surfaced during the 1960s as "The Chilean New Song" in Chile. The musical style emerged shortly afterwards in Spain and other areas of Latin America where it came to be known under similar names. Nueva canción renewed traditional Latin American folk music, and was soon associated with revolutionary movements, the Latin American New Left, Liberation Theology, hippie and human rights movements due to political lyrics. It would gain great popularity throughout Latin America, and is regarded as a precursor to Rock en español.

Cueca is a family of musical styles and associated dances from Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina.

North America

USA

American traditional music is also called roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music. The music is considered American either because it is native to the United States or because it developed there, out of foreign origins, to such a degree that it struck musicologists as something distinctly new. It is considered "roots music" because it served as the basis of music later developed in the United States, including rock and roll, contemporary folk music, rhythm and blues, and jazz.

Cajun music, an emblematic music of Louisiana, is rooted in the ballads of the French-speaking Acadians of Canada. Cajun music is often mentioned in tandem with the Creole-based, Cajun-influenced zydeco form, both of Acadiana origin. These French Louisiana sounds have influenced American popular music for many decades, especially country music, and have influenced pop culture through mass media, such as television commercials.

Appalachian music is the traditional music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. It is derived from various European and African influences, including English ballads, Irish and Scottish traditional music (especially fiddle music), religious hymns, and African-American blues. First recorded in the 1920s, Appalachian musicians were a key influence on the early development of Old-time music, country music, and bluegrass, and were an important part of the American folk music revival of the 1960s. Instruments typically used to perform Appalachian music include the banjo, American fiddle, fretted dulcimer, and guitar.

Early recorded Appalachian musicians include Fiddlin' John Carson, Henry Whitter, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the Carter Family, Clarence Ashley, Frank Proffitt, and Dock Boggs, all of whom were initially recorded in the 1920s and 1930s. Several Appalachian musicians obtained renown during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including Jean Ritchie, Roscoe Holcomb, Ola Belle Reed, Lily May Ledford, and Doc Watson. Country and bluegrass artists such as Loretta Lynn, Roy Acuff, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Chet Atkins, and Don Reno were heavily influenced by traditional Appalachian music. Artists such as Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, and Bruce Springsteen have performed Appalachian songs or rewritten versions of Appalachian songs.

The Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. They were the first vocal group to become country music stars a beginning of the divergence of country musioc from traditional folk music. Their recordings of such songs as "Wabash Cannonball", "Will the Circle Be Unbroken", "Wildwood Flower" and "Keep On the Sunny Side" made them country standards.

Canada

Canada's traditional folk music is particularly diverse. "Traditional folk music of European origin has been present in Canada since the arrival of the first French and British settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries." "They fished the coastal waters and farmed the shores of what became Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and the St Lawrence River valley of Quebec."

The fur trade and its Voyagers brought this farther north and west into Canada, later lumbering operations and lumberjacks continued this process.

"Agrarian settlement in eastern and southern Ontario and western Quebec in the early 19th century established a favorable milieu for the survival of many Anglo-Canadian folksongs and broadside ballads from Great Britain and the USA. Despite massive industrialization, folk music traditions have persisted in many areas until today. In the north of Ontario, a large Franco-Ontarian population kept folk music of French origin alive. Populous Acadian communities in the Atlantic provinces contributed their song variants to the huge corpus of folk music of French origin centred in the province of Quebec. A rich source of Anglo-Canadian folk music can be found in the Atlantic region, especially Newfoundland. Completing this mosaic of musical folklore is the Gaelic music of Scottish settlements, particularly in Cape Breton, and the hundreds of Irish songs whose presence in eastern Canada dates from the Irish famine of the 1840s which forced the large migrations of Irish to North America."

Traditional folk music revivals

"Folk revival" most commonly refers to two particular phenomena; the British folk revival of approximately 1890-1920, and the folk revival of the mid 20th century which started new genres of folk music. But earlier events have also sometimes been referred to as folk revivals.

One such earlier one influenced western classical music. Such composers as Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Béla Bartók, made field recordings or transcriptions of folk singers and musicians.

In Spain, Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909) produced piano works reflect his Spanish heritage, including the ''Suite Iberia'' (1906–1909). Enrique Granados (1867–1918) composed ''zarzuela'', Spanish light opera, and ''Danzas Españolas'' - Spanish Dances. Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) became interested in the cante jondo of Andalusian flamenco, the influence of which can be strongly felt in many of his works, which include ''Nights in the Gardens of Spain'' and ''Siete canciones populares españolas'' ("Seven Spanish Folksongs", for voice and piano). Composers such as Fernando Sor and Francisco Tarrega established the guitar as Spain's national instrument. Modern Spanish folk artists abound (Mil i Maria, Russian Red, et al.) modernizing whilst respecting the traditions of their forebears.

Flamenco grew in popularity through the 20th century, as did northern styles such as the Celtic music of Galicia. French classical composers, from Bizet to Ravel, also drew upon Spanish themes, and distinctive Spanish genres became universally recognised.

First British folk revival

The "first" British folk revival was a roots revival which occurred approximately 1890 -1920 and was marked by heightened interest in traditional music and its preservation. It arose from earlier developments, perhaps combined with changes in the nature of British identity, led to a much more intensive and academic attempt to record what was seen as a vanishing tradition, and is now usually referred to as the first English or British folk revival.

Contemporary folk music

Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, electric folk, and others. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two.

Definitions of "contemporary folk music" are generally vague and variable. Here it is taken to mean all music that is called folk which is not traditional music; a set of genres which began with and then evolved from the folk revival of the mid-20th century. According to Hugh Blumenfeld, for the American folk scene, in general it is:

"Anglo-American, embracing acoustic and/or tradition-based music from the U.K. and the United States.

Musically, it is mainly Western European in its origins; linguistically, it is predominantly English-based.

The few exceptions to the above are based mainly on prevailing political/historical conditions in the Anglo-American world and the demographics of folk fans: Celtic music, blues, some Central and South American music, Native American music, and Klezmer." With "folk music" being an particularly English term, this definition may have general relevance. This is the common use of the term contemporary folk music (and the subject of this section), but is not the only case of evolution of new forms of folk music from traditional folk music. Nueva canción, a similar evolution of a new form of socially committed music occurred in several Spanish speaking countries. New forms of traditional music emerge elsewhere to someday become themselves traditional folk music.

Contemporary country music descends ultimately from a rural American folk tradition, but has evolved differently. Bluegrass music is a professional development of American old time music, intermixed with blues and jazz.

Folk revival of the mid 20th century in Britain and America

While the Romantic nationalism of the folk revival had its greatest influence on art-music, the "second folk revival" of the later 20th century brought a new genre of popular music with artists marketed by amplified concerts, recordings and broadcasting. This is the genre that remains as folk music even when traditional music is considered to be a separate genre. One of the earliest figures in this revival was Woody Guthrie. The American Woody Guthrie collected folk music in the 1930s and 1940s and also composed his own songs, as did Pete Seeger. In the 1930s Jimmie Rodgers, in the 1940s Burl Ives, in the early 1950s Seeger's group The Weavers and Harry Belafonte, and in the late 1950s The Kingston Trio as well as other professional, commercial groups became popular. In 1963–1964, the ABC television network aired the ''Hootenanny'' television series devoted to this brand of folk music and also published the associated magazine ''ABC-TV Hootenanny''. Starting in 1950 the ''Sing Out!'', ''Broadside'', and ''The Little Sandy Review'' magazines helped spread both traditional and composed songs, as did folk-revival-oriented record companies.

In the United Kingdom, the folk revival fostered young artists like The Watersons, Martin Carthy and Roy Bailey and a generation of singer-songwriters such as Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell, Donovan and Roy Harper; all seven entered the public eye in the 1960s. Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Tom Paxton visited Britain for some time in the early 1960s, the first two, particularly, making later use of the traditional English material they heard.

In 1950, Alan Lomax came to Britain and met A.L. 'Bert' Lloyd and Ewan MacColl, a meeting credited as inaugurating the second British folk revival. In London the colleagues opened The Ballads and Blues Club, eventually renamed the Singers' Club, possibly the first folk club; it closed in 1991. As the 1950s progressed into the 1960s, the folk revival movement built up in both Britain and America. Odetta was an important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.

The mid and late 1960s saw fusion forms of folk (such as folk rock) achieve prominence never before seen by folk music, but the early 1960s were perhaps the zenith of non-fusion folk music prominence in the music scene.

Major performers that emerged from the 1940s to the early 1960s

Some major folk music performers who emerged during 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s were: Woody Guthrie (1912 –1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan ''This Machine Kills Fascists'' displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land". Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence. Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". Throughout his life, Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was allegedly not a member of any. Guthrie fathered American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. During his later years Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

The Almanac Singers Almanac members Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie began playing together informally in 1940 or 1941. They invented a driving, energetic performing style, based on what they felt was the best of American country string band music, black and white. They evolved towards controversial topical music. To a certain extent they evolved into The Weavers.

Burl Ives - as a youth, Ives dropped out of college to travel around as an itinerant singer during the early 1930s, earning his way by doing odd jobs and playing his banjo and guitar. In 1930, he had a brief, local radio career on WBOW radio in Terre Haute, Indiana, and in the 1940s he had his own radio show, titled ''The Wayfaring Stranger,'' titled after one of the popular ballads he sang. The show was very popular, and in 1946 Ives was cast as a singing cowboy in the film ''Smoky''. Ives went on to play parts in other popular film as well. His first book, ''The Wayfaring Stranger'', was published in 1948.

Pete Seeger had met and been influenced by many important folk musicians (and singer-songwriters with folk roots), such as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. Seeger had labor movement involvements, and he met Woody at a "Grapes of Wrath" migrant workers’ concert on March 3, 1940, and the two thereafter began a musical collaboration (which included the Almanac Singers). In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic ''How to Play the Five-String Banjo'', an instructional book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument.

The Weavers were formed in 1947 by Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman. After they debuted at the Village Vanguard in New York in 1948, they were then discovered by arranger Gordon Jenkins and signed with Decca Records, releasing a series of successful but heavily-orchestrated single songs. The group's political associations in the era of the Red Scare forced them to break up in 1952; they re-formed in 1955 with a series of successful concerts and album recordings on Vanguard Records. A fifth member, Erik Darling, sometimes sat in with the group when Seeger was unavailable and ultimately replaced Seeger in The Weavers when the latter resigned from the quartet in a dispute about its commercialism in general and its specific agreement to record a cigarette commercial. Harry Belafonte, another influential performer, started his career as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. In 1952, he signed a contract with RCA Victor and released his first record album, ''Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites''. His breakthrough album ''Calypso'' (1956) was the first LP to sell over a million copies. The album spent 31 weeks at number one, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the US charts. It introduced American audiences to Calypso music and Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso." Belafonte went on to record in many genres, including blues, American folk, gospel, and nore. In 1959, he starred in ''Tonight With Belafonte'' a nationally televised special, that introduced Odetta in her debut to a prime time audience. She sang ''Water Boy'' and performed a duet with Belafonte of ''There's a Hole in My Bucket'' that hit the national charts in 1961. Odetta - Starting in 1953 singers Odetta and Larry Mohr recorded some songs, with the LP being released in 1954 as ''Odetta and Larry'', an album that was partially recorded live at San Francisco's Tin Angel bar. Odetta enjoyed a long and respected career with a repertoire of traditional songs (e.g., spirituals) and blues until her death in 2009. The Kingston Trio was formed in 1957 in the Palo Alto, California area by Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, and Dave Guard, who were just out of college. They were greatly influenced by the Weavers, the calypso sounds of Belafonte, and other semi-pop folk artists such as The Gateway Singers and The Tarriers. The unprecedented popularity and album sales of this group from 1957 to 1963 (including fourteen top ten and five number one LPs on the ''Billboard'' charts) was a significant factor in creating a commercial and mainstream audience for folk-styled music where little had existed prior to their emergence.The Kingston Trio's success was followed by other highly successful pop-folk acts, such as The Limeliters.

The Limeliters are an American folk music group, formed in July 1959 by Lou Gottlieb (bass), Alex Hassilev (baritone), and Glenn Yarbrough (tenor). The group was active from 1959 until 1965, when they disbanded.  After a hiatus of sixteen years Yarbrough, Hassilev, and Gottlieb reunited and began performing as The Limeliters again.

Joan Baez’s career got started in 1958 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where at 17 she gave her first coffee-house concert. She was invited to perform at the premiere Newport Folk Festival in 1959 by pop folk star Bob Gibson, after which Baez was sometimes called "the barefoot Madonna," gaining renown for her clear voice and three-octave range. She recorded her first album for a major label the following year – a collection of laments and traditional folk ballads from the British Isles, accompanying the songs with guitar. Her second LP release went gold, as did her next (live) albums. One record featured her rendition of a song by the then-unknown Bob Dylan. In the early 1960s, Baez moved into the forefront of the American folk-music revival. Increasingly, her personal convictions – peace, social justice, anti-poverty – were reflected in the topical songs that made up a growing portion of her repertoire, to the point that Baez became a symbol for these particular concerns.

Bob Dylan often performed, and sometimes toured, with Joan Baez, starting when she was a singer of mostly traditional songs. As Baez adopted some of Dylan's songs into her repertoire and even introduced Dylan to her avid audiences, a large following on the folk circuit, it helped the young songwriter to gain initial recognition. By the time Dylan recorded his first LP (1962) he had developed a style reminiscent of Woody Guthrie. He began to write songs that captured the "progressive" mood on the college campuses and in the coffee houses. Though by 1964 there were many new guitar-playing singer/songwriters, it is arguable that Dylan eventually became the most popular of these younger folk-music-revival performers.

Peter, Paul and Mary debuted in the early 1960s and were a American trio who ultimately became one of the biggest musical acts of the 1960s. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers. They were one of the main folk music torchbearers of social commentary music in the 1960s. As the decade passed, the music incorporated more elements of pop and rock.

Judy Collins debuted in the early 1960s. At first, she sang traditional folk songs or songs written by others — in particular the protest poets of the time, such as Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan. She also recorded her own versions of important songs from the period, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn."

The mid 1960s through the early 1970s

The large musical, political, lifestyle, and counterculture changes most associated with "the 60s" occurred during the second half of the 1960s and the first year or two of the 1970s. Folk music underwent a related rapid evolution and expansion at that same time. Large changes occurred through the evolution of established performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, The Seekers and Peter Paul and Mary, and also through the creation of new fusion genres with rock and pop. Dylan's use of electric instruments helped inaugurate the genres of folk rock and country rock, particularly by his album ''John Wesley Harding''. The Seekers emerged in 1963 and blended traditional music, contemporary folk music and pop, an illustration of the rapid evolution and diversification of folk music than began in the mid 1960s. These changes represented a further departure from traditional folk music. The Byrds with hits such as Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn" were emblematic of a new term folk rock. Marianne Faithfull began as a folk music performer in 1964 but became known only after switching to other genres. Other performers such as Simon & Garfunkel and The Mamas & the Papas created new hard-to-classify music that is folk inspired or styled. Folk singers and songwriters such as Phil Ochs, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Arlo Guthrie and Tom Paxton followed in Woody Guthrie's footsteps, writing "protest music" and topical songs and expressing support for various causes including the American Civil Rights Movement and anti-war causes associated with the Vietnam War. The Canadian performers Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn and Joni Mitchell represented such fusions and were all invested with the Order of Canada. Many of the acid rock bands of San Francisco began by playing acoustic folk and blues. The Smothers Brothers television shows featured many folk performers, including formerly blacklisted ones such as Pete Seeger and Harry Belafonte.

The late 1960s saw the advent of electric folk groups. This is a form of folk rock, with a focus on indigenous (European, and, emblematically, English) songs. A key electric folk moment was the release of Fairport Convention's album ''Liege and Lief''. Guitarist Richard Thompson declared that the music of the band demanded a corresponding "English Electric" style, while bassist Ashley Hutchings formed Steeleye Span in order to pursue a more traditional repertoire performed in the electric folk style. Exponents of electric folk music such as Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Alan Stivell, Mr. Fox and Steeleye Span saw electrification of traditional musical forms as a means to reach a far wider audience.

Bonnie Koloc is an American folk music singer-songwriter, actress, and artist who was considered one of the three main Illinois-based folk singers in the 1970s, (recording debut in 1971) along with Steve Goodman and John Prine forming the "trinity of the Chicago folk scene.".

Mid 1970s through present day

Malicorne, a French electric folk group emerged in 1973, starting with traditional music and then later blended it with pop. Stan Roger's wrote and performed folk music with strong historical nautical themes, emerging in 1976. Si Kahn emerged in 1974 at the more political and topical end of the folk music spectrum.

In the 1980s, artists like The Knitters propagated cowpunk or folk punk, which eventually evolved into alt country. More recently the same spirit has been embraced and expanded on by artists such as Dave Alvin, Miranda Stone and Steve Earle.

Starting in the 1970s it was fueled by new singer-songwriters such as Steve Goodman, John Prine who emerged in the early 1970s. The Pogues who emerged in the early 1980s and Ireland's The Corrs who emerged in the 1990s brought traditional tunes back into the album charts. Carrie Newcomer emerged with Stone Soup in 1984 and individually in 1991.

In the second half of the 1990s, once more, folk music made an impact on the mainstream music via a younger generation of artists such as Eliza Carthy, Kate Rusby and Spiers and Boden. Hard rock and heavy metal bands such as Korpiklaani, Skyclad, Waylander and Finntroll meld elements from a wide variety of traditions, including in many cases instruments such as fiddles, tin whistles, accordions and bagpipes. Folk metal often favours pagan-inspired themes. Viking metal is defined in its folk stance, incorporating folk interludes into albums (e.g., Bergtatt and Kveldssanger, the first two albums by once-folk metal, now-experimental band Ulver).

Specialty sub-genres

Filk music can be considered folk music stylistically and culturally (though the 'community' it arose from, science fiction fandom, is an unusual and thoroughly modern one). Neofolk began in the 1980s, fusing traditional European folk music with post-industrial music, historical topics, philosophical commentary, traditional songs and paganism. The genre is largely European.

Anti folk began in New York City in the 1980s. Folk punk, known in its early days as rogue folk, is a fusion of folk music and punk rock. It was pioneered by the London-based Irish band The Pogues in the 1980s. Industrial folk music is a characterization of folk music normally referred to under other genres, and covers music of or about industrial environments and topics, including related protest music.

Other sub-genres include Indie folk, Techno-folk, Freak folk and Americana and fusion genres such as folk metal, progressive folk, psychedelic folk, and neofolk.

Notable venues

The Philadelphia Folk Festival is a four-day festival which began in 1962. It is sponsored by the non-profit Philadelphia Folksong Society. The event hosts contemporary and traditional artists in genres including World/Fusion, Celtic, Singer/Songwriter, Folk Rock, Country, Klezmer, and Dance. It is held annually on the third weekend in August. The event now hosts approximately 12,000 visitors, presenting bands on 6 stages.

The Newport Folk Festival is an annual folk festival held near Newport, Rhode Island. It ran most year from 1959 to 1970, and 1985 to the present, with an attendance of approximately 10,000 persons.

It is sometimes claimed that the earliest folk festival was the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, 1928, in Asheville, North Carolina, founded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Sidmouth Festival began in 1954, and Cambridge Folk Festival began in 1965. The Cambridge Folk Festival in Cambridge, England is noted for having a very wide definition of who can be invited as folk musicians. The "club tents" allow attendees to discover large numbers of unknown artists, who, for ten or 15 minutes each, present their work to the festival audience.

Stan Rogers is a lasting fixture of the Canadian folk festival Summerfolk, held annually in Owen Sound, Ontario, where the main stage and amphitheater are dedicated as the "Stan Rogers Memorial Canopy". The festival is firmly fixed in tradition, with Rogers' song "The Mary Ellen Carter" being sung by all involved, including the audience and a medley of acts at the festival.

The Canmore Folk Music Festival is Alberta's longest running folk music festival. The Feast of the Hunters' Moon in Indiana draws approximately 70,000 visitors per year.

Folk music is popular among some audiences today, with folk music clubs meeting to share traditional-style songs, and there are major folk music festivals in many countries, e.g. the Woodford Folk Festival, National Folk Festival and Port Fairy Folk Festival are amongst Australia's largest major annual events, attracting top international folk performers as well as many local artists. This includes the music of Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Devendra Banhart and others.

See also

List of folk festivals

Ethnomusicology

Roud Folk Song Index

World music

Indigenous music

Canadian Folk Music Awards

References

Further reading

Traditional folk music

Bayard, Samuel Preston (1950). "Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of British-American Folksong", ''Journal of American Folklore'' pp. 1–44. Reprinted in McAllester, David Park (ed.) (1971) ''Readings in ethnomusicology'' New York: Johnson Reprint. Bearman, C. J. (2000). "Who Were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp's Somerset Folk Singers." ''The Historical Journal'' (September 2000) Vol. 43 No.3 pp. 751–75. Bevil, Jack Marshall (1984). ''Centonization and Concordance in the American Southern Uplands Folksong Melody: A Study of the Musical Generative and Transmittive Processes of an Oral Tradition''. PhD Thesis, North Texas University, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International. Bevil, Jack Marshall (1986). "Scale in Southern Appalachian Folksong: a Reexamination", ''College Music Symposium'' Vol. 26, 77-91.

Bevil, Jack Marshall (1987). "A Paradigm of Folktune Preservation and Change Within the Oral Tradition of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1916-1986." Unpublished. Read at the 1987 National Convention of the American Musicological Society, New Orleans.

Bronson, Bertrand Harris. ''The Ballad As Song'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).

Bronson, Bertrand Harris. ''The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).

Bronson, Bertrand Harris. ''The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, with Their Texts, According to the Extant Records of Great Britain and North America'', 4 volumes (Princeton and Berkeley: Princeton University and University of California Presses, 1959, ff.).

Cartwright, Garth (2005). ''Princes Amongst Men: Journeys with Gypsy Musicians''. London: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1852428775

Carson, Ciaran (1997). ''Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music''. North Point Press. ISBN 9780865475151

Cowdery, James R. (1990). ''The Melodic Tradition of Ireland''. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. ISBN 9780873384070

Farsani, Mohsen (2003) ''Lamentations chez les nomades bakhtiari d'Iran''. Paris: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Harker, David (1985). ''Fakesong: The Manufacture of British 'Folksong', 1700 to the Present Day''. Milton Keynes [Buckinghamshire]; Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335150667

Jackson, George Pullen (1933). ''White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes"''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Reprinted by Kessinger Publishing (2008) ISBN 9781436690447 (August 6)

Karpeles, Maud. ''An Introduction to English Folk Song''. 1973. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Keller, Marcello Sorce (1984). "The Problem of Classification in Folksong Research: A Short History", ''Folklore'' Vol. 95, no. 1:100–104.

Mills, Isabelle (1974). The Heart of the Folk Song, ''Canadian Journal for Traditional Music'' Vol. 2

Poladian, Sirvart. "Melodic Contour in Traditional Music," ''Journal of the International Folk Music Council'' III (1951), 30-34.

Poladian, Sirvart. "The Problem of Melodic Variation in Folksong," ''Journal of American Folklore'' (1942), 204-211.

Rooksby, Rikky, Dr Vic Gammon et al. ''The Folk Handbook''. (2007). Backbeat

Sharp, Cecil. ''Folk Song: Some Conclusions''. 1907. Charles River Books

Sharp, Cecil ''English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians''. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp. Ed. Maud Karpeles. 1932. London. Oxford University Press.

Warren-Findley, Jannelle (1980). "Journal of a Field Representative : Charles Seeger and Margaret Valiant" ''Ethnomusicology'', Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1980), pp. 169–210

Contemporary folk music

Cantwell, Robert. ''When We Were Good: The Folk Revival''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-674-95132-8

Cohen, Ronald D., ''Folk music: the basics'', Routledge, 2006.

Cohen, Ronald D., ''A history of folk music festivals in the United States'', Scarecrow Press, 2008

Cohen, Ronald D. ''Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival & American Society, 1940-1970''. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55849-348-4

Cohen, Ronald D., ed. ''Wasn't That a Time? Firsthand Accounts of the Folk Music Revival. American Folk Music Series no. 4.'' Lanham, Maryland and Folkstone, UK: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1995.

Cohen, Ronald D., and Dave Samuelson. ''Songs for Political Action''. Booklet to Bear Family Records BCD 15720 JL, 1996.

Cray, Ed, and Studs Terkel. ''Ramblin Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie''. W.W. Norton & Co., 2006.

Cunningham, Agnes "Sis", and Gordon Friesen. ''Red Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography''. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. ISBN 1-55849-210-0

De Turk, David A.; Poulin, A., Jr., ''The American folk scene; dimensions of the folksong revival'', New York : Dell Pub. Co., 1967

Denisoff, R. Serge. ''Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.

Denisoff, R. Serge. ''Sing Me a Song of Social Significance''. Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972. ISBN 0-87972-036-0

Denning, Michael. ''The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century''. London: Verso, 1996.

Donaldson, Rachel Clare, ''Music for the People: the Folk Music Revival And American Identity, 1930-1970'', Ph.D. Dissertation, Vanderbilt University, May, 2011, Nashville, Tennessee

Dunaway, David. ''How Can I Keep From Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger''. [1981, 1990] Villard, 2008. ISBN 0-306-80399-2

Eyerman, Ron, and Scott Barretta. "From the 30s to the 60s: The folk Music Revival in the United States". ''Theory and Society'': 25 (1996): 501-43.

Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. ''Music and Social Movements. Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century''. Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-62966-7

Filene, Benjamin. ''Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music''. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8078-4862-X

Goldsmith, Peter D. ''Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records''. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. ISBN 1-56098-812-6

Hajdu, David. ''Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña''. New York: North Point Press, 2001. ISBN 0-86547-642-X

Hawes, Bess Lomax. ''Sing It Pretty''. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008

Jackson, Bruce, ed. ''Folklore and Society. Essay in Honor of Benjamin A. Botkin.'' Hatboro, Pa Folklore Associates, 1966

Hogeland, William (2004). "Emulating the Real and Vital Guthrie, Not St. Woody". ''New York Times'' (March 14).

Lieberman, Robbie. ''"My Song Is My Weapon:" People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-50''. 1989; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. ISBN 0-252-06525-5

Lomax, Alan, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, eds. ''Hard Hit Songs for Hard Hit People''. New York: Oak Publications, 1967. Reprint, Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Lynch, Timothy. ''Strike Song of the Depression (American Made Music Series)''. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

Middleton, Richard (1990). ''Studying Popular Music''. Milton Keynes; Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15276-7 (cloth), ISBN 0-335-15275-9 (pbk).

Reuss, Richard, with [finished posthumously by] Joanne C. Reuss. ''American Folk Music and Left Wing Politics. 1927-1957. American Folk Music Series no. 4''. Lanham, Maryland and Folkstone, UK: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2000.

Rubeck, Jack; Shaw, Allan; Blake, Ben et al. ''The Kingston Trio On Record''. Naperville, IL: KK, Inc, 1986. ISBN 978-0-9614594-0-6

Scully, Michael F. (2008). ''The Never-Ending Revival: Rounder Records and the Folk Alliance''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Seeger, Pete. ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singer's Stories''. Bethlehem, Pa.: Sing Out Publications, 1993.

Willens, Doris. ''Lonesome Traveler: The Life of Lee Hays''. New York: Norton, 1988.

Weissman, Dick. ''Which Side Are You On? An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America''. New York: Continuum, 2005. ISBN 0-8264-1698-5

Wolfe, Charles, and Kip Lornell. ''The Life and Legend of Leadbelly.'' New York: Da Capo [1992] 1999.

Covering both traditional music and contemporary folk music

Pegg, Carole (2001). "Folk Music". ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.

van der Merwe, Peter (1989). ''Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316121-4.

External links

The World and Traditional Music section at the British Library Sound Archive

The Traditional Music in England project, World and Traditional Music section at the British Library Sound Archive Dead link

The Mudcat Cafe and Digital Tradition song database

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Folk Music

The Crooked Road: Heritage music trail-A famous 243-mile experience where folk and bluegrass music originated.

Folk Alley A Non-Profit Listener Supported Folk Music Resource, Streaming online since 2004

Traditional songs - Folk song lyrics of the world

Ben Gray Lumpkin Digital Folk Music Collection Howard B. Waltz Music Library, University of Colorado Boulder

Free scores (songs) at www.traditional-songs.com

Category:Folklore

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Name	Bob Saget
Birth name	Robert Lane Saget
Birth date	May 17, 1956
Birth place	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Occupation	ActorComedianFilmmakerTelevision host,director and screenwriter
Years active	1977–present
Spouse	Sherri Kramer (1982–1997) (divorced) 3 children }}

Robert Lane "Bob" Saget (born May 17, 1956) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and television host. Although he is best known for his roles as Danny Tanner in ''Full House'', host of ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' and Future Ted Mosby on ''How I Met Your Mother''. Saget is known outside of television for his blue stand-up routine.

Early life

Saget was born in Philadelphia to Jewish parents. His father, Benjamin, was a supermarket executive, and his mother, Rosalyn, was a hospital administrator. Saget lived in Norfolk, Virginia, and Encino, California, before moving back to Philadelphia and graduating from Abington Senior High School. Saget originally intended to become a doctor, but his Honors English teacher, Elaine Zimmerman, saw his creative potential and urged him to seek a career in films.

He attended Temple University's film school, where he created ''Through Adam's Eyes'', a black-and-white film about a boy who received reconstructive facial surgery, and was honored with an award of merit in the Student Academy Awards. He graduated with a B.A. in 1978. Saget intended to take graduate courses at the University of Southern California but quit a few days later. Saget describes himself at the time in an article by Glenn Esterly in the 1990 ''Saturday Evening Post'': "I was a cocky, overweight twenty-two-year-old. Then I had a gangrenous appendix taken out, almost died, and I got over being cocky or overweight." Saget talked about his burst appendix on ''Anytime with Bob Kushell'', saying that it happened on the Fourth of July, at the UCLASS Medical Center and that they at first just iced the area for seven hours before taking it out and finding that it had become gangrenous.

Career

Early career

Saget started performing stand-up comedy and did a number of national tours. Later, in 1987, he became the co-host of ''The Morning Program''—an attempt by CBS to take a different direction with morning television—for which he also wrote and produced content.

''Full House'' and ''America's Funniest Home Videos''

Soon after, Saget was cast as Danny Tanner in ''Full House'', which became a huge success through family viewers and landed in the Nielsen ratings's Top 30 from the third season onward. In 1989 Saget was cast as the host of ''America's Funniest Home Videos'', a role he held until 1997. During the early 1990s Saget worked both on ''Full House'' and ''AFV'' simultaneously, and in 2009 ABC had Saget return to ''AFV'' for a 20th anniversary one-hour special co-hosted with Tom Bergeron.

Continued career

Saget was also the host of NBC's game show ''1 vs. 100'', which debuted October 13, 2006.

He plays the narrator of the CBS sitcom ''How I Met Your Mother'', which premiered on September 19, 2005. In the series he portrays the future version of the protagonist Ted Mosby. Throughout the series, only his voice is heard and it is yet to be seen if he will make an appearance.

His HBO comedy special, ''That Ain't Right,'' came out on DVD on August 28, 2007. It is dedicated to his father, Ben Saget, who died on January 30, 2007, due to complications from congestive heart failure. He was 89.

He has had recurring roles in HBO's ''Entourage'' playing a parody of himself.

Saget appeared in the Broadway musical ''The Drowsy Chaperone'' for a limited four-month engagement. He played "Man in Chair" while Jonathan Crombie, who normally played the character on Broadway, was with the national tour of the musical. On January 4, 2008, Saget's caricature was unveiled at Sardi's Restaurant.

On August 17, 2008, Saget was roasted by Comedy Central in a special, titled ''The Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget''.

In April 2009, he debuted in a new sitcom along with his co-star Cynthia Stevenson on ABC called ''Surviving Suburbia''. The series, which was originally to air on The CW, ended after one abbreviated season.

Directing career

Saget directed the 1996 ABC television movie ''For Hope'', which was inspired by the life story of his sister, Gay Saget, who died from scleroderma three years earlier.

In 1998, Saget directed his first feature film ''Dirty Work'', starring Norm MacDonald and Artie Lange. Coming off one year after he left his long-running role as host of America's Funniest Home Videos, the film received broadly negative reviews from critics, and earned low box office returns. However, it has since become a cult favorite, due partially to Artie Lange's later popularity on ''The Howard Stern Show'' where the film is sometimes mentioned, often in unflattering terms.

Saget wrote, directed, and starred in ''Farce of the Penguins'', a parody of 2005's ''March of the Penguins'', which was released direct-to-DVD, in January 2007.

Other works

In 1998, Saget played a cocaine addict in the stoner comedy ''Half Baked''.

In 2006, Jamie Kennedy released a rap song and music video entitled "Rollin' with Saget", which featured Saget and is on his website.

In 2010, Saget starred in an A&E; series ''Strange Days'' in which he follows others in different activities and lifestyles, documenting their adventures in unusual ways.

Charity work

Saget is currently a board member of the Scleroderma Research Foundation. His scleroderma efforts have further benefited such celebrities as ''Scary Movie'' star Regina Hall.

Television and filmography

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- |1979 |''Outer Touch'' | Voice of Wurlitzer | Voice Also writer |- | 1980 |''Devices'' | Therapy Patient | |- | rowspan=2|1981 |''Full High Moon'' | Sportscaster | |- |''Bosom Buddies'' | Bob the Comic | Episode: "The Show Must Go On" |- | 1983 |''The Greatest American Hero'' | Cook | Episode: "Wizards and Warlocks" |- |1985 |''New Love, American Style'' | Comedy Vignettes | ''unknown episodes'' |- | 1986 |''It's a Living'' | Dr. Bartlett | Episode: "The Doctor Danny Show" |- | 1987 |''Critical Condition'' | Dr. Joffe | |- | 1987–1995 | ''Full House'' | Daniel 'Danny' Tanner | 192 episodes |- | 1989–1997; 2009 | ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' | Himself (host) | |- | 1989 |''MMC'' | | Episode: Guest Day" |- | rowspan=2|1992 |''Quantum Leap'' | Macklyn 'Mack' MacKay | Episode: "Stand Up - April 30, 1959" |- |''To Grandmother's House We Go'' | Win-O-Lotto Lottery Host | TV film ''uncredited' |- | 1993 |''For Goodness Sake'' | Surgeon | |- | 1994 |''Father and Scout'' | Spencer Paley | TV film Also executive producer |- | 1997 |''Meet Wally Sparks'' | Reporter #4 | |- | 1998 |''Half Baked'' | Cocaine Addict | ''uncredited'' |- | 1999 |''Sorority'' |Dean Tinker | TV film ''uncredited'' |- | rowspan=2|2000 |''Becoming Dick'' |Bob |TV film ''uncredited'' Also director |- |''The Norm Show'' | Mr. Atkitson | Episode: "Norm vs. Schoolin'" Also director |- | 2001–2002 |''Raising Dad'' | Matt Stewart | 17 episodes |- | 2003 |''Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd'' | Jessica's Dad | |- | 2004 |''Huff'' | Butch |Episode: "Flashpants" |- | rowspan=3|2005 |''Listen Up'' | Mitch |Coach Potato |- |''Madagascar'' | Zoo Animal | Voice |- |The Aristocrats | Himself | Documentary |- | 2005–present | ''How I Met Your Mother | Ted Mosby (2030) Voice only | TV series |- | rowspan=3|2006 |- | ''1 vs. 100'' | Himself (host) | Hosted from 2006-2008 on NBC |- |''Casper's Scare School'' | Dash | Voice TV film |- |''Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'' | Glenn Cheales | Episode: "Choreographed" |- |rowspan="3"|2007 | ''Farce of the Penguins'' | Carl |Voice Direct-to-video Also writer, director and producer |- |''Howard Stern on Demand'' | |Episode: "Brad Garrett" |- |''The Tuttles: Madcap Misadventures'' | Barry Tuttle |Video game |- |2008 |''The Life & Times of Tim'' | | Voice Episode: "Mugger/Cin City" |- | 2009 |''Surviving Suburbia'' | Steve Patterson | 13 episodes |- | rowspan=2|2010 |''Conan'' | | Episode: "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Dead Fish" |- |''Strange Days with Bob Saget'' |Himself (host) |6 episodes |- | 2011 |''Law & Order: LA'' | | Episode: "Van Nuys" |}

References

External links

Regina Hall Interview "Regina Hall Issue", ABILITY Magazine, April/May 2010

Category:1956 births Category:1 vs. 100 Category:American comedians Category:American film directors Category:American game show hosts Category:American stage actors Category:American stand-up comedians Category:American television actors Category:The Groundlings Category:Living people Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:Actors from Pennsylvania Category:People from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:Temple University alumni Category:Actors from Virginia Category:People from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

da:Bob Saget de:Bob Saget es:Bob Saget fa:باب سجت fr:Bob Saget id:Bob Saget it:Bob Saget hu:Bob Saget nl:Bob Saget ja:ボブ・サゲット no:Bob Saget simple:Bob Saget fi:Bob Saget sv:Bob Saget tr:Bob Saget

name	Pete Seeger
landscape	yes
background	solo_singer
birth name	Peter Seeger
born	May 03, 1919
birth place	Manhattan, New York, United States
instrument	Banjo, guitar, recorder, mandolin, piano, ukulele
genre	Protest music, Americana, American folk music
occupation	Musician, songwriter, activist, television host
years active	1939–present
label	Folkways, Columbia, CBS, Vanguard, Sony Kids’, SME
associated acts	The Weavers, The Almanac Singers, Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, Leadbelly
notable instruments	}}

Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.

As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962), Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962), and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964 and The Seekers. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song'', Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more inspirational "We shall overcome".

Family and personal life

Seeger was born in French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan, the youngest of three sons. He came from a distinguished, prosperous family, which he described as "enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition." His father, Charles Louis Seeger Jr. was a violinist and composer who had studied music at Harvard. His mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, was a classical violinist and teacher, raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School.

Soon after their 1911 wedding, the couple had moved to Berkeley, California, where Charles Seeger took up a position as professor of music. Facing opposition from his university colleagues, he became a pioneering ethnomusicologist, investigating both Native American and American folk music. In 1914, Charles Seeger, who had previously been apolitical, had a political awakening when he became aware of the lives of migrant workers in California. His subsequent left-wing activism, which included opposition to World War I, led to deteriorating relations with the university, and in September 1918, he took a "sabbatical"; the entire family, including a pregnant Constance, moved back to the Seeger family home.

Charles and Constance Seeger divorced when Pete Seeger was seven. His stepmother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, was one of the most significant female composers of the twentieth century. His eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the Dalton School in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 at Fieldston Lower School in the Bronx. His uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet, was killed during the First World War. His half-sister, Peggy Seeger, also a well-known folk performer, was married for many years to British folk singer Ewan MacColl. Half-brother Mike Seeger went on to form the New Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, was married to Pete's other half-sister, singer Penny Seeger, also a highly talented singer.

In 1943, Pete married Toshi-Aline Ōta, whom he credits with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. Pete and Toshi have three children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker), Mika (Potter and muralist), and Tinya Seeger (Potter)—and grandchildren Tao (musician), Cassie Seeger (Artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (filmaker), Moraya, Penny, and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own right, singing and playing guitar, banjo and harmonica with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was associate producer of the PBS documentary ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song''.

Seeger lives in Beacon, New York. He remains very active politically and maintains an active lifestyle in the Hudson Valley Region of New York, especially in the nearby City of Beacon, New York. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves.

Musical career

Early work

Pete Seeger attended the Avon Old Farms boarding school in Connecticut, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Though Pete Seeger's parents were both professional musicians, they didn't press him to play an instrument. On his own, Pete gravitated to the ukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it, while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. Pete heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville, North Carolina in 1936, while traveling with his father (then a director of Roosevelt's Farm Resettlement program). It changed his life forever. He spent much of the next four years trying to master the instrument.

Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but, as he became increasingly involved with radical politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938. He dreamed of a career in journalism and also took courses in art. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during summer stint of touring New York State with The Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling puppet theater "inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico". One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An article in the October 2, 1939 ''Daily Worker'' reported on the Puppeteers' six-week tour this way:

During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm women would bring "suppers" and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.

"They fed us too well," the girls reported. "And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the offers to spend a week on the farm."

In the farmers' homes they talked about politics and the farmers’ problems, about anti-Semitism and Unionism, about war and peace and social security—"and always," the puppeteers report, "the farmers wanted to know what can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers. They felt the need of this more strongly than ever before, and the support of the CIO in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the part of city organizations—unions, consumers’ bodies, the American Labor Party and similar groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for progress.

That fall Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assisting Alan Lomax, a friend of his father's, at the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seeger's job was to help Lomax sift through commercial "race" and "hillbilly" music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division of the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–53). Lomax also encouraged Seeger's folk singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray's weekly Columbia Broadcasting show ''Back Where I Come From'' (1940–41) alongside of Josh White, Burl Ives, Leadbelly, and Woody Guthrie (whom he had first met at Will Geer's Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for migrant workers on March 3, 1940). ''Back Where I Come From'' was unique in having a racially integrated cast, which made news when it performed in March 1941 at a command performance at the White House organized by Eleanor Roosevelt called "An Evening of Songs for American Soldiers," before an audience that included the Secretaries of War, Treasury, and the Navy, among other notables. The show was a success but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast. During the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.

Group recordings

As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor), Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: The Almanac Singers and The Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement, racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Baldwin "Butch" Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, and Sam Gary. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under the stage name "Pete Bowers" to avoid compromising his father's government career.

In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as The Weavers, named after the title of a 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann about a workers' strike (which contained the lines, "We'll stand it no more, come what may!"). Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman (later, Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling and Bernie Krause serially took the place of Seeger). In the atmosphere of the 1950s red scare, the Weavers' repertoire had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its progressive message was couched in indirect language—arguably rendering it even more powerful. The Weavers even on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers refused to let them perform at political venues. Because of this, the somewhat hokey string orchestra and chorus arrangements on their hit records with Decca Records, and, no doubt also because of their considerable, if temporary, financial success, the Weavers incurred criticism from some progressives for supposedly compromising their political integrity. It was a tricky dilemma, but Seeger and the other Weavers felt that the imperative of getting their music and their message out to the widest possible audience amply justified these measures. The Weavers' string of major hits began with "On top of Old Smokey" and an arrangement of Leadbelly's signature waltz, "Goodnight, Irene," which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950 and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of "Irene" was the Israeli song "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena." Other Weaver hits included, "So Long It's Been Good to Know You" (by Woody Guthrie), "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly), the South African Zulu song, "Wimoweh" (about "the lion," warrior chief Shaka Zulu), to name a few.

The Weavers's performing career was abruptly derailed in 1953 at the peak of their popularity when blacklisting prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced a hit version of Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons" as well as LPs of their concert performances. "Kumbaya," a Gullah black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.

In the late fifties, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latter's repertoire, though with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial and mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits, and, in its turn spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.

In the documentary film ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song'' (2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers when the three other band members agreed to perform a jingle for a cigarette commercial.

Banjo and 12-string guitar

In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic ''How to Play the Five-String Banjo'', a book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the ''Long Neck'' or ''Seeger'' banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo,is slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region, the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger's championing of and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in David King Dunaway's biography, "by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth string" Pete Seeger "gentrified" the more percussive traditional Appalachian "frailing" style, "with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head." Though what Dunaway's informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality associated with the style.

From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that had been associated with Lead Belly who had styled himself "the King of the 12-String Guitar". Seeger's distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28") and capo-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.

Introduction of the "Steel Pan" to U.S. Audiences

In 1956, then "Peter" Seeger (see film credits) and his wife, Toshi, traveled to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to seek out information on the steel pan, steel drum or "Ping-Pong" as it was sometimes called. The two searched out a local panyard and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then new, national instrument of Trinidad-Tobago. The film is located here.

Recent work

On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister Peggy, his brothers Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the American Folklife Center in honor of the Seeger family, held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.

On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the ''Late Show with David Letterman'', singing "Take It From Dr. King". In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released ''At 89'', Seeger's first studio album in 12 years. On September 19, Pete Seeger made his first appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, particularly notable because the Festival does not normally feature folk artists.

In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote and performed a song "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You" with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Obama Inaugural Celebration

On January 18, 2009, Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen, grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, and the crowd in singing the Woody Guthrie song "This Land Is Your Land" in the finale of Barack Obama's Inaugural concert in Washington, D.C. The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion of two verses not often included in the song, one about a "private property" sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a passing reference to a Depression-era relief office.

90th Birthday Celebration

On May 3, 2009, at The Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at Madison Square Garden to celebrate Seeger's 90th birthday (which was later televised on PBS during the summer), ranging from Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco and Roger McGuinn to Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Tom Paxton, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Arlo Guthrie. Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez was also invited to appear but his visa was not approved in time by the US government. Consistent with Seeger's long-time advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the event benefited the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit organization created to defend and restore the Hudson River. Seeger's 90th Birthday was also celebrated at The College of Staten Island on May 4.

A number of Pete Seeger celebrations are being organized in Australia including a revival of the musical play about his life ''One Word ... WE!'', a DVD of his 1963 concert in Melbourne Town Hall, and concerts in folk clubs and folk festivals. ''One Word ... WE!'' was performed at the Tom Mann Theatre in Surry Hills, Sydney, on 12, 13 and 14 June 2009. It was written by Maurie Mulheron, who is also musical director and a performer. Frank Barnes directed.

On April 18, 2009, Pete Seeger performed in front of a small group of Earth Day celebrants at Teachers College in New York City. Among the songs he performed were "This Land is Your Land", "Take it From Dr. King", and "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain".

Activism

1930s and 1940s

In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its popularity and influence. In 1942 he became a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself. He eventually "drifted away" (his words) from the Party in the late 1940s and 1950s.

In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, ''Songs for John Doe'' (recorded in late February or March and released in May, 1941), the ''Talking Union'', and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, ''Songs for John Doe'' was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, "It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil," that were sharply critical of Roosevelt's unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September, 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was "phony" and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time—as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL's members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill's arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake) and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in ''Time'' magazine, which under its owner, Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs' ''John Doe'', accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called "the mendacious Moscow tune" that "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war." Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album "in bad taste," though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government, Carl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser on domestic propaganda to the US military. In a review in the June 1941 ''Atlantic Monthly'', entitled "The Poison in Our System," he pronounced ''Songs for John Doe'' "...strictly subversive and illegal," "...whether Communist or Nazi financed," and "a matter for the attorney general," observing further that "mere" legal "suppression" would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist poison, the poison being folk music, and the ease with which it could be spread.

At that point, the U.S. had not yet entered the war but was energetically re-arming. African Americans were barred from working in defense plants, a situation that greatly angered both African Americans and white progressives. Black union leaders A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste began planning a huge march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries and to urge desegregation of the armed forces. The march, which many regard as the first manifestation of the Civil Rights Movement, was canceled after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) of June 25, 1941, barring discrimination in hiring by companies holding federal contracts for defense work. This Presidential act defused black anger considerably, although the US army still refused to desegregate, declining to participate in what it called "social engineering."

Roosevelt's order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. The Communist Party now immediately directed its members to get behind the draft, and it also forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war (angering some leftists). Copies of ''Songs for John Doe'' were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors. The Almanac Singers' ''Talking Union'' album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year the Almanacs issued ''Dear Mr. President'', an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, "Dear Mr. President," was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his life-long credo:

Now, Mr. President, / We haven't always agreed in the past, I know, / But that ain't at all important now. / What is important is what we got to do, / We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do, / Other things can wait.//

Now, as I think of our great land . . . / I know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday, / Just give us a little time. // This is the reason that I want to fight, / Not 'cause everything's perfect, or everything's right. / No, it's just the opposite: I'm fightin' because / I want a better America, and better laws, / And better homes, and jobs, and schools, / And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like / "You can't ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro," / "You can't live here 'cause you're a Jew,"/ "You can't work here 'cause you're a union man."//

So, Mr. President, / We got this one big job to do / That's lick Mr. Hitler and when we're through, / Let no one else ever take his place / To trample down the human race. / So what I want is you to give me a gun / So we can hurry up and get the job done.

Seeger's critics, however, have continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated ''Songs for John Doe''. In 1942, a year after the ''John Doe'' album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York ''World Telegram'' (Feb. 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 article "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce's right hand man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President of ''Time'' magazine, had founded "...to combat all the nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist..." antiwar groups in the United States). and was shown to the Almanac's employers in order to keep them off the air. Coincidentally, defamatory reviews and gossip items appeared in New York newspapers whenever they performed in public, and ultimately the Almanacs had to disband.

Seeger served in the US Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. Later, when people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered "I strummed my banjo." After returning from service, Seeger and others established People's Songs, conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts that was designed to "Create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People" With Pete Seeger as its director, People's Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt's former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a third party candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however, Wallace only won in New York City, and, in the red-baiting frenzy that followed, he was excoriated (as Roosevelt had not been) for accepting the help in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers such as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.

Spanish Civil War songs

Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with Tom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called ''Songs of the Lincoln Battalion'' on Moe Asch's Stinson label. This included such songs as "There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama," and "Viva la Quinta Brigada." In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called ''Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades''. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary ''Six Songs for Democracy'' (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch and a chorus of members of the Thälmann Battalion, made up of refugees from Nazi Germany. The songs were: "Moorsoldaten" ("Peat Bog Soldiers", composed by political prisoners of German concentration camps), "Die Thaelmann-Kolonne," "Hans Beimler," "Das Lied Von Der Einheitsfront" ("Song of The United Front" by Hans Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), "Der Internationalen Brigaden" ("Song Of The International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals," known in English as "The Four Insurgent Generals").

1950s and early 1960s

In the 1950s and, indeed, consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace campaign) and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. With the ever-growing revelations of Joseph Stalin's atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Communism. In his PBS biography, Seeger said he "drifted away" from the CPUSA beginning in 1949 but remained friends with some who did not leave it, though he argued with them about it.

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of court, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self incriminating) and instead (as the Hollywood Ten had done) refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this." Seeger's refusal to testify led to a March 26, 1957 indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of court in March 1961, and sentenced to 10 years in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.

In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the government. Seeger refused, and the American Civil Liberties Union obtained an injunction against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. In February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of their predecessors.

Vietnam War era

A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the Vietnam War, Seeger satirically attacked then-President Lyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album ''Dangerous Songs!?'', of Len Chandler's children's song, ''"Beans in My Ears"''. Beyond Chandler's lyrics, Seeger said that "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" had "beans in his ears," which, as the lyrics imply, ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the Vietnam War the phrase implied that "Alby Jay" was a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ," and sarcastically suggested "that must explain why he doesn't respond to the protests against his war policies."

Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain—referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song's political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the ''Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour'', the final lines were "Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show, after wide publicity it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show in the following January.

Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled "This machine kills fascists",^photo Seeger's banjo was emblazoned with the motto "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender."^photo

In the documentary film ''The Power of Song'', Seeger mentions that he and his family visited North Vietnam in 1972.

Environmentalism

Seeger is involved in the environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which he co-founded in 1966. This organization has worked since then to highlight pollution in the Hudson River and worked to clean it. As part of that effort, the sloop ''''Clearwater'''' was launched in 1969 with its inaugural sail down from Maine to South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, and thence to the Hudson River. Amongst the inaugural crew was Don McLean, who co-edited the book ''Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew'', with sketches by Thomas B. Allen for which Seeger wrote the foreword. Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 ''Clearwater'' album. The sloop regularly sails the river with volunteer and professional crew members, primarily conducting environmental education programs for school groups. The Great Hudson River Revival (aka Clearwater Festival) is an annual two-day music festival held on the banks of the Hudson at Croton Point Park. This festival grew out of early fundraising concerts arranged by Seeger and friends to raise money to pay for ''Clearwater's'' construction.

Seeger wrote and performed "That Lonesome Valley" about the then-polluted Hudson River in 1969, and his band members also wrote and performed songs commemorating the ''Clearwater''.

Solo career and the folk song revival

To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger had gigs as a music teacher in schools and summer camps and traveled the college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as five albums a year for Moe Asch's Folkways Records label. As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger's anti-war songs, such as, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (co-written with Joe Hickerson), "Turn, Turn, Turn", adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and "The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh poet Idris Davies (1957), gained wide currency. Seeger also was closely associated with the 1960s Civil Rights movement and in 1963 helped organize a landmark Carnegie Hall Concert, featuring the youthful Freedom Singers, as a benefit for the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. This event and Martin Luther King's March on Washington in August of that year, in which Seeger and other folk singers participated, brought the Civil Rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" to wide audiences. A version of this song, submitted by Zilphia Horton of Highlander, had been published in Seeger's People's Songs ''Bulletin'' as early as in 1947.

By this time Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as a longtime columnist in ''Sing Out!'', the successor to the People's Songs ''Bulletin'', and as a founder of the topical ''Broadside'' magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding to his associate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. This urban folk revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the thirties and forties and of People's Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies' ''Little Red Song Book'', compiled by Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill (1879–1915). (The ''Little Red Song Book'' had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie's, who was known to carry it around.)

Pete Seeger made two tours of Australia, the first in 1963. At the time of this tour, his single "Little Boxes" (written by Malvina Reynolds) was number one in the nation's Top 40s. In 1993 the Australian singer/playwright Maurie Mulheron assembled a musical biography of Seeger's, and friends', work in a stage production ''One Word ... WE!''. It enjoyed a long and sold-out season at the New Theatre in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. It was reprised in 2000 and 2009, and the company has also taken the show on tour to folk festivals at Maleny and Woodford in Queensland, and Port Fairy in Victoria.

The long television blacklist of Seeger began to end in the mid-1960s when he hosted a regionally broadcast, educational folk-music television show, ''Rainbow Quest''. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, The Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick Sky, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Donovan, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mamou Cajun Band, Bernice Johnson Reagon, The Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb, Malvina Reynolds, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU's Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The Smothers Brothers ended Seeger's national blacklisting by broadcasting him singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on their CBS variety show on February 25, 1968, after his similar performance in September 1967 was censored by CBS.

An early booster of Bob Dylan, Seeger, who was on the board of directors of the Newport Folk Festival, became upset over the extremely loud and distorted electric sound that Dylan, instigated by his manager Albert Grossman, also a Folk Festival board member, brought into the 1965 Festival during his performance of "Maggie's Farm". Tensions between Grossman and the other board members were running very high (at one point reportedly there was a scuffle and blows were briefly exchanged between Grossman and board member Alan Lomax). There are several versions of what happened during Dylan's performance and some claimed that Pete Seeger tried to disconnect the equipment. Seeger has been portrayed by Dylan's publicists as a folk "purist" who was one of the main opponents to Dylan's "going electric", but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, he said:

I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo Howlin' Wolf yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.

In November 1976 Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs" about then death row inmate Delbert Tibbs, who was later exonerated. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs.

Repudiation of Stalin

In 1982 Seeger performed at a benefit concert for Poland's Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer David Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of communism in its Soviet form. In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that "the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time." In his autobiography ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone'' (1993 and 1997 reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, "Should I apologize for all this? I think so." He went on to put his thinking in context:

How could Hitler have been stopped? Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to the League of Nations in '36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times check out pacifist Dave Dellinger's book, ''From Yale to Jail''.... At any rate, today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a "hard driver" and not a "supremely cruel misleader." I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza, of Southern White Democrats, of Franco Spain, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She's part African, part European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part Native American. Let's look ahead.

In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it." In recent years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his life-long activism, he also found himself attacked once again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, David Boaz—Voice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato Institute—wrote an opinion piece in ''The Guardian'', entitled "Stalin's Songbird" in which he excoriated ''The New Yorker'' and ''The New York Times'' for lauding Seeger. He characterized Seeger as "someone with a longtime habit of following the party line" who had only "eventually" parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he quoted lines from the Almanac Singers' May 1941 ''Songs for John Doe'', contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from ''Dear Mr. President'', issued in 1942, after the USA had entered the war.

In 2007, in response to criticism from a former banjo student—historian Ron Radosh, who was once a Trotskyite and now writes for the conservative ''National Review''—Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues": "''I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Do this job, no questions asked. / I got the Big Joe Blues.''" The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, "I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965]."

The banjo-playing narrator of John Updike's 1998 short story "Licks of Love in the Heart of the Cold War", who is sent by the US government as a "cultural ambassador" to the Soviet Union, confesses himself an ardent fan of Pete Seeger and the Weavers.

Selected discography

! Release Date	! Album Title	! Record Label
2009	''American Favorite Ballads, The Complete Collection Vol.1-5''	Smithsonian Folkways
2009	"Pete Seeger at Bard College," credited to "Ono Okoy and the Banshees," a student performance art group dedicated to "preserving the footsteps of Pete Seeger" by singing folk music and recording in his footsteps.	Appleseed Recordings
2008	''At 89''	Appleseed Recordings
2007	''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 5''	Smithsonian Folkways
2006	''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 4''	Smithsonian Folkways
2004	''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 3''	Smithsonian Folkways
2003	''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 2''	Smithsonian Folkways
2002	''American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 1''	Smithsonian Folkways
2000	''American Folk, Game and Activity Songs''	Smithsonian Folkways
1998	''Headlines and Footnotes: A Collection of Topical Songs''	Smithsonian Folkways
1998	''If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle''	Smithsonian Folkways
1998	''Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Little and Big)''	Smithsonian Folkways
1996		Living Music Records
1993	''Darling Corey/Goofing-Off Suite''	Smithsonian Folkways
1992	''American Industrial Ballads''	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	''Abiyoyo and Other Story Songs for Children''	Smithsonian Folkways
1990	''Folk Songs for Young People''	Smithsonian Folkways
1990	''American Folk Songs for Children''	Smithsonian Folkways
1989	''Traditional Christmas Carols''	Smithsonian Folkways
1980	''God Bless the Grass''	Folkways Records
1979	''Circles & Seasons''	Warner Bros. Records
1974	''Banks of Marble and Other Songs''	Folkways Records
1968	''Wimoweh and Other Songs of Freedom and Protest''	Folkways Records
1966	Dangerous Songs!?	Columbia Records
1966	God Bless The Grass	Columbia Records
1964	''Songs of Struggle and Protest, 1930-50''	Folkways Records
1964	''Broadsides - Songs and Ballads''	Folkways Records
1962	''12-String Guitar as Played by Lead Belly''	Folkways Records
1960	''Champlain Valley Songs''	Folkways Records
1959	''American Play Parties''	Folkways Records
1958	''Gazette, Vol. 1''	Folkways Records
1957	''American Ballads''	Folkways Records
1956	''With Voices Together We Sing''	Folkways Records
1956	''Love Songs for Friends and Foes''	Folkways Records
1955	"The Folksinger's Guitar Guide (Instruction)	(Folkways Records)	1955	''Bantu Choral Folk Songs''	Folkways Records
1954	''How to Play a 5-String Banjo (instruction)''	Folkways Records
1954	''The Pete Seeger Sampler''	Folkways Records

Tribute albums

In 1998 Appleseed Records issued a double-CD tribute album: ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone: the Songs of Pete Seeger'', which included readings by Studs Terkel and songs by Billy Bragg, Jackson Browne, Eliza Carthy, Judy Collins, Bruce Cockburn, Donovan, Ani DiFranco, Dick Gaughan, Nanci Griffith, Richie Havens, Indigo Girls, Roger McGuinn, Holly Near, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Bonnie Raitt, Martin Simpson, and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

In 2001, Appleseed release "If I Had a Song: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2." In 2003, it issued the double-CD ''Seeds: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Volume 3'', the final set in its trilogy of releases celebrating Seeger's music.

In April 2006 Bruce Springsteen released a collection of folk songs associated with Seeger's repertoire, titled, ''We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions'' (which some reviewers noted that, oddly, contained no songs actually composed by Seeger). Springsteen and his band also toured to sellout crowds in a series of concerts based on those sessions. He had previously performed the Seeger staple, "We Shall Overcome", on ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone''.

In the 1970s Harry Chapin released a song dedicated to Seeger called "Old Folkie".

Awards

Seeger has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including :

The Mid Hudson Civic Center Hall of Fame (2008)

Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the first public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York not-for-profit family entertainment venue, close to Seeger's home, in 1976. Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.

The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993)

The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994)

Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Honor (1994)

The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)

Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996)

Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 for his record "Pete" (1997)

The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba's highest honor for "his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism" (1999)

The Schneider Family Book Award for his children's picture book "The Deaf Musicians." (2007)

The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award (1986)

The Eugene V. Debs Award (1979)

Grammy Award for best traditional album of 2008 for his record "At 89" (2008)

A proposal to name the Walkway Over the Hudson in his honor.

The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)

The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2009)

Quotes

From Seeger

"Some may find them [songs] merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I." "I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other." "Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first." "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail." "I certainly should apologize for saying that Stalin was a hard driver rather than a very cruel leader. I don't speak out about a lot of things. I don't talk about slavery. A lot of white people in America could apologize for stealing land from the Indians and enslaving Africans. Europe could apologize for worldwide conquest. Mongolia could apologize for Genghis Khan. But I think the thing to do is look ahead."

"There is hope for the world." – in ''Pete Seeger: The Power of Song''.

"We sang about Alabama 1955, / But since 9-11, we wonder, will this world survive? / The world learned a lesson from Dr. King: / We can survive, we can, we will, and so we sing – // Don’t say it can’t be done, / The battle's just begun. / Take it from Dr. King, / You too can learn to sing, / So drop the gun." "I believe God is everywhere."

"Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life." – Seeger, October 17, 2009, at community concert in Beacon, New York

"I usually quote Plato, who said: It is very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music in the republic." 0:45 @

From others

Jim Musselman (founder of Appleseed Recordings), longtime friend and record producer for Pete Seeger: :He was one of the few people who invoked the First Amendment in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). Everyone else had said the Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination, and then they were dismissed. What Pete did, and what some other very powerful people who had the guts and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the committee and say, "I'm gonna invoke the First Amendment, the right of freedom of association...."

:...I was actually in law school when I read the case of ''Seeger v. United States'', and it really changed my life, because I saw the courage of what he had done and what some other people had done by invoking the First Amendment, saying, "We're all Americans. We can associate with whoever we want to, and it doesn't matter who we associate with." That's what the founding fathers set up democracy to be. So I just really feel it's an important part of history that people need to remember."

Raffi on his concert video "Raffi on Broadway" during the introduction of May There Always Be Sunshine:

"And this song is the one that I first heard Pete Seeger singing. And he tells me that it was written by a four-year-old boy in Russia. And it's just got four lines and it's been translated into a number of languages."

See also

Seeger family

Tao Rodríguez-Seeger – grandson

Tom Winslow – Clearwater singer and songwriter

Notes

References

Dunaway, David K. ''How Can I Keep from Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger''. [McGraw Hill (1981), DaCapo (1990)] Revised Edition. New York: Villard Trade Paperback, 2008 ISBN 0-07-018150-0, ISBN 0-07-018151-9, ISBN 0-306-80399-2, ISBN 0-345-50608-1.

Forbes, Linda C. "Pete Seeger on Environmental Advocacy, Organizing, and Education in the Hudson River Valley: An Interview with the Folk Music Legend, Author and Storyteller, Political and Environmental Activist, and Grassroots Organizer." ''Organization & Environment'', 17, No. 4, 2004: pp. 513–522.

Gardner, Elysa. "Seeger: A 'Power' in music, politics." USA Today, February 27, 2008. p. 8D.

Seeger, Pete. ''How to Play the Five-String Banjo'', New York : People’s Songs, 1948. 3rd edition, New York: Music Sales Corporation, 1969. ISBN 0-8256-0024-3.

Wilkinson, Alec. "The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music," ''The New Yorker'', April 17, 2006, pp. 44–53.

Further reading

Seeger, Pete, (Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz), ''The Incompleat Folksinger'', New York : Simon and Schuster, 1972. ISBN 067120954X (excerpts) Also, reprinted in a Bison Book edition, Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1992. ISBN 0803292163

External links

PBS's American Masters site for "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song"

Pete Seeger Appreciation Page, a site originally created by Jim Capaldi

"Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" documentary filmmaker Jim Brown interview on The Alcove with Mark Molaro, 2007

"To Hear Your Banjo Play" a movie at archive.org narrated by Pete Seeger

Discography for Pete Seeger on Folkways

"Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing?" Website by Seeger biographer David Dunaway

How Can I Keep From Singing?: A Seeger Family Tribute, Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. Online presentation of the March 2007 symposium and concert. All events are available as webcasts via the site. Retrieved August 25, 2009.

"We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger" on ''Democracy Now!'', September 2006 (video, audio, and print transcript)

"Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger Turns 90, Thousands Turn Out for All-Star Tribute Featuring Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Dozens More" on ''Democracy Now!'', May 2009 (video, audio, and print transcript)

On Point Radio: "The World According to Pete Seeger"

"Pete Seeger Is 86", Studs Terkel, ''The Nation'', May 16, 2005

Folk Legend Pete Seeger Looks Back - National Public Radio interview, July 2, 2005

Peter Seeger interviewed by Australian composer Andrew Ford (MP3 of interview first broadcast in 1999)

Pete Seeger, Folk Singer and Song Writer by Thomas Blair. Part of a series of Notable American Unitarians

1-hour Internet radio interview- Seeger discusses the music industry, the world in general, and more (August 2007).

Pete Seeger 90th birthday celebrations in Australia

Pete Seeger 90th birthday cake cutting at the Beacon Sloop Club.

Peter (Pete) Seeger, 1913 - Links to articles and videoclips on Seeger, his groups and his songs.

Gallery of photos of Pete Seeger performing in White Springs, FL, in 1977.

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br:Pete Seeger ca:Pete Seeger cs:Pete Seeger da:Pete Seeger de:Pete Seeger es:Pete Seeger fr:Pete Seeger ga:Pete Seeger gl:Pete Seeger it:Pete Seeger he:פיט סיגר hu:Pete Seeger nl:Pete Seeger ja:ピート・シーガー no:Pete Seeger pl:Pete Seeger pt:Pete Seeger ru:Сигер, Пит simple:Pete Seeger fi:Pete Seeger sv:Pete Seeger vi:Pete Seeger zh-yue:皮特西格 zh:皮特·西格

name	Woody Guthrie
background	solo_singer
birth name	Woodrow Wilson Guthrie
born	July 14, 1912Okemah, Oklahoma, United States
died	October 03, 1967New York City, New York, United States
instrument	Guitar, Vocal, Harmonica, Mandolin, Fiddle
genre	Folk, protest song
occupation	Singer-songwriter
years active	1930–1956
influences	Joe Hill, Will Rogers, Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Lead Belly
influenced	Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Cisco Houston, Jack Elliott, Phil Ochs, Joe Strummer, Bruce Springsteen
notable instruments	Martin 000-18, Gibson Southern Jumbo, Gibson J-45 }}

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan ''This Machine Kills Fascists'' displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land". Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the "Dust Bowl Troubadour". Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was seemingly not a member of any.

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntington's disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Woody Guthrie was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 1997.

Biography

Early life: 1912–30

Guthrie was born in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, to Nora Belle Tanner and Charles Edward Guthrie. His parents named him after Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey and the Democratic candidate soon to be elected President of the United States.

Charles Guthrie was an industrious businessman, owning at one time up to of land in Okfuskee County. He was actively involved in Oklahoma politics and was a Democratic candidate for office in the county. When Charles was making stump speeches, he would often be accompanied by his son. Charles Guthrie was involved in the 1911 lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson. His son wrote three songs about the event and said that his father was later a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan.

Guthrie's early family life was affected by several fires, including one that caused the loss of his family's home in Okemah. His sister Clara later died in a coal-oil (used for heating) fire when Guthrie was seven, and Guthrie's father was severely burned in a subsequent coal-oil fire. The circumstances of these fires, especially that in which Charley was injured, remain unclear. It is unknown whether they were accidents or the result of actions by Guthrie's mother Nora, who was afflicted with Huntington's disease, although the family did not know this at the time. It leads to dementia as well as muscular effects.

Nora Guthrie was eventually committed to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane, where she died in 1930 from Huntington's disease. Judging from the circumstances of her father's death by drowning, researchers suspect that George Sherman suffered from the same hereditary disease.

When Nora Guthrie was institutionalized, Woody Guthrie was 14. His father Charley was living and working in Pampa, Texas to repay his debts from unsuccessful real estate deals. Woody and his siblings were on their own in Oklahoma; they relied on their eldest brother Roy for support. The 14-year-old Woody Guthrie worked odd jobs around Okemah, begging meals and sometimes sleeping at the homes of family friends. According to one story, Guthrie made friends with an African-American blues harmonica player named "George", whom he would watch play at the man's shoe shine booth. Before long, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along with him. In another interview 14 years later, Guthrie claimed he learned how to play harmonica from a boyhood friend, John Woods, and that his earlier story about the shoe-shining player was false.

He seemed to have a natural affinity for music and easily learned to "play by ear". He began to use his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or coins. Guthrie easily learned old Irish ballads and traditional songs from the parents of friends. Although he did not excel as a student (he dropped out of high school in his fourth year and did not graduate), his teachers described him as bright. He was an avid reader on a wide range of topics. Friends recall his reading constantly.

Eventually, Guthrie's father sent for his son to come to Texas, but little changed for the aspiring musician. Guthrie, then 18, was reluctant to attend high school classes in Pampa and spent much time learning songs by busking on the streets and reading in the library at Pampa's city hall. He was growing as a musician, gaining practice by regularly playing at dances with his father's half-brother Jeff Guthrie, a fiddle player. At the library, he wrote a manuscript summarizing everything he had read on the basics of psychology. A librarian in Pampa shelved this manuscript under Guthrie's name, but it was later lost in a library reorganization.

1930s: traveling

At age 19, Guthrie met and married his first wife, Mary Jennings, with whom he had three children, Gwendolyn, Sue and Bill, all of whom would later die prematurely. With the advent of the Dust Bowl era, Guthrie left Texas, leaving Mary behind, and joined the thousands of Okies who were migrating to California looking for work. Many of his songs are concerned with the conditions faced by these working class people.

California

In the 1930s, Guthrie lived on Preston Avenue at Ewing St. in Echo Park, California; a Los Angeles, California neighborhood nicknamed "Red Hill" for the concentration of political radicals living there. During the late part of that decade, he achieved fame with radio partner Maxine "Lefty Lou" Crissman as a broadcast performer of commercial "hillbilly" music and traditional folk music. Guthrie was making enough money to send for his family, who were still living in Texas. While appearing on the commercial radio station KFVD, owned by a populist-minded New Deal Democrat Frank Burke, Guthrie began to write and perform some of the protest songs that would eventually appear on ''Dust Bowl Ballads''.

It was at KFVD that Guthrie met newscaster Ed Robbin. Robbin was impressed with a song Guthrie wrote about Thomas Mooney, believed by many to be a wrongly convicted man who was, at the time, a leftist ''cause célèbre''. Robbin, who became Guthrie's political mentor, introduced Guthrie to socialists and communists in Southern California, including Will Geer. He remained Guthrie's lifelong friend, and helped Guthrie book benefit performances in the communist circles in Southern California. Notwithstanding Guthrie's later claim that "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party", he was never a member of the Party. He was noted as a fellow traveler—an outsider who agreed with the platform of the party while not subject to party discipline. Guthrie requested to write a column for the Communist newspaper, ''The Daily Worker''. The column, titled "Woody Sez", appeared a total of 174 times from May 1939 to January 1940. "Woody Sez" was not explicitly political, but was about current events as observed by Guthrie. He wrote the columns in an exaggerated hillbilly dialect and usually included a small comic; they were published as a collection after Guthrie's death. Steve Earle said of Guthrie, "I don't think of Woody Guthrie as a political writer. He was a writer who lived in very political times".

With the outbreak of World War II and the nonaggression pact the Soviet Union had signed with Germany in 1939, the owners of KFVD radio did not want its staff "spinning apologia" for the Soviet Union. Both Robbin and Guthrie left the station. Without the daily radio show, his prospects for employment diminished, and Guthrie and his family returned to Pampa, Texas. Although Mary Guthrie was happy to return to Texas, the wanderlusting Guthrie soon after accepted Will Geer's invitation to New York City and headed east.

1940s: building a legacy

New York City

Arriving in New York, Guthrie, known as "the Oklahoma cowboy", was embraced by its leftist folk music community. For a time, he slept on a couch in Will Geer's apartment. Guthrie made what were his first recordings—several hours of conversation and songs recorded by the folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress—as well as an album, ''Dust Bowl Ballads'', for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey.

Guthrie was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". He thought the lyrics were unrealistic and complacent. Partly inspired by his experiences during a cross-country trip and his distaste for "God Bless America", he wrote his most famous song, "This Land Is Your Land", in February 1940; it was subtitled "God Blessed America for Me." The melody is adapted from an old gospel song, "Oh My Loving Brother." This was best known as "When The World's On Fire", sung by the country group The Carter Family. Guthrie signed the manuscript with the comment, "All you can write is what you see, Woody G., N.Y., N.Y., N.Y.". He protested against class inequality in the fourth and sixth verses:

:''As I went walking, I saw a sign there,'' :''And on the sign there, It said "no trespassing."'' [In another version, the sign reads "Private Property"] :''But on the other side, it didn't say nothing!'' :''That side was made for you and me.''

:''In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;'' :''By the relief office, I'd seen my people.'' :''As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,'' :''Is this land made for you and me?''

These verses were often omitted in subsequent recordings, sometimes by Guthrie. Although the song was written in 1940, it was four years before he recorded it for Moses Asch in April 1944., Sheet music was not produced and given to schools by Howie Richmond until later.

In March 1940, Guthrie was invited to play at a benefit hosted by The John Steinbeck Committee to Aid Farm Workers, to raise money for migrant workers. There he met the folksinger Pete Seeger, and the two men became good friends. Later, Seeger accompanied Guthrie back to Texas to meet other members of the Guthrie family. He recalled an awkward conversation with Mary Guthrie's mother, in which she asked for Seeger's help to persuade Guthrie to treat her daughter better.

Guthrie had some success in New York at this time as a guest on CBS's radio program ''Back Where I Come From'' and used his influence to get a spot on the show for his friend Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter. Ledbetter's Tenth Street apartment was a gathering spot for the leftwing musician circle in New York at the time, and Guthrie and Ledbetter were good friends, as they had busked together at bars in Harlem.

In September 1940 Guthrie was invited by the Model Tobacco Company to host their radio program, ''Pipe Smoking Time''. Guthrie was paid $180 a week, an impressive salary in 1940. He was finally making enough money to send regular payments back to Mary. He also brought her and the children to New York, where the family lived briefly in an apartment on Central Park West. The reunion represented Woody's desire to be a better father and husband. He said "I have to set [''sic''] real hard to think of being a dad". Guthrie quit after the seventh broadcast, claiming he had begun to feel the show was too restrictive when he was told what to sing. Disgruntled with New York, Guthrie packed up Mary and his children in a new car and headed west to California.

Pacific Northwest

In May 1941, after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie moved the family north to Washington state on the promise of a job. Gunther von Fritsch was directing a documentary about the Bonneville Power Administration's construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, and needed a narrator. Alan Lomax had recommended Guthrie to narrate the film and sing songs onscreen. The original project was expected to take 12 months, but as filmmakers became worried about casting such a political figure, they minimized Guthrie's role. The Department of the Interior hired him for one month to write songs about the Columbia River and the construction of the federal dams for the documentary's soundtrack. Guthrie toured the Columbia River and the Pacific Northwest. Guthrie said he "couldn't believe it, it's a paradise", which appeared to inspire him creatively. In one month Guthrie wrote 26 songs, including three of his most famous: "Roll On Columbia", "Pastures of Plenty", and "Grand Coulee Dam". The surviving songs were released as ''Columbia River Songs''. The film was never completed and was released only in a limited form.

At the conclusion of the month in Oregon and Washington, Guthrie wanted to return to New York. Tired of the continual uprooting, Mary Guthrie told him to go without her and the children. Although Guthrie would see Mary again, once on a tour through Los Angeles with the Almanac Singers, it was essentially the end of their marriage. Divorce was difficult, since Mary was a member of the Catholic Church, but she reluctantly agreed in December 1943.

Almanac Singers

Following the conclusion of his work in Washington State, Guthrie corresponded with Pete Seeger about Seeger's newly formed folk-protest group, the Almanac Singers. Guthrie returned to New York with plans to tour the country as a member of the group. The singers originally worked out of a loft in New York City hosting regular concerts called "hootenannys", a word Pete and Woody had picked up in their cross-country travels. The singers eventually outgrew the space and moved into the cooperative Almanac House in Greenwich Village.

Initially Guthrie helped write and sing what the Almanacs Singers termed "peace" songs; while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was in effect, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist line was that World War II was a capitalist fraud. After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, the group wrote anti-fascist songs. The members of the Almanac Singers and residents of the Almanac House were a loosely defined group of musicians, though the 'core' members included Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell and Lee Hays. In keeping with common socialist ideals, meals, chores and rent at the Almanac House were shared. The Sunday hootenannys were good opportunities to collect donation money for rent. Songs written in the Almanac House had shared songwriting credits among all the members, although in the case of "Union Maid", members would later state that Guthrie wrote the song, ensuring that his children would receive residuals.

In the Almanac House, Guthrie added authenticity to their work, since he was a "real" working-class Oklahoman. "There was the heart of America personified in Woody....And for a New York Left that was primarily Jewish, first or second generation American, and was desperately trying to get Americanized, I think a figure like Woody was of great, great importance", a friend of the group, Irwin Silber, would say. Woody routinely emphasized his working-class image, rejected songs he felt were not in the country blues vein he was familiar with, and rarely contributed to household chores. House member Agnes "Sis" Cunningham, another Okie, would later recall that Woody, "loved people to think of him as a real working class person and not an intellectual". Guthrie contributed songwriting and authenticity in much the same capacity for Pete Seeger's post-Almanac Singers project ''People's Songs'', a newsletter and booking organization for labor singers, founded in 1945.

''Bound for Glory''

Guthrie was a prolific writer, penning thousands of pages of unpublished poems and prose, many written while living in New York City. After a recording session with Alan Lomax, Lomax suggested Guthrie write an autobiography. Lomax thought Guthrie's descriptions of growing up were some of the best accounts he had read of American childhood. During this time Guthrie met Marjorie Mazia, a dancer in New York who would become his second wife. Mazia was an instructor at the prestigious Martha Graham Dance School, where she was assisting Sophie Maslow with her piece ''Folksay''. Based on the folklore and poetry collected by Carl Sandburg, ''Folksay'' included the adaptation of some of Guthrie's ''Dust Bowl Ballads'' for the dance. Guthrie continued to write songs and began work on his autobiography. The end product, ''Bound For Glory'' was completed due to the patient editing assistance of Mazia and was first published by E.P. Dutton in 1943. It is vividly told in the artist's down-home dialect, with the flair and imagery of a true storyteller. ''Library Journal'' complained about the "Too careful reproduction of illiterate speech." But Clifton Fadiman, reviewing the book in the ''New York Times'', paid the author a fine tribute: "Some day people are going to wake up to the fact that Woody Guthrie and the ten thousand songs that leap and tumble off the strings of his music box are a national possession like Yellowstone and Yosemite, and part of the best stuff this country has to show the world." A film adaptation of ''Bound for Glory'' was released in 1976.

The Asch recordings

In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he first recorded "This Land Is Your Land". Over the next few years, he recorded "Worried Man Blues", along with hundreds of other songs. These recordings would later be released by Folkways and Stinson Records, which had joint distribution rights. The Folkways recordings are available (through the Smithsonian Institute online shop); the most complete series of these sessions, culled from dates with Asch, is titled ''The Asch Recordings''.

World War II years

Guthrie believed performing his anti-fascist songs and poems at home was the best use of his talents; Guthrie lobbied the United States Army to accept him as a USO performer instead of conscripting him as a soldier in the draft. When Guthrie's attempts failed, his friends Cisco Houston and Jim Longhi pressured Guthrie to join the U.S. Merchant Marine. Guthrie followed their advice: he served as a mess man and dishwasher, and frequently sang for the crew and troops to buoy their spirits on transatlantic voyages. Guthrie made attempts to write about his experience in the Merchant Marine, but was never satisfied with the results. Longhi later wrote about these experiences in his book ''Woody, Cisco and Me''. The book offers a rare first-hand account of Guthrie during his Merchant Marine service. In 1945, Guthrie's association with communism made him ineligible for further service in the Merchant Marine, and he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

While he was on furlough from the Army, Guthrie and Marjorie were married. After his discharge, they moved into a house on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, and over time had four children. One of their children, Cathy, died as a result of a fire at age four, sending Guthrie into a serious depression. Their other children were Joady, Nora and Arlo. Arlo followed in his father's footsteps as a singer-songwriter. During this period, Guthrie wrote and recorded, ''Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child'', a collection of children's music, which includes the song "Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Little Darlin')", written when Arlo was about nine years old.

A 1948 crash of a plane carrying 28 Mexican farm workers from Oakland, California in deportation back to Mexico inspired Woody to write "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)".

Mermaid Avenue

The years living on Mermaid Avenue were among Guthrie's most productive periods as a writer. His extensive writings from this time were archived and maintained by Marjorie and later his estate, mostly handled by Guthrie's daughter, Nora. Several of the manuscripts contain scribblings by a young Arlo and the other Guthrie offspring.

During this time Ramblin' Jack Elliott studied extensively under Guthrie, visiting his home and observing how he wrote and performed. Elliott, like Bob Dylan later, idolized Guthrie and was inspired by his idiomatic performance style and repertoire. Due to Guthrie's suffering Huntington's disease, Dylan and Guthrie's son Arlo later claimed they learned much of Guthrie's performance style from Elliott. When asked about Arlo's claim, Elliott said, "I was flattered. Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody. Woody didn't teach me. He just said, If you want to learn something, just steal it—that's the way I learned from Lead Belly."

1950s and 1960s

Deteriorating health

By the late 1940s, Guthrie's health was declining, and his behavior was becoming extremely erratic. He received various diagnoses (including alcoholism and schizophrenia), but in 1952, it was finally determined that he was suffering from Huntington's disease, a genetic disorder inherited from his mother. Believing him to be a danger to their children, Marjorie suggested he return to California without her; they eventually divorced.

Upon his return to California, Guthrie lived in a compound owned by Will Geer; with blacklisted singers and actors, he waited out the anti-communist political climate. As his health worsened, he met and married his third wife, Anneke Van Kirk. They had a child, Lorinna Lynn. The couple moved to Fruit Cove, Florida briefly. They lived in a bus on land called Beluthahatchee, owned by his friend Stetson Kennedy. Guthrie's arm was hurt in a campfire accident when gasoline used to start the campfire exploded. Although he regained movement in the arm, he was never able to play the guitar again. In 1954, the couple returned to New York. Shortly after, Anneke filed for divorce, a result of the strain of caring for Guthrie. Anneke left New York and allowed friends to adopt Lorina Lynn. Lorinna had no further contact with her birth parents and died in 1973 at the age of nineteen in a car accident in California. After the divorce, Guthrie's second wife, Marjorie, re-entered his life; it was Marjorie who cared for him and assisted him until his death.

Guthrie, increasingly unable to control his muscles, was hospitalized at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital from 1956 to 1961, at Brooklyn State Hospital until 1966, and finally at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center until his death. Marjorie and the children visited Guthrie at Greystone every Sunday. They answered fan mail and played on the hospital grounds. Eventually a longtime fan of Guthrie invited the family to his nearby home for the Sunday visits. This lasted until Guthrie was moved to the Brooklyn State Hospital, which was closer to where Marjorie lived.

When Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie and whose early folk career was deeply inspired by him, learned that Guthrie was hospitalized in Brooklyn, he was determined to meet his idol. By this time, Guthrie was said to have his "good days" and "bad days". On the good days, Dylan would sing songs to him, and at the beginning Guthrie seemed to warm to Dylan. When the bad days came, Guthrie would berate Dylan. Reportedly on Dylan's last visit, Guthrie didn't recognize him. Dylan said that he made his trek to New York City primarily to seek out his idol. At the end of his life, Guthrie was largely alone except for family. Due to the progression of Huntington's, he was difficult to be around. Guthrie's illness was essentially untreated, due to a lack of information about the disease. His death helped raise awareness of the disease and led Marjorie to help found the Committee to Combat Huntington's Disease, which became the Huntington's Disease Society of America. None of Guthrie's three remaining children with Marjorie has developed symptoms of Huntington's. Two of Mary Guthrie's children (Gwendolyn and Sue) suffered from the disease. (Her son Bill died in an auto-train accident in Pomona, California, at age 23.) Both died at 41 years of age.

Folk revival and Guthrie's death

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by folk singers including Guthrie. These "folk revivalists" became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement. Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie's visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie's repertoire: "The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them." After learning of Guthrie's whereabouts, Bob Dylan regularly visited him. Guthrie died of complications of Huntington's disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.

Family

Married: Mary Esta Jennings (1933–1943), Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia (1945–1953), Anneke van Kirk (1953–1954)

Children (8): Gwendolyn Gail (1935–1976), Sue (1937–1978), Bill (1939–1962), Cathy Ann (1943–1947), Arlo Davy (1947-), Joady Ben (1948-), Nora (1950-), Lorinna Lynn (1954–1973)

Musical legacy

Foundation and archives

The Woody Guthrie Foundation is a non-profit organization that serves as administrator and caretaker of the Woody Guthrie Archives. The archive houses the largest collection of Guthrie material in the world. Guthrie's unrecorded written lyrics housed at the Archives have been the starting point of several albums including the Wilco and Billy Bragg albums ''Mermaid Avenue'' and ''Mermaid Avenue Vol. II'', created in 1998 sessions at the invitation of Guthrie's daughter Nora. The Native American (Diné) trio Blackfire also interpreted previously unreleased Guthrie lyrics at Nora's invitation. Jonatha Brooke's 2008 album, "The Works" (RELEASE: August 26, 2008, LABEL: Bad Dog Records) includes lyrics from the Woody Guthrie Archives set to music by Jonatha Brooke.

Folk Festival

The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is held annually in mid-July to commemorate Guthrie's life and music. The festival is held on the weekend closest to Guthrie's birth date (July 14) in Guthrie's hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. Planned and implemented annually by the Woody Guthrie Coalition, a non-profit corporation, the goal is simply to ensure Guthrie's musical legacy. The Woody Guthrie Coalition commissioned a local Creek Indian sculptor to cast a full-body bronze statue of Guthrie and his guitar, complete with the guitar's well-known inscription: "This machine kills fascists". The statue, sculpted by artist Dan Brook, stands along Okemah's main street in the heart of downtown and was unveiled in 1998, the inaugural year of the festival.

Jewish songs

Marjorie Mazia was born Marjorie Greenblatt and her mother, Aliza Greenblatt, was a well-known Yiddish poet. With her, Guthrie wrote numerous Jewish lyrics. Guthrie’s Jewish lyrics can be traced to the unusual collaborative relationship he had with his mother-in-law, who lived across from Guthrie and his family in Brooklyn in the 1940s. Guthrie (the Oklahoma troubadour) and Greenblatt (the Jewish wordsmith) often discussed their artistic projects and critiqued each other’s works, finding common ground in their shared love of culture and social justice, despite very different backgrounds. Their collaboration flourished in 1940s Brooklyn, where Jewish culture was interwoven with music, modern dance, poetry and anti-fascist, pro-labor, classic socialist activism. Guthrie was inspired to write songs that came directly out of this unlikely relationship, both personal and political; he identified the problems of Jews with those of his fellow Okies and other oppressed peoples.

These lyrics were rediscovered by Nora Guthrie and were set to music by the Jewish Klezmer group The Klezmatics with the release of ''Happy Joyous Hanukkah'' on JMG Records in 2007. The Klezmatics also released ''Wonder Wheel — Lyrics by Woody Guthrie'', an album of spiritual lyrics put to music composed by the band. The album, produced by Danny Blume, was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album.

Tributes

Since his death, artists have paid tribute to Guthrie by covering his songs or by dedicating songs to him. One of the first artists to do so was Scottish folk artist Donovan, who covered Guthrie's "Car, Car (Riding in My Car)" on his 1965 debut album ''What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid''. On January 20, 1968, three months following Guthrie's death, Harold Leventhal produced ''A Tribute to Woody Guthrie'' at New York City's Carnegie Hall. Performers included Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and The Band, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Odetta, and others. Leventhal repeated the tribute on September 12, 1970 at the Hollywood Bowl. Recordings of the two concerts were eventually compiled as an album. The legendary Irish folk singer, Christy Moore, was also strongly influenced by Woody in his seminal 1970 album ''Prosperous'', giving renditions of "The Ludlow Massacre" and Bob Dylan's "Song to Woody". Bob Dylan also penned, ''Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie'' as a later tribute song to Guthrie. Bruce Springsteen also performed a cover of Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" on his live album ''Live 1975-1985''. In the introduction to the song, Springsteen referred to it as "just about one of the most beautiful songs ever written."

In September 1996 Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Case Western Reserve University cohosted ''Hard Travelin': The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie'', a 10-day conference of panel sessions, lectures, and concerts. The conference became the first in what would become the museum's annual American Music Masters Series conference. Highlights included Arlo Guthrie's keynote address, a Saturday night musical jamboree at Cleveland's Odeon Theater, and a Sunday night concert at Severance Hall, the home of the Cleveland Orchestra. Musicians performing over the course of the conference included Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the Indigo Girls, Ellis Paul, Jimmy LaFave, Ani DiFranco, and others. In 1999, Wesleyan University Press published a collection of essays from the conference and DiFranco's record label, Righteous Babe, released a compilation of the Severance Hall concert, '''Til We Outnumber 'Em'', in 2000.

From 1999 to 2002 the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service presented the traveling exhibit, ''This Land Is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie''. In collaboration with Nora Guthrie, the Smithsonian exhibition draws from rarely seen objects, illustrations, film footage, and recorded performances to reveal a complex man who was at once poet, musician, protester, idealist, itinerant hobo, and folk legend.

In 2003, Jimmy LaFave produced a Woody Guthrie tribute show called ''Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway''. The ensemble show toured around the country and included a rotating cast of singer-songwriters individually performing Guthrie's songs. Interspersed between songs were Guthrie's philosophical writings read by a narrator. In addition to LaFave, members of the rotating cast included Ellis Paul, Slaid Cleaves, Eliza Gilkyson, Joel Rafael, husband-wife duo Sarah Lee Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's granddaughter) and Johnny Irion, Michael Fracasso, and The Burns Sisters. Oklahoma songwriter Bob Childers, sometimes called "the Dylan of the Dust", served as narrator. When word spread about the tour, performers began contacting LaFave, whose only prerequisite was to have an inspirational connection to Guthrie. Each artist chose the Guthrie songs that he or she would perform as part of the tribute. LaFave said, "It works because all the performers are Guthrie enthusiasts in some form". The inaugural performance of the Ribbon of Highway tour took place on February 5, 2003 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The abbreviated show was a featured segment of ''Nashville Sings Woody'', yet another tribute concert to commemorate the music of Woody Guthrie held during the Folk Alliance Conference. The cast of ''Nashville Sings Woody'', a benefit for the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, also included Arlo Guthrie, Marty Stuart, Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Janis Ian, and others.

Woody and Marjorie Guthrie were honored at a musical celebration featuring Billy Bragg and the band Brad on October 17, 2007 at Webster Hall in New York City. Steve Earle also performed. The event was hosted by actor/activist Tim Robbins to benefit the Huntington¹s Disease Society of America to commemorate the organization's 40th Anniversary.

Copyright controversy

In his recordings in the early 1940s Woody Guthrie included the following “Copyright Warning”:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” Currently the copyright in much of Woody's songs is claimed by a number of different organizations.

When JibJab published a parody of Woody's song This Land Is Your Land to comment on the US 2004 Presidential election, Ludlow Music attempted to have this parody taken down, claiming it breached their copyright. JibJab then sued to affirm their parody was Fair Use, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) acting for them. As part of their research on the case they found that the song had actually been first published by Woody Guthrie in 1945, although the copyright was not registered until 1956. This meant that when Ludlow applied to renew the copyright in 1984 they were 11 years too late, and the song had in fact been in the public domain since 1973 (28 years from first publication). Ludlow agreed that JibJab were free to distribute their parody. In an interview on NPR Arlo Guthrie said that he thought the parody was hilarious and he thought Woody would have loved it too. Ludlow still claims copyright in this song; however, it is not clear what the basis of this claim is.

Posthumous honors

Pete Seeger had the Sloop ''Woody Guthrie'' built for an organization he founded, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. It was launched in 1978. Now operated by the Beacon Sloop Club, it serves to educate people about sailing and the history and environs of the Hudson River.

Although Guthrie's catalogue never brought him many awards while he was alive, in 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the same year Bob Dylan was inducted (much of Dylan's initial folk music work was heavily influenced by Guthrie), and in 2000 he was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1987 "Roll On Columbia" was chosen as the official Washington State Folk Song, and in 2001 Guthrie's "Oklahoma Hills" was chosen to be the official state folk song of Oklahoma.

On September 26, 1992, The Peace Abbey, a multi-faith retreat center located in Sherborn, Massachusetts, awarded Guthrie their Courage of Conscience Award for his social activism and artistry in song which conveyed the plight of the common person.

On June 26, 1998, as part of its Legends of American Music series, the United States Postal Service issued 45 million 32-cent stamps honoring folk musicians Huddie Ledbetter, Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Josh White. The four musicians were represented on sheets of 20 stamps.

In July 2001, CB's Gallery in New York City began hosting an annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Bash concert featuring multiple performers. This event moved to the Bowery Poetry Club in 2007 after CB's Gallery and CBGB, its parent club, closed.

In 2005, the Boston-based punk band Dropkick Murphys recorded "I'm Shipping Up to Boston". The song's lyrics are from a poem written by Guthrie, and the music was composed by the band. The song was released in 2005 on the album ''The Warrior's Code'' and gained fame when it was used as part of the soundtrack for the 2006 movie ''The Departed''.

In 2006, The Klezmatics set Jewish lyrics written by Guthrie to music. The resulting album, ''Wonder Wheel'', won the Grammy award for best contemporary world music album.

On April 27, 2007, Guthrie was one of four Okemah natives inducted into Okemah's Hall of Fame during the town's Pioneer Day weekend of festivities.

On February 10, 2008, ''The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949'', a rare live recording released in cooperation with the Woody Guthrie Foundation, was the recipient of a Grammy Award in the category Best Historical Album. Less than two years later, Guthrie was again nominated for a Grammy in the same category with the 2009 release of ''My Dusty Road'' on Rounder Records.

Selected discography

Many Guthrie tracks have been repeatedly repackaged and reordered. Items here are listed in order of the most recent published date, not original recording date.

!Year	!Title	!Record Label
1940	''Dust Bowl Ballads''	Folkways Records
1972	''Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie''
1987	''Columbia River Collection''	Rounder Records
1988	''Folkways: The Original Vision'' (Woody and Leadbelly)	Smithsonian Folkways
1988	''Library of Congress Recordings''	Rounder Records
1989	''Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs''	Smithsonian Folkways
1990	''Struggle''	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	''Cowboy Songs on Folkways''	Smithsonian Folkways
1991	''Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child''	Smithsonian Folkways
1992	''Nursery Days''	Smithsonian Folkways
1994	''Long Ways to Travel: The Unreleased Folkways Masters, 1944–1949''	Smithsonian Folkways
1996	''Almanac Singers''	UNI/MCA
1996	''Ballads of Sacco & Vanzetti''	Smithsonian Folkways
1997		Smithsonian Folkways
1997		Smithsonian Folkways
1998		Smithsonian Folkways
1999		Smithsonian Folkways
2007	''The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949''	Woody Guthrie Publications
2009	''My Dusty Road''	Rounder Records

See also

Arlo Guthrie

List of songs by Woody Guthrie

List of albums by Woody Guthrie

Lynching of Laura and Lawrence Nelson

Pete Seeger

References

Citations

Printed sources

Further reading/listening

Hogeland, William (March 14, 2004), Emulating the Real and Vital Guthrie, Not St. Woody, New York Times.

Down Home Radio Show. LeadBelly & Woody Guthrie live on WNYC Radio, Dec. 1940. Audio re-broadcast of a 1940 radio show. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Earle, Steve. Woody Guthrie. ''The Nation'', July 21, 2003. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Scanned images of some of Woody Guthrie's original works. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Jackson, Mark Allen. ''Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie''. University Press of Mississippi, January, 2007. ISBN 978-1-60473-102-6

La Chapelle, Peter. Is Country Music Inherently Conservative? History News Network. Nov. 12, 2007. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

La Chapelle, Peter. ''Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California''. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-520-24888-5 (hb); ISBN 978-0-520-24889-2 (pb)

Library of Congress. Timeline of Woody Guthrie (1912–1967). Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Library of Congress. Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940–1950. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Marroquin, Danny. Walking the Long Road. PopMatters.com. Aug. 4, 2006. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Public Broadcasting Service. ''Woody Guthrie: Ain't Got No Home''. Documentary from PBS' American Masters series, July 2006. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

University of Oregon. ''Roll On Columbia: Woody Guthrie and the Bonneville Power Administration''. Video documentary. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

University of Virginia. Guthrie singing "This Land Is Your Land". MP3 recording. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

Symphony Silicon Valley Concert Recordings. David Amram's ''Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie'' Recorded September 30, 2007. Audio recording. Retrieved on January 11, 2008.

WoodyGuthrie.de. Woody Guthrie Related Audio. Miscellaneous Real Audio files featuring Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Alan Lomax and others. Retrieved on January 29, 2008.

External links

The Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives

''Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940–1950'', Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. American Memory presentation of archival correspondence written by Woody Guthrie to the staff of the Archive of American Folk Song. Retrieved August 31, 2009

Woody Guthrie in NYC, 1943 - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Woody Guthrie's Discography on Smithsonian Folkways

Songfacts interview with Anna Canoni (Guthrie's granddaughter)

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Guthrie, Woody

Voices of Oklahoma interview with Nora Guthrie. First person interview conducted with Nora Guthrie speaking about her father, Woody Guthrie, on October 7, 2010. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.

Category:1912 births Category:1967 deaths Category:American autobiographers Category:American buskers Category:American folk singers Category:American folk-song collectors Category:American male singers Category:American sailors Category:American singer-songwriters Category:American socialists Category:Cub Records artists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Woody Category:Industrial Workers of the World members Category:Musicians from Oklahoma Category:Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Echo Park, Los Angeles Category:People from Okemah, Oklahoma Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Shack dwellers Category:Squatters Category:Songster musicians Category:Songwriters from Oklahoma Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Vanguard Records artists Category:Anti-fascists Category:American folk guitarists Category:American harmonica players Category:American mandolinists Category:American violinists Category:Rounder Records artists

ast:Woody Guthrie ca:Woody Guthrie cs:Woody Guthrie da:Woody Guthrie de:Woody Guthrie es:Woody Guthrie eu:Woody Guthrie fr:Woody Guthrie ga:Woody Guthrie gl:Woody Guthrie it:Woody Guthrie he:וודי גאת'רי la:Woody Guthrie lv:Vudijs Gatrijs nl:Woody Guthrie ja:ウディ・ガスリー no:Woody Guthrie nn:Woody Guthrie pl:Woody Guthrie pt:Woody Guthrie ru:Гатри, Вуди simple:Woody Guthrie fi:Woody Guthrie sv:Woody Guthrie tr:Woody Guthrie uk:Вуді Гатрі

name	Denis Leary
birth name	Denis Colin Leary
birth date	August 18, 1957
birth place	Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.
medium	Stand up, Music, Television, Film
active	1987–present
genre	Observational comedy, Black comedy, Insult comedy, Satire, Musical comedy
subject	American culture, Current events, Libertarianism, Recreational drug use, Drinking culture
influences	Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Michael Gough, Sam Kinison
spouse	Ann Lembeck (1989–present; 2 children)
notable work	''No Cure for Cancer''''Lock 'n Load''''Gus'', in ''The Ref''''Michael McCann'', in ''The Thomas Crown Affair''''Diego'', in ''Ice Age''''Tommy Gavin'', in ''Rescue Me''''Bill'', in ''The Sandlot''
website	http://denisleary.com
footnotes	}}

Denis Colin Leary (born August 18, 1957) is an American actor, comedian, singer, writer and director. Leary is known for his biting comedic style and his chain smoking. He is the star and co-creator of the television show ''Rescue Me'', which began its seventh and final season in July 2011.

Early life

Leary was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants. His mother, Nora (née Sullivan), was a maid, and his father, John Leary, was an auto mechanic. As both of his parents are from Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland, Leary holds both Irish and American citizenship. Through marriage, Leary is a third cousin of talk show host Conan O'Brien. He attended Saint Peter-Marian High School, in Worcester.

Leary is a graduate of Emerson College, in Boston. While at Emerson, he met fellow comic Mario Cantone, who to this day Leary considers his closest friend. Comedian Steven Wright and actress Gina Gershon also attended Emerson at the same time as Leary. At the school, he founded the Emerson Comedy Workshop, a troupe that continues on-campus as of 2011. After graduating with the Emerson Class of 1979, he took a job at the school teaching comedy writing classes and maintained the job for five years. Leary received an honorary doctorate and spoke briefly at his alma mater's undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 16, 2005; he is thus credited as "Dr. Denis Leary" on the cover of his 2009 book, ''Why We Suck''.

Career

Leary began working as a comedian in the Boston comedy scene of the 1980s, where he hosted his own show at the underground club "Play It Again Sam's". He also wrote and appeared on a local comedy series, ''Lenny Clarke's Late Show'', hosted by his friend Lenny Clarke and written by Boston comedy writer Martin Olson. Leary and Clarke both spoke about their early affiliations and influences in the Boston comedy scene in the documentary film ''When Standup Stood Out'' (2006). It was during this time that he developed his stage persona. He also appeared in skits on the MTV game show ''Remote Control'', playing such characters as Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, the "brother" of co-host Colin Quinn, and artist Andy Warhol.

Leary first earned fame when he ranted about R.E.M. in an early 1990s MTV sketch. Several other commercials for MTV quickly followed, in which Leary would rant at high speeds about a variety of topics, playing off the then-popular and growing alternative scene. He released two records of his stand-up comedy: ''No Cure for Cancer'' (1993) and ''Lock 'n Load'' (1997). In late 2004, he released the EP ''Merry F#%$in' Christmas'', which included a mix of new music, previously unreleased recordings, and some tracks from ''Lock 'n Load''.

In 1993, his sardonic song about the stereotypical American male, "Asshole", achieved much notoriety. It was voted #1 in an Australian youth radio poll (the Triple J Hottest 100). The song was used as part of the Holsten Pils series of ads in the UK, in which Leary was participating, with adapted lyrics criticizing a drunk driver.

Leary has appeared as an actor in over 40 movies, including ''The Sandlot'', as Scott's stepfather Bill, ''Monument Ave.'', ''The Matchmaker'', ''The Ref'', ''Suicide Kings'', ''Dawg'', ''Wag the Dog'', ''Demolition Man'', ''The Thomas Crown Affair'', and ''Operation Dumbo Drop''. He had a small part in Oliver Stone's ''Natural Born Killers'', playing a ranting inmate during a prison riot; his part was eventually cut, but can be seen on the Special Edition DVD. He has had the lead role in two television series, ''The Job'' and the FX cable-network series ''Rescue Me'', of which he is also co-creator. He plays Tommy Gavin, a New York City firefighter dealing with alcoholism, family dysfunction, and other issues in post-9/11 New York City. He received Emmy nominations in 2006 and 2007 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

In addition, Leary has provided voices for characters in animated films, such as a fire-breathing dragon named Flame in the series ''The Agents'', a prehistoric saber-toothed cat named Diego in the ''Ice Age'' film trilogy, and the pugnacious ladybug Francis in ''A Bug's Life''. He has produced numerous movies, television shows, and specials through his production company, Apostle; these include Comedy Central's ''Shorties Watchin' Shorties'', the stand-up special ''Denis Leary's Merry F#$%in' Christmas'', and the movie ''Blow''. As a Boston Red Sox fan, he narrated the official 2004 World Series film. In 2006, Leary and Lenny Clarke appeared on television during a Red Sox telecast and, upon realizing that Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis is Jewish, delivered a criticism of Mel Gibson's antisemitic comments. As an ice hockey fan, Leary hosted the National Hockey League video ''NHL's Greatest Goals''. In 2003, he was the subject of the ''Comedy Central Roast of Denis Leary''.

Leary did the TV voiceover for MLB 2K8 advertisements, where he used his trademark rant style in baseball terms, and ads for the 2009 Ford F-150 pickup truck. He has also appeared in commercials for Hulu and DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket package. Leary was a producer of the Fox Broadcasting series ''Canterbury's Law'', and wrote and directed its pilot episode. ''Canterbury's Law'' aired in the spring of 2008 and was canceled after eight episodes.

On September 9, 2008, Leary hosted the sixth annual ''Fashion Rocks'' event, which aired on CBS. In December of the year, he appeared in a video on funnyordie.com critiquing a list of some of his "best" films, titled "Denis Leary Remembers Denis Leary Movies". Also in in 2008, Leary voiced a guest role as himself on the "Lost Verizon" episode of ''The Simpsons''.

On March 21, 2009 Leary began the "Rescue Me Comedy Tour" in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The 11-date tour, featuring ''Rescue Me'' co-stars Lenny Clarke and Adam Ferrara, was Leary's first stand-up comedy tour in 12 years. The Comedy Central special ''Douchebags and Donuts'', filmed during the tour, debuted on American television January 16, 2011, with a DVD release on January 18, 2011.

On January 1, 2010, both Leary and Lenny Clarke sang the Neil Diamond song "Sweet Caroline" at the 2010 NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park, flanked by members of the Boston and Worcester Fire Departments. Nine days later, Leary sang at Road Recovery, on New York City's The Bowery, along with Peter Frampton, John Varvatos and Leary's band The Enablers.

He is currently writing the American adaptation of British comedy ''Sirens''.

Personal life

Leary has been married to writer Ann Lembeck Leary since 1989. They met when he was her instructor in an English class at Emerson College. They have two children, son John Joseph "Jack" (born 1990) and daughter Devin (born 1992). Ann Leary published a memoir, An Innocent, a Broad, about the premature birth of their son on an overseas visit to England. She has also written a novel, Outtakes From a Marriage, which was published in 2008.

Leary is an ice hockey fan and has his own backyard hockey rink at his home in Connecticut, with piping installed under the ice surface to help the ice stay frozen. His favorite National Hockey League team is the Boston Bruins. He is also a Boston Red Sox fan, as well as a fan of the Green Bay Packers.

Leary told Glenn Beck, "I was a life-long Democrat, but now at my age, I've come to realize that the Democrats suck, and the Republicans suck, and basically the entire system sucks. But you have to go within the system to find what you want." Leary supported Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

Leary has said of his religious beliefs, "I'm a lapsed Catholic in the best sense of the word. You know, I was raised with Irish parents, Irish immigrant parents. My parents, you know, prayed all the time, took us to Mass. And my father would sometimes swear in Gaelic. It doesn't get more religious than that. But, no, after a while, they taught us wrong. I didn't raise my kids with the fear of God. I raised my kids with the sense of, you know, to me, Jesus was this great guy...."

Leary Firefighters Foundation

On December 3, 1999, six firefighters from Leary's hometown of Worcester were killed in the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire. Among the dead were Leary's cousin Jerry Lucey and his close childhood friend Lt. Tommy Spencer. In response, the comedian founded the Leary Firefighters Foundation. Since its creation in the year 2000, the foundation has distributed over $2.5 million (USD) to fire departments in the Worcester, Boston, and New York City areas for equipment, training materials, new vehicles, and new facilities. Leary won $125,000 for the foundation on the game show ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire''. Leary has close ties with 107.3 WAAF-FM, which in 2000 released the station album ''Survive This!'' Part of the proceeds from this album were donated to the Leary Firefighters Foundation.

A separate fund run by Leary's foundation, the Fund for New York's Bravest, has distributed over $2 million to the families of the 343 firemen killed in the September 11 attacks in 2011 in addition to providing funding for necessities such as a new mobile command center, first responder training, and a high-rise simulator for the New York City Fire Department's training campus. This new fund was established because the families of the Worcester fire did not want to include New York families into the fund. As a result, Leary created a separate fund for New York.

As the foundation's president, Leary has been active in all of the fundraising, usually presenting large checks and donated equipment personally. The close relationship he has developed with the FDNY as well as with individual firefighters across the New York/New England area has resulted in Leary's most recent television show, ''Rescue Me'', a comedy-drama on FX. In the pilot episode of the show, he is seen wearing a Leary Firefighter Foundation 9-11 Memorial T-shirt.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Leary donated over a dozen boats to the New Orleans Fire Department to aid in rescue efforts in future disasters. The foundation also rebuilt entire NOLA firehouses.

Controversies

Statements concerning autism

In his 2008 book ''Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid'', Leary said:

In response to the controversy, Leary stated that the quote was taken out of context and that in that paragraph he had been talking about the trend of overdiagnosis of autism, which he attributed to American parents seeking an excuse for behavioral problems and underperformance. Later, he apologized to parents with autistic children whom he had offended.

Allegations of plagiarism

For many years, Leary had been friends with fellow comedian Bill Hicks. When Leary's comedy album ''No Cure for Cancer'' was released, many people believed Leary had stolen Hicks' act and material. The friendship ended abruptly as a result. Hicks once told an interviewer: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his [Leary's] act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did".

At least three stand-up comedians have gone on the record stating they believe Leary stole Hicks' material, comedic persona and attitude. One similar routine was about the band Judas Priest, during which Hicks says, "I don’t think we lost a cancer cure."

During a 2003 roast of Denis Leary, comedian Lenny Clarke, a friend of Leary's, said there was a carton of cigarettes backstage from Bill Hicks with the message, "Wish I had gotten these to you sooner." This joke was cut from the final broadcast.

The feud is also mentioned in Cynthia True's biography ''American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story'': }}

According to the book, True said upon hearing a tape of Leary's album ''No Cure for Cancer'', "Bill was furious. All these years, aside from the occasional jibe, he had pretty much shrugged off Leary's lifting. Comedians borrowed, stole stuff and even bought bits from one another. Milton Berle and Robin Williams were famous for it. This was different. Leary had, practically line for line, taken huge chunks of Bill's act and ''recorded'' it."

In a 2008 appearance on ''The Opie and Anthony Show'', comedian Louis CK claimed that Leary stole his "I'm an asshole" routine, which was then expanded upon and turned into a hit song by Leary. On a later episode of the same show, Leary challenged this assertion by claiming that he (Leary) co-wrote the song with Chris Phillips.

Awards

! Year	! Result	! Award	! Category	! Film/Show
2009		Golden Globe Awards	Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
2008		Emmy Awards	Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie	''Recount'' (2008)
2007		Emmy Awards	Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
2007		Satellite Awards	Best Actor in a Series, Drama	''Rescue Me''
2007		Prism Awards	Performance in a Drama Series, Multi-Episode Storyline	''Rescue Me''
2006		Emmy Awards	Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series	''Rescue Me''
2006		Satellite Awards	Best Actor in a Series, Drama	''Rescue Me''
2006		Prism Awards	Performance in a Drama Series, Multi-Episode Storyline	''Rescue Me''
2005		Emmy Awards	Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series	''Rescue Me''
2005		Golden Globe Awards	Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama	''Rescue Me''
2005		Satellite Awards	Best Actor in a Series, Drama	''Rescue Me''
2003		Kids' Choice Awards	Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie
2003		DVD Exclusive Awards	Best Actor
2002		Television Critics Association Awards	Individual Achievement in Comedy
2000		Blockbuster Entertainment Awards	Favorite Supporting Actor - Drama/Romance
1996		CableACE Awards	Best Directing: Comedy	''National Lampoon's Favorite Deadly Sins'' (1995)
1992		Edinburgh International Arts Festival	Critic's Award	''No Cure for Cancer'' (1992)
1992		BBC Festival	Recommendation Award	''No Cure for Cancer'' (1992)

Filmography

Films

''Strictly Business (film) ''The Sandlot'' ''The Ref'' Natural Born Killers#Alternate versions ''National Lampoon's Favorite Deadly Sins'' ''Underworld (1996 film) ''The Second Civil War'' ''Monument Ave.'' ''True Crime (1999 film) ''Sand (film) ''Double Whammy (2001 film) ''Dawg (film) ''When Stand Up Stood Out'' ''Ice Age: The Meltdown'' ''Recount (film) ''Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs'' ''The Amazing Spider-Man (2012 film)

Year
1987	Long Walk to Forever (short film)>Long Walk to Forever''	Newt
1991	Strictly Business'' ||	Jake	cameo appearance>cameo
rowspan="5"	1993	|	Bill
''Who's the Man?''	Sergeant Cooper
''Demolition Man (film)	Demolition Man''	Edgar Friendly
''Loaded Weapon 1	National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1''
''Judgment Night (film)	Judgment Night''	Fallon
rowspan="3"	1994	|	Gus
''Gunmen (film)	Gunmen''	Armor O'Malley
''Natural Born Killers''	Prison Inmate || director's cut, cameo
rowspan="3"	1995	|	Jake	TV-movie, also directed segment "Lust"
''Operation Dumbo Drop''	CW3 David Poole
''The Neon Bible (film)	The Neon Bible''	Frank
rowspan="2"	1996	Underworld'' ||	Johnny Crown/Johnny Alt
''Two If by Sea''	Francis "Frank" O'Brien
rowspan="7"	1997	|	Vinnie Franko	TV-movie
''Love Walked In (1997 film)	Love Walked In''	Jack Hanaway
''Subway Stories''	Guy in wheel chair
''Wag the Dog''	Fad King
''Suicide Kings''	Lono Veccio
''The Real Blonde''	The Real Blonde#Cast>Doug
''The Matchmaker (1997 film)	The MatchMaker''	Nick
rowspan="4"	1998	|	Bobby O'Grady	a.k.a ''Snitch'', also uncredited writer
''Wide Awake (1998 film)	Wide Awake''	Mr. Beal
''Small Soldiers''	Gil Mars
''A Bug's Life''	List of A Bug's Life characters#Francis>Francis
rowspan="4"	1999	True Crime'' ||	Bob Findley
''Jesus' Son''	Wayne
''Do Not Disturb (1999 film)	Do Not Disturb''	Simon
''The Thomas Crown Affair (1999 film)	The Thomas Crown Affair''	Det. Michael McCann
rowspan="3"	2000	Sand'' ||	Teddy
''Lakeboat''	The Fireman
''Company Man (film)	Company Man''	Officer Fry
rowspan="2"	2001	Double Whammy'' ||	Det. Raymond Pluto	also uncredited producer
''Final (2001 film)	Final''
rowspan="3"	2002	Dawg'' ||	Douglas "Dawg" Munford	a.k.a ''Bad Boy''
''Ice Age (film)	Ice Age''	List of characters in the Ice Age films#Diego>Diego
''The Secret Lives of Dentists''	Slater
rowspan="3"	2003	|	Himself	documentary film>documentary
''The Curse of the Bambino''	Himself
''Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino''	Himself
2006	|	List of characters in the Ice Age films#Diego>Diego	voice
2008	Recount'' ||	Michael Whouley	TV-movie
2009	|	List of characters in the Ice Age films#Diego>Diego	voice
rowspan="2">2012	The Amazing Spider-Man'' ||	George Stacy#Film>George Stacy	filming
''Ice Age: Continental Drift''	List of characters in the Ice Age films#Diego>Diego

TV shows

Title ''Remote Control (game show) ''Afterdrive'' ''Tonight with Jonathan Ross'' ''Mike & Spike'' ''Mike & Spike'' ''The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder'' ''Fantasy World Cup'' ''Space Ghost Coast to Coast'' ''The Rosie O'Donnell Show'' ''The Job (TV series) ''Contest Searchlight'' ''Crank Yankers'' ''Rescue Me (TV series) ''The Charlie Rose Show'' ''Rachael Ray (TV series) ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' ''The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson'' >''The Daily Show'' ''Late Show with David Letterman'' ''Conan (TV series)

Year	|	Role	Note(s)
1987	Remote Control'' ||	Various roles	All episodes
1990	|	Himself	Talk show
1992	|		2 episodes
1994	|	Charles S. Baby	Episode: "Person To Insect"
rowspan="2"	1995	|	Charles S. Baby	Episode: "Person To Shoe"
''Mike & Spike''	Charles S. Baby
1998	|	Himself	Episode dated 24 April 1998
1998	|	Himself	Episode #1.15
1998	|	Himself	Episode: "Waiting For Edward"
2001–2002	|	Himself	Guest at two episodes
2001–2002	The Job'' ||	Mike McNeil	Also writer and producer<	All episodes
2002	|	Fictionalized version of himself	All episodes
2002	|	Joe Smith (voice)	Episode: 1.2
2004–2011	Rescue Me'' ||	Tommy Gavin	nominated for Golden Globe and Emmyalso creator, producer and writer
rowspan="4"	2005	|	Himself	one episode
''Last Call with Carson Daly''	Himself
''The Tony Danza Show''	Himself
''The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch''	Himself
rowspan="5"	2006	Rachael Ray'' ||	Himself	1 episode
''Late Show with David Letterman''	Himself
''Late Night with Conan O'Brien''	Himself
''Live with Regis and Kathie Lee''	Himself
''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992 TV series)	The Tonight Show with Jay Leno''	Himself
rowspan="3"	2007	|	Himself	Episode dated 12 September 2007
''The Ellen DeGeneres Show''	Himself
''The View (U.S. TV series)	The View''	Himself
rowspan="5"	2008	|	Himself	3 episodes (two of them in last seasons)
''The Simpsons''	Himself
''Family Guy''	Himself
	''The Bonnie Hunt Show''	Himself
	''Jimmy Kimmel Live!''	Himself
rowspan="2"	2009	|	Himself	14 episodes (1997–2011)
	''The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien''	Himself
	2010	|	Himself	Episode dated 26 July 2010
	2011	Conan'' ||	Himself	Episode dated 12 January 2011

TV commercials

Quaker State Motor Oil

MTV promos (1991–93)

Lotus Notes

Holsten O'Pils beer

2009, 2010 Ford F-150 (voice only)

Hulu (2009)

Direct TV Sunday Ticket (2009)

Discography

1993: ''No Cure for Cancer''

1997: ''Lock 'n Load''

2004: ''Merry F#%$in' Christmas''

Bibliography

2008: ''Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid'', Viking ISBN 978-0-670-03160-3

2010: ''Suck on This Year : LYFAO @ 140 Characters or Less'', Viking ISBN 978-0-670-02289-2

References

External links

DenisLeary.com - Official Site.

Leary Firefighters Foundation

Category:1957 births Category:Actors from Massachusetts Category:American comedians Category:American comedians of Irish descent Category:American film actors Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American stand-up comedians Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Emerson College alumni Category:Emerson College faculty Category:Irish comedians Category:Irish film actors Category:Irish people of American descent Category:Irish stand-up comedians Category:Irish television actors Category:Living people Category:People from Worcester, Massachusetts

bg:Денис Лиъри ca:Denis Leary de:Denis Leary es:Denis Leary fr:Denis Leary id:Denis Leary it:Denis Leary nl:Denis Leary ja:デニス・リアリー no:Denis Leary pl:Denis Leary pt:Denis Leary ru:Лири, Денис simple:Denis Leary fi:Denis Leary sv:Denis Leary tr:Denis Leary