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Oral tradition, and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledges across generations without a writing system.

A narrower definition of oral tradition is sometimes appropriate. Sociologists might also emphasize a requirement that the material is held in common by a group of people, over several generations, and might distinguish oral tradition from testimony or oral history. In a general sense, "oral tradition" refers to the transmission of cultural material through vocal utterance, and was long held to be a key descriptor of folklore (a criterion no longer rigidly held by all folklorists). As an academic discipline, it refers both to a set of objects of study and a method by which they are studied -- the method may be called variously "oral traditional theory," "the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition" and the "Parry-Lord theory" (after two of its founders; see below) The study of oral tradition is distinct from the academic discipline of oral history, which is the recording of personal memories and histories of those who experienced historical eras or events. It is also distinct from the study of orality, which can be defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population.

Study of oral tradition

History

Oral tradition as a field of study had its origins in the work of the Serb scholar Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic (1787–1864), a contemporary and friend of the Brothers Grimm. Vuk pursued similar projects of "salvage folklore" (similar to rescue archaeology) in the cognate traditions of the Southern Slavic regions which would later be gathered into Yugoslavia, and with the same admixture of romantic and nationalistic interests (he considered all those speaking Serbo-Croat as Serbs). Somewhat later, but as part of the same scholarly enterprise of nationalist studies in folklore, the turcologist Vasily Radlov (1837–1918) would study the songs of the Kara-Kirghiz in what would later become the Soviet Union; Karadzic and Radloff would provide models for the work of Parry.

Milman Parry and Albert Lord

Shortly thereafter, Milman Parry (1902–1935), pursuing a degree in Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, began to grapple with what was then called the "Homeric Question". This was usually framed as "who was Homer?" and "what are the Homeric poems?" The Homeric question actually consists of a series of related inquiries. Parry's contribution, which drew upon and synthesized the insights of previous scholars including Marcel Jousse, Matija Murko and Arnold van Gennep, was to reconsider the foundational assumptions which framed the inquiries. This re-ordering would have consequences for a great many literatures and disciplines.

Parry's work under Antoine Meillet at the Sorbonne led to his crucial insight into the "formula," which he originally defined as "a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea." In Homeric verse, for example, phrases like ''eos rhododaktylos'' ("rosy fingered dawn") or ''oinops pontos'' ("winedark sea") occupy a certain metrical pattern that fits, in modular fashion, into the six-colon Greek hexameter, and aids the ''aioidos'' or bard in extempore composition. Moreover, phrases of this type would be subject to internal substitutions and adaptations, permitting flexibility in response to narrative and grammatical needs: ''podas okus Achilleus'' ("swift footed Achilles") is metrically equivalent to ''koruthaiolos Hektor'' ("glancing-helmed Hektor"). Parry and Lord observed that the same phenomenon was apparent in the Old English alliterative line:

:''Hrothgar mathelode helm Scildinga'' ("Hrothgar spoke, protector of the Scildings") :''Beowulf mathelode bearn Ecgtheowes'' ("Beowulf spoke, son of Ecgtheow")

and in the ''junacki deseterac'' (heroic decasyllable) of the demonstrably oral poetry of the Serbs:

:''a besjedi od Orasca Tale'' ("But spoke of Orashatz Tale") :''a besjedi Mujagin Halile'' ("But spoke Mujo's Halil")

In Parry's view, formulas were not individual and idiosyncratic devices of particular artists, but the shared inheritance of a tradition of singers. They were easily remembered, making it possible for the singer to execute an improvisational composition-in-performance. A later scholar commented on the potential for Parry's concept to be seen as disparaging of Homeric genius: "The meaning of the Greek term 'rhapsodize', ''rhapsoidein'', 'to stitch song together' could then be taken in a negative sense: Homer stitched together pre-fabricated parts."

The idea indeed met with immediate resistance, because it seemed to make the fount of Western literary eloquence the slave of a system of clichés, but it accounted for such otherwise inexplicable features of the Homeric poems as gross anachronisms (revealed by advances in historical and archaeological knowledge), the presence of incompatible dialects, and the deployment of locally unsuitable epithets ("blameless Aegisthos" for the murderer of Agamemnon, or the almost comic use of "swift-footed Achilles" for the hero in conspicuously sedentary moments).

Parry was appointed to a junior professorship at Harvard, and during this time became aware of living oral traditions in the Balkan region. In two field expeditions with his young assistant Albert Lord (1912–1991) he would record thousands of songs on aluminum disks. The collection would provide the basis for an empirical documentation of the dynamics of composition of metrical narrative in traditional oral performance. This analysis included the patterns and types of variation at lexical and other levels which would yield a structural account of a work's multiformity. This phenomenon could only be accounted for in standard literary methodology by concepts of “corruption” and “distortion” of a pristine, original “ur-text” or hypothetical “lost Q" ("Quelle", German for "source"), hypothesized via stemmatology. Thus the work of Parry and Lord reduced the prominence of the historic-geographic method in folkloristics.

Parry died in 1935. His work was posthumously published by his son Adam Parry as ''The Making of Homeric Verse'' (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971). Lord, however, had meanwhile published ''The Singer of Tales'' (1960), a work which summarized both Parry's response to the Homeric Question, and the joint work he had done with Parry in the Balkans. The Parry-Lord work exercised great influence on other scholars, notably Francis P. Magoun, whose application of their model to Anglo-Saxon traditions demonstrated the explicative and problem-solving power of the theory – a process that would be repeated by other scholars in numerous independent traditions (see below).

Walter Ong

In a separate development, the media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) would begin to focus attention on the ways that communicative media shape the nature of the content conveyed. He would serve as mentor to the Jesuit, Walter Ong (1912–2003), whose interests in cultural history, psychology and rhetoric would result in ''Orality and Literacy'' (Methuen, 1980) and the important but less-known ''Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness'' (Cornell, 1981) These two works articulated the contrasts between cultures defined by primary orality, writing, print, and the secondary orality of the electronic age.

:{|style="border:1px; border: thin solid white; background-color:#f6f6FF; margin:20px;" cellpadding="10" |- | I style the orality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge of writing or print, 'primary orality'. It is 'primary' by contrast with the 'secondary orality' of present-day high technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print. Today primary culture in the strict sense hardly exists, since every culture knows of writing and has some experience of its effects. Still, to varying degrees many cultures and sub-cultures, even in a high-technology ambiance, preserve much of the mind-set of primary orality. |}

Ong's works also made possible an integrated theory of oral tradition which accounted for both production of content (the chief concern of Parry-Lord theory) and its reception. This approach, like McLuhan's, kept the field open not just to the study of aesthetic culture but to the way physical and behavioral artifacts of oral societies are used to store, manage and transmit knowledge, so that oral tradition provides methods for investigation of cultural differences, other than the purely verbal, between oral and literate societies.

The most-often studied section of ''Orality and Literacy'' concerns the “psychodynamics of orality” This chapter seeks to define the fundamental characteristics of 'primary' orality and summarizes a series of descriptors (including but not limited to verbal aspects of culture) which might be used to index the relative orality or literacy of a given text or society.

John Miles Foley

In advance of Ong’s synthesis, John Miles Foley, who studied with Robert Creed (who had in turn studied with Magoun), began a series of papers based on his own fieldwork on South Slavic oral genres, emphasizing the dynamics of performers and audiences. Foley effectively consolidated oral tradition as an academic field when he compiled ''Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research'' in 1985. The bibliography gives a summary of the progress scholars made in evaluating the oral tradition up to that point, and includes a list of all relevant scholarly articles relating to the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition. He also both established both the journal ''Oral Tradition'' and founded the ''Center for Studies in Oral Tradition'' (1986) at the University of Missouri. Foley developed Oral Theory beyond the somewhat mechanistic notions presented in earlier versions of Oral-Formulaic Theory, by extending Ong's interest in cultural features of oral societies beyond the verbal, by drawing attention to the agency of the bard and by describing how oral traditions bear meaning.

The bibliography would establish a clear underlying methodology which accounted for the findings of scholars working in the separate Linguistics fields (primarily Ancient Greek, Anglo-Saxon and Serbo-Croatian). Perhaps more importantly, it would stimulate conversation among these specialties, so that a network of independent but allied investigations and investigators could be established.

Foley’s key works include ''The Theory of Oral Composition'' (1988); ''Immanent Art'' (1991); ''Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf and the Serbo-Croatian Return-Song'' (1993); ''The Singer of Tales in Performance'' (1995); ''Teaching Oral Traditions'' (1998); ''How to Read an Oral Poem'' (2002). His Pathways Project (2006-) draws parallels between the media dynamics of oral traditions and the Internet.

Acceptance and further elaboration

The theory of oral tradition would undergo elaboration and development as it grew in acceptance. While the number of formulas documented for various traditions proliferated, the concept of the formula remained lexically-bound. However, numerous innovations appeared, such as the "formulaic system" with structural "substitution slots" for syntactic, morphological and narrative necessity (as well as for artistic invention). Sophisticated models such as Foley's "word-type placement rules" followed. Higher levels of formulaic composition were defined over the years, such as "ring composition", "responsion" and the "type-scene" (also called a "theme" or "typical scene"). Examples include the "Beasts of Battle" and the "Cliffs of Death". Some of these characteristic patterns of narrative details, (like "the arming sequence;" "the hero on the beach"; "the traveler recognizes his goal") would show evidence of global distribution.

At the same time, the fairly rigid division between oral and literate was replaced by recognition of transitional and compartmentalized texts and societies, including models of diglossia (Brian Stock Franz Bäuml, and Eric Havelock). Perhaps most importantly, the terms and concepts of "orality" and "literacy" came to be replaced with the more useful and apt "traditionality" and "textuality". Very large units would be defined (The Indo-European Return Song) and areas outside of military epic would come under investigation: women's song, riddles and other genres.

The methodology of oral tradition now conditions a large variety of studies, not only in folklore, literature and literacy, but in philosophy, communication theory, Semiotics, and including a very broad and continually expanding variety of languages and ethnic groups,, and perhaps most conspicuously in biblical studies, in which Werner Kelber has been especially prominent.; the annual bibliography is indexed by 100 areas, most of which are ethnolinguistic divisions.

Present developments explore the implications of the theory for rhetoric and composition, interpersonal communication, cross-cultural communication, postcolonial studies, rural community development, popular culture and film studies, and many other areas. The most significant areas of theoretical development at present may be the construction of systematic hermeneutics and aesthetics specific to oral traditions.

Criticism and debates

The theory of oral tradition encountered early resistance from scholars who perceived it as potentially supporting either one side or another in the controversy between what were known as “unitarians” and “analysts” – that is, scholars who believed Homer to have been a single, historical figure, and those who saw him as a conceptual “author function,” a convenient name to assign to what was essentially a repertoire of traditional narrative. A much more general dismissal of the theory and its implications simply described it as "unprovable" Some scholars, mainly outside the field of oral tradition, represent (either dismissively or with approval) this body of theoretical work as reducing the great epics to children’s party games like “telephone” or “Chinese whispers”. While games provide amusement by showing how messages distort content via uncontextualized transmission, Parry’s supporters argue that the theory of oral tradition reveals how oral methods optimized the signal-to-noise ratio and thus improved the quality, stability and integrity of content transmission.

There were disputes concerning particular findings of the theory. For example, those trying to support or refute Crowne's hypothesis found the "Hero on the Beach" formula in numerous Old English poems. It was also discovered in other works of Germanic origin, Middle English poetry, and even an Icelandic prose saga. J.A. Dane, in an article characterized as "polemics without rigor" claimed that the appearance of the theme in Ancient Greek poetry, a tradition without known connection to the Germanic, invalidated the notion of "an autonomous theme in the baggage of an oral poet."

Within Homeric studies specifically, Lord's ''The Singer of Tales'', which focused on problems and questions that arise in conjunction with applying oral-formulaic theory to problematic texts such as the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and even ''Beowulf'', influenced nearly all of the articles written on Homer and oral-formulaic composition thereafter. However, in response to Lord, Geoffrey Kirk published "The Songs of Homer," questioning Lord's extension of the oral-formulaic nature of Serbian and Croatian literature (the area from which the theory was first developed) to Homeric epic. Kirk argues that Homeric poems differ from those traditions in their "metrical strictness," "formular system[s]", and creativity. In other words, Kirk argued that Homeric poems were recited under a system that gave the reciter much more freedom to choose words and passages to get to the same end than the Serbo-Croatian poet, who was merely "reproductive". Shortly thereafter, Eric Havelock's ''Preface to Plato'' revolutionized how scholars looked at Homeric epic by arguing not only that it was the product of an oral tradition, but also that the oral-formulas contained therein served as a way for ancient Greeks to preserve cultural knowledge across many different generations. Adam Parry, in his 1966 work "Have we Homer's ''Iliad''?", theorized the existence of the most fully developed oral poet to his time, a person who could (at his discretion) creatively and intellectually create nuanced characters in the context of the accepted, traditional story. In fact, he discounted the Serbo-Croatian tradition to an "unfortunate" extent, choosing to elevate the Greek model of oral-tradition above all others. Lord reacted to Kirk's and Parry's essays with "Homer as Oral Poet," published in 1968, which reaffirmed Lord's belief in the relevance of Yugoslav poetry and its similarities to Homer and downplayed the intellectual and literary role of the reciters of Homeric epic.

Many of the criticisms of the theory have been absorbed into the evolving field as useful refinements and modifications. For example, in what Foley called a "pivotal" contribution, Larry Benson introduced the concept of "written-formulaic" to describe the status of some Anglo-Saxon poetry which, while demonstrably written, contains evidence of oral influences, including heavy reliance on formulas and themes A number of individual scholars in many areas continue to have misgivings about the applicability of the theory or the aptness of the South Slavic comparison, and particularly what they regard as its implications for the creativity which may legitimately be attributed to the individual artist. However, at present, there seems to be little systematic or theoretically coordinated challenge to the fundamental tenets of the theory; as Foley put it, ""there have been numerous suggestions for revisions or modifications of the theory, but the majority of controversies have generated further understanding.

See also

American Indian elder

Intangible culture

Oral law

Oral literature

Oral-formulaic composition

Oral history

Orality

Secondary orality

Traditional knowledge

Oral Torah

Patha, Śrauta

Oral Tradition Journal

Parampara

Understanding Media

World Oral Literature Project

References

External links

Back to the Oral Tradition

The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition

The Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature Online

Oral Tradition Journal

The World Oral Literature Project

Post-Gutenberg Galaxy

Dédalo Project. Open Software for Management of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative at Texas Tech University

Category:Humanities Category:Oral tradition

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Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Tony Benn
Office	President of the Stop the War Coalition
Vicepresident	Lindsey German
Term start	21 September 2001
Predecessor	Office created
Office2	Secretary of State for Energy
Primeminister2	Harold WilsonJames Callaghan
Term start2	10 June 1975
Term end2	4 May 1979
Predecessor2	Eric Varley
Successor2	David Howell
Office3	Secretary of State for Industry
Primeminister3	Harold Wilson
Term start3	5 March 1974
Term end3	10 June 1975
Predecessor3	Peter Walker (at DTI)
Successor3	Eric Varley
Office4	Chairman of the Labour Party
Leader4	Harold Wilson
Term start4	20 September 1971
Term end4	25 September 1972
Predecessor4	Ian Mikardo
Successor4	William Simpson
Office5	Minister of Technology
Primeminister5	Harold Wilson
Term start5	4 July 1966
Term end5	19 June 1970
Predecessor5	Frank Cousins
Successor5	Geoffrey Rippon
Office6	Postmaster General
Primeminister6	Harold Wilson
Term start6	15 October 1964
Term end6	4 July 1966
Predecessor6	Reginald Bevins
Successor6	Edward Short
Office8	Member of Parliament for Bristol South East
Term start9	30 November 1950
Term end9	17 November 1960
Predecessor9	Stafford Cripps
Successor9	Malcolm St Clair
Majority9	13,044 (39%)
Term start8	20 August 1963
Term end8	9 June 1983
Predecessor8	Malcolm St Clair
Successor8	Constituency Abolished
Majority8	1,890 (3.5%)
Office7	Member of Parliament for Chesterfield
Term start7	1 March 1984
Term end7	7 June 2001
Predecessor7	Eric Varley
Successor7	Paul Holmes
Majority7	24,633 (46.5%)
Birth date	April 03, 1925
Birth place	Marylebone, London, United Kingdom
Party	Labour
Nationality	British
Spouse	Caroline DeCamp(m. 1949–2000)
Children	Stephen, Hilary, Melissa, Joshua
Alma mater	New College, Oxford
Religion	Agnostic - United Reformed Church
Website	Official website
Branch	Royal Air Force
Rank	Pilot Officer
Battles	World War II }}

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn (born 3 April 1925) is a British Labour Party politician, former MP and Cabinet Minister. He is the current President of the Stop the War Coalition.

With his successful campaign to renounce his inherited title (inherited from his father, a politician who had been made a Labour peer in 1942), Benn was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. Later, in the Labour Government of 1964–1970 under Harold Wilson, he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology, retaining his seat in the cabinet. In the period when the Labour Party was in opposition, Benn served for a year as the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979, he returned to the Cabinet, initially serving as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" (a term never actually used by Benn himself) has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical, left-wing position. According to the historian Alwyn W. Turner, Benn had "emerged during the 1970s as the most persuasive and charismatic leader of the left for two decades, charming, funny and impassioned, as adept in the television studio as he was at mass rallies."

Benn, second only to John Parker as Labour's longest-serving Member of Parliament, has come top in several polls as one of the most popular politicians in Britain. He has been described as "one of the few UK politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office." Since leaving parliament, Benn has become more involved in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, as opposed to parliamentary activities. He has been a vegetarian since the 1970s.

Biography

Early life and family

Benn was born in London on 3 April 1925. Benn's paternal grandfather was John Benn (a successful politician who had been created a baronet in 1914) and his father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal Member of Parliament who later crossed the floor to the Labour Party. He was appointed Secretary of State for India by Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, a position he held until 1931. He would later be elevated to the House of Lords, with the title of 1st Viscount Stansgate in 1941; the new wartime coalition government was short of working Labour peers in the upper house. From 1945 to 1946, he was the Secretary of State for Air in the first majority Labour Government.

Both his grandfathers, John Benn (who founded a publishing company) and Daniel Holmes, were also Liberal MPs (respectively, for Tower Hamlets, Devonport and Glasgow Govan). Benn's contact with leading politicians of the day thus dates back to his earliest years as a result of his family's profile; he met Ramsay MacDonald when he was five, David Lloyd George when he was twelve and Mahatma Gandhi in 1931, while his father was Secretary of State for India.

Benn's mother Margaret Eadie (née Holmes) (1897–1991), was a dedicated theologian, feminist and the founder President of the Congregational Federation. She was a member of the ''League of the Church Militant'', which was the predecessor of the ''Movement for the Ordination of Women'' – in 1925 she was rebuked by Randall Thomas Davidson, then-Archbishop of Canterbury, for advocating the ordination of women. His mother's theology had a profound influence on Benn, as she taught him that the stories in the Bible were based around the struggle between the prophets and the kings and that he ought in his life to support the prophets over the kings, who had power, as the prophets taught righteousness.

Benn was a pupil at Westminster School and later studied at New College, Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1947. In later life, Benn attempted to remove public references to his private education from ''Who's Who''; in the 1975 edition his entry stated "Education—still in progress". In the 1976 edition, almost all details of his biography were omitted save for his name, jobs as a Member of Parliament and as a Government Minister, and address; the publishers confirmed that Benn had sent back his draft entry with everything else struck through. In the 1977 edition, Benn's entry disappeared entirely. In October 1973 he announced on BBC Radio that he wished to be known as "Mr Tony Benn" and his book ''Speeches'' from 1974 is credited to "Tony Benn".

Benn met US-born Caroline Middleton DeCamp (born 13 October 1926, Cincinnati, Ohio) over tea at Worcester College in 1949 and nine days later he proposed to her on a park bench in the city. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council and installed it in the garden of their home in Holland Park. Tony and Caroline had four children—Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua, and ten grandchildren. Caroline Benn died of cancer on 22 November 2000, aged 74, after a prominent career as an educationalist.

In July 1943, Benn joined the Royal Air Force. His father and brother Michael (who was later killed in an accident) were already serving in the RAF in 1943. Whilst holding the rank of pilot officer, Tony Benn served as a pilot in South Africa and Rhodesia.

Benn's children have also been active in politics; his first son Stephen served as an elected Member of the Inner London Education Authority from 1986 to 1990. His second son Hilary served as a councillor in London, and stood for Parliament in 1983 and 1987, finally becoming the Labour MP for Leeds Central in 1999. He served as Secretary of State for International Development from 2003 to 2007, and then as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs until 2010. This makes him the third generation of his family to have sat in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom, a rare distinction for a modern political family in Britain. Benn's granddaughter Emily Benn fought and ultimately lost the seat of East Worthing and Shoreham in 2010, becoming the Labour Party's youngest ever candidate in the process. Tony Benn is a first cousin once removed of the late actress Dame Margaret Rutherford.

Member of Parliament

Following his Second World War service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, Benn worked briefly as a BBC Radio producer. On 1 November 1950, he was unexpectedly selected to succeed Sir Stafford Cripps as the Labour candidate for Bristol South East, after Cripps stood down because of ill-health, and won the seat in a by-election on 30 November 1950. Anthony Crosland helped him get the seat as he was the MP for nearby South Gloucestershire at the time. Upon taking the oath on 4 December 1950 Benn became the youngest MP, or "Baby of the House" for one day, being succeeded by Thomas Teevan, who was two years younger but took his oath a day later. He became the "Baby" again in 1951, when Teevan was not re-elected. In the 1950s, Benn held middle-of-the-road or soft left views, and was not associated with the young left wing group around Aneurin Bevan.

Peerage reform

Benn's father had been created Viscount Stansgate in 1942 when Winston Churchill increased the number of Labour peers to aid political work in the House of Lords; at this time, Benn's elder brother Michael was intending to enter the priesthood and had no objections to inheriting a peerage. However, Michael was later killed in an accident while on active service in the Second World War, and this left Tony Benn as the heir to the peerage. He made several attempts to renounce the succession, but they were unsuccessful.

In November 1960, Viscount Stansgate died, and as a result Benn automatically became a peer and was thus prevented from sitting in the House of Commons. Insisting on his right to abandon his peerage, Benn fought to retain his seat in a by-election caused by his succession on 4 May 1961. Although he was disqualified from taking his seat, the voters of Bristol South-East re-elected him regardless. An election court found that the voters were fully aware that Benn was disqualified, and declared the seat won by the Conservative runner-up, Malcolm St Clair, who was at the time also the heir presumptive to a peerage.

Outside Parliament, Benn continued his campaign, and eventually the Conservative Government of the time accepted the need for a change in the law. The Peerage Act 1963, allowing renunciation of peerages, was given the Royal Assent and became law shortly after 6 pm on 31 July 1963. Benn was the first peer to renounce his title, at 6.22 pm that day. Malcolm St. Clair, fulfilling a promise he had made at the time of his seating, then accepted the office of Stewardship of the Manor of Northstead, thereby disqualifying himself from the House (outright resignation being impermissible). Benn returned to the Commons after winning a by-election on 20 August 1963.

In government (1964–1970)

In the 1964 Government of Harold Wilson, Benn was appointed Postmaster General; during his time in that position, he oversaw the opening of what was then the UK's tallest building, the Post Office Tower, and the creations of the Postal Bus Service and Girobank. He proposed issuing stamps without the Sovereign's head, but this met with private opposition from the Queen. Instead, the portrait was reduced to a small profile in silhouette, a format that is still used on commemorative stamps today. Benn also led the government's campaign to close down the many off-shore pirate radio stations of the time, a campaign that forms the centrepiece of the 2009 film ''The Boat That Rocked'', and was responsible for introducing the Marine Broadcasting Offences Bill. By the time the bill became law in 1967, Benn had been promoted to the post of Minister of Technology, which included specific responsibility for overseeing the development of Concorde and the formation of International Computers Ltd. The period also saw government involvement in industrial rationalisation, and the merger of several car companies to form British Leyland. Labour lost the 1970 election to Edward Heath's Conservatives, and upon Heath's application to join the European Economic Community, Benn campaigned in favour of a referendum on the UK's membership. The Shadow Cabinet voted to support a referendum on 29 March 1972, and as a result Roy Jenkins resigned as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

In government (1974–1979)

In the Labour Government of 1974, Benn was appointed Secretary of State for Industry, where he set up worker cooperatives in struggling industries, the best known being at Meriden, which kept Triumph Motorcycles in production until 1983. In 1975, he was appointed Secretary of State for Energy, immediately following his ultimately unsuccessful campaign for a "No" vote in the referendum on the UK's membership of the EEC. By his own admission in his diary (25 October 1977), Benn "loathed" the EEC; he claimed it was "bureaucratic and centralised" and "of course it is really dominated by Germany. All the Common Market countries except the UK have been occupied by Germany, and they have this mixed feeling of hatred and subservience towards the Germans".

Harold Wilson resigned as Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister in March 1976. Benn entered the subsequent leadership contest and came fourth with 37 votes in the first ballot. Benn then withdrew from the second ballot and supported Michael Foot for the leadership, although James Callaghan eventually won. Despite not receiving his support in the vote, Callaghan kept Benn as Energy Secretary. Later in the autumn of 1976, there was a sterling crisis, and then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey sought to gain a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Benn publicly circulated the Cabinet minutes from the 1931 National Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald, which cut unemployment benefits in order to secure a loan from American bankers and resulted in the inadvertent splitting of the Labour Party. Callaghan allowed Benn to put forward his "alternative economic strategy", which consisted of a siege economy. However this plan would later be rejected by the Cabinet.

Move to the Left

By the end of the 1970s, Benn had migrated to the left-wing of the Labour Party. He attributed this political shift to his experience as a Cabinet Minister in the 1964–1970 Labour Government. Benn wrote:

As a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes is minuscule. This power was revealed even more clearly in 1976 when the IMF secured cuts in our public expenditure. These lessons led me to the conclusion that the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum.

Benn's philosophy consisted of a form of syndicalism, economic planning, greater democracy in the structures of the Labour Party and observance of Party conference decisions by the Party leadership; he was vilified in the right-wing press, and his enemies implied that a Benn-led Labour Government would implement a type of East European socialism. Conversely, Benn was overwhelmingly popular with Labour activists. A survey of delegates at the Labour Conference of 1978 found that by large margins they supported both Benn for the leadership and many Bennite policies.

He publicly supported Sinn Féin and the unification of Ireland, although in 2005 he suggested to Sinn Féin leaders that Sinn Féin abandon its long-standing policy of not taking seats at Westminster. Sinn Féin argue that to do so would recognise Britain's claim over Northern Ireland, and the Sinn Féin constitution prevents its elected members from taking their seats in any British-created institution.

In opposition

In a keynote speech to the Labour Party Conference of 1980, shortly before the resignation of party leader James Callaghan and election of Michael Foot as successor, Benn outlined what he envisaged the next Labour Government would do. "Within days", a Labour Government would grant powers to nationalise industries, control capital and implement industrial democracy; "within weeks", all powers from Brussels would be returned to Westminster and then they would abolish the House of Lords by creating one thousand peers and then abolishing the peerage. Benn received tumultuous applause from the audience.

In 1981, he stood for election against the incumbent Denis Healey for the post of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, disregarding the appeal from Michael Foot either to stand for the leadership, or to abstain from inflaming the party's divisions. Benn defended his decision with insistence that it was "not about personalities, but about policies." The contest was extremely closely fought in the summer of 1981, and Healey eventually won by a margin of barely 1%. The decision of several moderate left-wing MPs, including Neil Kinnock, to abstain from supporting Benn triggered the split of the Campaign Group from the Left of the Tribune Group.

After Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, Benn argued that the dispute should be settled by the United Nations and that the British Government should not send a task force to recapture the islands. The task force was sent and the Falklands were soon back in British control. In a subsequent debate in the Commons, Benn's demand for "a full analysis of the costs in life, equipment and money in this tragic and unnecessary war" was rejected by Margaret Thatcher, who, apparently unaware that Benn had served during the Second World War, stated that "he would not enjoy the freedom of speech that he put to such excellent use unless people had been prepared to fight for it".

In 1983, Benn's Bristol South East constituency was abolished by boundary changes, and he subsequently lost the battle to stand in the new seat of Bristol South to Michael Cocks. Rejecting offers from the new seat of Livingston in Scotland, Benn contested Bristol East, losing to Conservative candidate Jonathan Sayeed in what was perceived to be a shock result. He was selected for the next Labour seat to fall vacant, and was elected as MP for Chesterfield in a by-election after Eric Varley resigned his seat to head Coalite. On the day of the by-election, 1 March 1984, ''The Sun'' newspaper ran a hostile feature article "Benn on the Couch" which purported to be the opinions of an American psychiatrist. In the intervening period, since Benn's defeat in Bristol, Michael Foot had stepped down after the general election in June 1983 (which saw Labour return a mere 209 MPs) and was succeeded in October of that year by Neil Kinnock.

Benn was a prominent supporter of the 1984-1985 UK miners' strike and of his long-standing friend, the National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill. Some miners, however, considered Benn's 1977 industry reforms to have caused problems during the strike; firstly, that they led to huge wage differences and distrust between miners of different regions; and secondly, that the controversy over balloting miners for these reforms made it unclear as to whether a ballot was needed for a strike or whether it could be deemed as a "regional matter" in the same way that the 1977 reforms had been.

In June 1985, three months after the miners admitted defeat and ended their strike, Benn introduced the Miners' Amnesty (General Pardon) Bill in the Commons which would have extended an amnesty to all miners imprisoned during the strike. This would have included two men convicted of murder (later reduced to manslaughter) for the killing of David Wilkie, a taxi driver driving a non-striking miner to work in South Wales during the strike.

Benn later stood for election as Party Leader in 1988, against Neil Kinnock, following Labour's third successive defeat in the 1987 general election, and lost again, on this occasion by a substantial margin. During the Gulf War, he visited Baghdad to persuade Saddam Hussein to release the hostages who had been captured. He was also one of the very few MPs to oppose the Kosovo War. In 1991, with Labour still in opposition and another general election due by June 1992, he proposed the Commonwealth of Britain Bill, which involved abolishing the British Monarchy in favour of the United Kingdom becoming a "democratic, federal and secular commonwealth"; in effect, a republic with a written constitution. It was read in Parliament a number of times until his retirement at the 2001 election, but never achieved a second reading. He presented an account of his proposal in ''Common Sense: A New Constitution for Britain''.

Retirement

Tony Benn did not stand at the 2001 general election; as he explained it, he was "leaving parliament in order to spend more time on politics". Along with Edward Heath, Benn was given the privilege of being able to continue using the House of Commons Library and Members' refreshment facilities by the Speaker. Shortly after his retirement, he was approached by the Stop the War Coalition, and was asked to become its President, an offer he accepted. He thus became a leading figure of the British opposition to the War on Iraq, and in February 2003 he travelled to Baghdad to again meet, and interview, Saddam Hussein. The interview was shown on British television. He also spoke out against the Iraq war at the February 2003 protest in London organised by the Stop the War Coalition, attended by over 1 million people. In February 2004 and 2008, he was re-elected President of the Stop the War Coalition.

He has toured with a one-man stage show and also appears a few times each year in a two-man show with folk singer Roy Bailey. In 2003, his show with Bailey was voted 'Best Live Act' at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In 2002 he opened the "Left Field" stage at the Glastonbury Festival. In October 2003, Benn was a guest of British Airways on the last-ever scheduled Concorde flight from New York to London. In June 2005, Benn was a panellist on a special edition of BBC1's ''Question Time''. The special edition was edited entirely by a school age film crew selected by a BBC competition.

On 21 June 2005, Benn presented a programme on democracy as part of the Channel 5 series ''Big Ideas That Changed The World'', he presented a left-wing view of democracy as the means to pass power from the "wallet to the ballot". He argued that traditional social democratic values were under threat in an increasingly globalised world in which powerful institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Commission remain unelected and unaccountable to those whose lives they affect daily. On 27 September 2005, Benn was taken ill at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton and taken by ambulance to the Royal Sussex County Hospital after being treated by paramedics at the Brighton Centre. Benn reportedly fell and struck his head. He was to be kept in hospital for observation, but was described as being in a "comfortable condition". He was subsequently fitted with an artificial pacemaker to help regulate his heartbeat. In a list compiled by the magazine ''New Statesman'' in 2006, he was voted twelfth in the list of "Heroes of our Time".

In September 2006, Benn joined the "Time to Go" demonstration in Manchester the day before the start of the final Labour Conference with Tony Blair as Party Leader, with the aim of persuading the Labour Government to withdraw troops from Iraq, to refrain from attacking Iran and to reject replacing the Trident missile and submarines with a new system. He spoke to the demonstrators in the rally afterwards along with other politicians and journalists, including George Galloway and members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In 2007, he appeared in an extended segment in the Michael Moore film ''Sicko'' giving comments about democracy, social responsibility, and health care. A poll by the BBC2 ''The Daily Politics'' programme in January 2007 selected Benn as the UK's "Political Hero" with 38.22% of the vote, beating Margaret Thatcher with 35.3% and five other contenders including Alex Salmond, Leader of the Scottish National Party; Clare Short, Independent MP; Neil Kinnock, previous Labour Party Leader; Norman Tebbit, previous Conservative Party Chairman and Shirley Williams, one of the 'gang of four' who founded the Social Democratic Party.

In the 2007 Labour Party leadership election, Tony Benn backed the left-wing MP John McDonnell in his ultimately unsuccessful bid. In September 2007, Benn called for the government to hold a referendum on the EU Reform Treaty. In October 2007, at the age of 82, and when it appeared that a general election was about to be held, Benn reportedly announced that he wanted to stand, having written to his local Kensington and Chelsea Constituency Labour Party offering himself as a prospective candidate for the seat held by the Conservative Malcolm Rifkind. No election, however, was ultimately held in 2007, and the Kensington and Chelsea seat was abolished.

In September 2008, Benn appeared on the DVD release for the ''Doctor Who'' story ''The War Machines'' with a vignette discussing the Post Office Tower; he became the second Labour politician, after Roy Hattersley to appear in a feature on a ''Doctor Who'' DVD. Also in 2008, Benn appeared on track 12 "Pay Attention to the Human" on Colin MacIntyre's ''The Water'' album.

At the Stop the War Conference 2009, he described the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as "Imperialist war(s)" and discussed the killing of American and allied troops by Iraqi or foreign insurgents, questioning whether they were in fact freedom fighters, and comparing the insurgents to a British Dad's Army, saying "If you are invaded you have a right to self defence, and this idea that people in Iraq and Afghanistan who are resisting the invasion are militant Muslim extremists is a complete bloody lie. I joined Dad's Army when I was sixteen, and if the Germans had arrived, I tell you, I could use a bayonet, a rifle, a revolver, and if I'd seen a German officer having a meal I'd have tossed a grenade through the window. Would I have been a freedom fighter or a terrorist?"

In an interview published in Dartford Living in September 2009, Benn was critical of the Government's decision to delay the findings of the Iraq War Inquiry until after the General Election, stating that "people can take into account what the inquiry has reported on but they’ve deliberately pushed it beyond the election. Government is responsible for explaining what it has done and I don’t think we were told the truth." He also stated that local government was strangled by Margaret Thatcher and hadn't been liberalised by New Labour.

During the autumn of 2009, Tony Benn was again admitted into hospital and as a result of this, "An Evening with Tony Benn", scheduled to take place at London's Cadogan Hall was cancelled. He resumed a tour of these shows in 2010. In July 2011 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University Of Glamorgan, Wales.

Diaries and biographies

Benn is a prolific diarist: eight volumes of his diaries have been published (the first six collected as ISBN 0-09-963411-2, the penultimate available as ISBN 0-09-941502-X). Collections of his speeches and writings were published as ''Arguments for Socialism'' (1979), ''Arguments for Democracy'' (1981), (both edited by Chris Mullin), ''Fighting Back'' (1988) and (with Andrew Hood) ''Common Sense'' (1993), as well as ''Free Radical: New Century Essays'' (2004). In August 2003, London DJ Charles Bailey created an album of Benn's speeches (ISBN 1-904734-03-0) set to ambient groove.

He has also made public several episodes of audio diaries he made during his time in Parliament and after retirement, entitled 'The Benn Tapes', broadcast originally on BBC Radio 4. Short series of these have been played periodically on BBC Radio 7. A major biography was written by Jad Adams and published by Macmillan in 1992. ''Tony Benn: A Biography'' (ISBN 0-333-52558-2) A more recent 'semi-authorised' biography, with a foreword by Benn, was published in 2001: David Powell, ''Tony Benn: A Political Life'', Continuum Books (ISBN 978-0826464156). An autobiography, ''Dare to be a Daniel: Then and Now'', Hutchinson (ISBN 978-0099471530), was published in 2004.

There are substantial essays on Benn in both the ''Dictionary of Labour Biography'' by Phillip Whitehead, Greg Rosen [ed], Politicos Publishing, 2001 (ISBN 978-1902301181) and in ''Labour Forces: From Ernie Bevin to Gordon Brown'', Kevin Jefferys [ed], I. B. Taurus Publishing, 2002 (ISBN 978-1860647437). Michael Moore dedicates his book ''Mike's Election Guide 2008'' (ISBN 978-0141039817) to Tony Benn with: "For Tony Benn, keep teaching us".

See also

Labour Party

Labour Representation Committee

Socialist Campaign Group

Stop the War Coalition

References

Bibliography

Diaries

Tony Benn ''Out of the Wilderness: Diaries 1963-67'', Hutchinson (1987) ISBN 978-0091706609

Tony Benn ''Office Without Power: Diaries 1968-72'', Hutchinson (1988) ISBN 978-0091736477

Tony Benn ''Against the Tide: Diaries 1973-76'', Hutchinson (1989) ISBN 978-0091737757

Tony Benn ''Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977-80'', Hutchinson (1990) ISBN 978-0091743215

Tony Benn ''The End of an Era: Diaries 1980-90'', Hutchinson (1992) ISBN 978-0091748579

Tony Benn ''Years of Hope: Diaries, Letters and Papers, 1940-62'', Hutchinson (1994) ISBN 978-0091785345

Tony Benn ''The Benn Diaries: Single Volume Edition 1940-90'', Hutchinson (1995) ISBN 978-0091792237

Tony Benn ''Free at Last!: Diaries 1991-2001'', Hutchinson (2002) ISBN 978-0091793524

Tony Benn ''More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007'', Hutchinson (2007) ISBN 978-0099517054

Essays and biography

Tony Benn ''Levellers and the English Democratic Tradition'', Spokesman Books (1976) ISBN 978-0851246338

Tony Benn ''Why America Needs Democratic Socialism'', Spokesman Books (1978) ISBN 978-0851242668

Tony Benn ''Prospects'', Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section (1979)

Tony Benn ''Case for Constitutional Civil Service'', Inst. for Workers' Control (1980) ISBN 978-0901740670

Tony Benn ''Case for Party Democracy'', Inst. for Workers' Control (1980) ISBN 978-0901740700

Tony Benn ''Arguments for Socialism'', Penguin Books (1980) ISBN 978-0140054897

Tony Benn and Chris Mullin ''Arguments for Democracy'', Jonathan Cape (1981) ISBN 978-0224018784

Tony Benn ''European Unity: A New Perspective'', Spokesman Books (1981) ISBN 978-0851243269

Tony Benn ''Parliament and Power: Agenda for a Free Society'', Verso Books (1982) ISBN 978-0860910572

Tony Benn & Andrew Hood ''Common Sense: New Constitution for Britain'', Hutchinson (1993)

Tony Benn ''Free Radical: New Century Essays'', Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd (2004) ISBN 978-0826474001

Tony Benn ''Dare to Be a Daniel: Then and Now'', Arrow Books Ltd (2005) ISBN 978-0099471530

Tony Benn ''Letters To My Grandchildren: Thoughts On The Future'' Arrow Books (2010) ISBN 978-0099539094

External links

Tony Benn blog of quotes and speeches

Unofficial Tony Benn site with extensive interview, articles, audio and visual

'Face-to-Face with Tony Benn'. Freeview video interview by the Vega Science Trust

Tony Benn's interview with ''The Third Estate''.

Andrew Roth. Tony Benn Chesterfield and Bristol South East MP, ''The Guardian'', 25 March 2001.

''Guardian'' web guide to the veteran leftwinger Tony Benn

Tony Benn interview for Leftfield appearances at the Glastonbury Festival

Tony Benn. Atomic hypocrisy: West is not in a position to take a high moral line, ''The Guardian'', 30 November 2005.

Amy Goodman. Interview with Tony Benn: How Britain secretly helped Israel build its nuclear arsenal, ''Democracy Now!'', 10 March 2006.

The Commonwealth - UK government site

Benn in the 1960s as seen by ''Private Eye''

Audio interview with ''The Guardian''.

His Address to the College Historical Society of Trinity College

Interview with Tony Benn - Radio France Internationale - 28 March 2008 - 6 minute audio - Ahead of G20 marches, London

Tony Benn on Tony Blair: "He Is Guilty of a War Crime" - video report by ''Democracy Now!''

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ar:توني بين cy:Tony Benn de:Tony Benn eo:Tony Benn fr:Tony Benn it:Tony Benn lt:Tony Benn nl:Tony Benn no:Tony Benn pl:Tony Benn ru:Бенн, Тони fi:Tony Benn

Juan Felipe Herrera (born December 27, 1948 Fowler, California) is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist.

The only son of María de la Luz (Lucha) Quintana and Felipe Emilio Herrera, the three were campesinos living from crop to crop, and from tractor to trailer to tents on the roads of the San Joaquín Valley, Southern California and the Salinas Valley. Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work, such as the children's book ''Calling the Doves'', which won the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award in 1997. Community and art has always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-seventies, when he was director of the ''Centro Cultural de la Raza'', an occupied water tank in Balboa Park that had been converted into an arts space for the community.

Herrera’s publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children with twenty-one books in total in the last decade. Herrera was awarded the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for ''Half the World in Light''.

Family

Juan Felipe Herrera lives with his partner, Margarita Robles, a poet and performance artist, in Redlands, California. His children and grandchildren live in California, Oregon and New York. The author and artist Joaquín Ramón Herrera is his son.

Education

Herrera received his B.A. in Social Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles, his Masters in Social Anthropology from Stanford University, and his Masters in Fine Arts, in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.

Teaching

After serving as chair of the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department at California State University, Fresno, in 2005, Herrera joined the Creative Writing Department at University of California, Riverside, as Tomás Rivera Endowed chair, and director of the Art and Barbara Culver Center for the Arts, a new multimedia space in downtown Riverside. He was a teaching fellow with the distinction of Excellence at the University of Iowa, Writers Workshop in 1990.

Community Arts

Juan Felipe has received grants to teach poetry, art and performance in several different settings, including community art galleries such as the ''Galería de la Raza'' in San Francisco, California, in 1983-85, develop community art and literature broadsides (1977–78) in San Diego, California, teach poetry in prisons (Soledad Correctional Facility, 1987–88). His current work focuses on working with community colleges and schools in the Riverside country and in Coachella Valley.

Awards

Ezra Jack Keats Award, for ''Calling the Doves''

Hungry Mind Award of Distinction

Americas Award

Focal Award

''Pura Belpré'' Honors Award

Smithsonian Children’s Book of the Year Award

Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choice

IRA Teacher’s Choice

LA Times Book Award Nomination

Texas Blue Bonnet Nomination

New York Public Library Outstanding Book for High School Students Award

two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards

two National Endowment for the Arts Writers’ Fellowship Awards

four California Arts Council grants

UC Berkeley Regent’s Fellowship

Breadloaf Fellowship in Poetry

Stanford Chicano Fellows Fellowship

2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for ''Half the World in Light''

2009 PEN/Beyond Margins Award 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship

Bibliography

''Rebozos of Love.'' Tolteca Publications. 1974.

''Exiles of Desire.'' Arte Publico Press. University of Houston. 1985.

''Facegames.'' Dragon Cloud Press. 1987.

''Akrílica.'' Alcatraz Editions. 1989.

''Memoria(s) from an Exile's Notebook of the Future.'' Santa Monica College Press. 1993. [Poetry Chapbook]

''The Roots of a Thousand Embraces: Dialogues.'' Manic D. Press. San Francisco. 1994.

''Night Train to Tuxtla: New Stories and Poems.'' University of Arizona. 1994.

[Bilingual children's story]. Fall 1995

''Love After the Riots.'' Curbstone Press. Willimantic, NY. 1996

''Mayan Drifter:'' Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America. Temple University Press. Philadelphia, Pa. Spring 1997.

''Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream.'' University of Arizona Press. 1999.

''Loteria Cards & Fortune Poems.'' City Lights Publishers. SF. Fall, 1999.

''The Upside Down Boy/El Nino de Cabeza.'' Children's Book Press, SF. 2000.

''Thunderweavers.'' University of Az. Tucson. 2000.

''Giraffe on Fire.'' Poems. Univ. Az. Press. Tucson. 2001.

''Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler.'' University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 2002.

''Coralito's Bay / La Bahia de Coralito.'' Monterey National Marine Sanctuary. Monterey. 2004

''Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box.'' Harper Collins, Joanna Cotler Books /Tempest. New York. 2005. ISBN 9780060579845

''Downtown Boy.'' Scholastic Press. Scholastic. New York. 2005.

''187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross The Border,'' City Lights, 2007, ISBN 9780872864627

''Undocuments 1971-2007''. City Lights Publishers. San Francisco. 2007.

''Half the World in Light''. University of Arizona Press. 2008.

Film and Stage

Herrera produced “The Twin Tower Songs,” a San Joaquin Valley performance memorial on the September 11, 2001 attacks and writes (poetry sequences) for the PBS television series “American Family.” His recent musical, ''The Upside Down Boy'', was well received in New York City, produced by ''Making Books Sing'', libretto by Barbara Zinn Krieger. Lyrics by Juan Felipe Herrera and Music by Cristian Amigo. Mr. Herrera is a board member of the Before Columbus American Book Awards Foundation and the California Council for the Humanities.

Theater

Juan Felipe Herrera founded a number of performance ensemble during the last three decades: ''Teatro Tolteca'' (UCLA, 1971 – a choreopoem theatre utilizing jazz, spoken-word and movement), ''TROKA'' ( Bay Area, 1983, a percussion/spoken word ensemble, ''Teatro Zapata'', (Fresno, Ca., 1990 – a student community theatre), ''Manikrudo: Raw Essence'' ( Fresno, Ca., 1993, a culturally diverse, performance art ensemble and workshop), ''Teatro Ambulante de Salud/The Traveling Health Theatre'' (2003, Fresno, Ca. for migrant communities in the San Joaquin Valley) and ''Verbal Coliseum'' – A Spoken Word Ensemble (UC Riverside, 2006), ''“Prison Journal,”'' an experimental play was featured at the Univ. of Iowa Playwright’s Festival, 1990. Latin@ Theatre/Movement & Improv training: Luis Valdez/Teatro Campesino, Enrique Buenaventura, Rodrigo Duarte-Clark, Olivia Chumacero, Jorge Huerta, James Donlon.

References

External links

Biography at Harper Collins

Biography at Scholastic

"An Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera", ''Parents Choice''

Juan Felipe Herrera Nov. 2007, footage of Juan’s reading at the Ruskin Arts Center in Los Angeles, Nov. 2007

Category:1948 births Category:American people of Mexican descent Category:Living people Category:American writers of Mexican descent Category:University of California, Riverside faculty Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni Category:Stanford University alumni Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni Category:California State University, Fresno faculty Category:Guggenheim Fellows

Felipe Herrera (17 June 1922 – 17 September 1996) was a Chilean economist. He served as the first president of the Inter-American Development Bank.

References

Category:People from Valparaíso Category:Chilean economists Category:Presidents of the Inter-American Development Bank Category:1922 births Category:1996 deaths