As you may have noticed, the title of this column is ""This Land is Your Land,"" which, aside from following in The Daily Cardinal tradition of using a columnist's last name in some kind of pun, is also a classic folk song by the late Mr. Woody Guthrie, who came to fame during the American Dust Bowl and has remained in the public consciousness ever since. The song also shares the same tune as ""You Are My Sunshine."" If you're familiar with both songs, try singing them out loud back-to-back (probably not a good idea if you're in a public place).
If you're not familiar with Guthrie, here's a very quick bio: born in Okemah, Ok. in 1912, he became THE American folk-singer during the Great Depression because of a) his talent, but also because b) his leftist politics that celebrated the working class and detested the wealthy robber barons with their private swimming pools and prop planes (not to be confused with the Red Baron, who makes consistently delicious pizzas). Guthrie believed so much in the power of his songs to overcome the evil of the rich that he carved into the back of his guitar the slogan, ""This machine kills fascists.""
The first time I ever heard a Woody Guthrie song, however, I was far too young to understand its political implications. In elementary school, we were taught a song in music class called ""This School is Your School"" that boasted of our friendly students and welcoming teachers. I really liked this song for some reason—it was always stuck in my head. I found myself humming it at the dinner table one night, and my dad asked how it was that a nine-year-old knew the 1930s classic ""This Land is Your Land."" Eager to show off my superior knowledge, I corrected him on the title and then proceeded to question him how he knew our school song. Sure enough, though, he pulled out an old vinyl and played me the original, much to my chagrin. I still liked the sentiment, though: ""This land is your land / this land is my land.""
It wasn't until 9th grade history class that I realized that a song celebrating communal property was not so much saying ""give us your poor huddled masses"" as much as ""hooray for socialism."" (The same thing happened to me with John Lennon's ""Imagine""—why do radical social and political messages so often take the form of really sweet, innocuous sounding songs?)
One of the coolest stories associated with Guthrie, is when he was on his deathbed, he called a young Minnesotan guitar player by the name of Robert Zimmerman to come sing him some songs. He told Zimmerman that he was the next in the line of great American folk singers, and to go forth and be the voice of his generation. In 1962, Zimmerman changed his name to Bob Dylan and started recording folk records denouncing the new ""fascists"" in the United States—the jingoistic wealthy elite.
Guthrie's music didn't die with him, however. Recently, folk singer Dan Bern (who sometimes sounds like he is Bob Dylan) recorded a song in which he tries to follow in the tradition of Guthrie/Dylan by breaking into the home of his folk hero, Bruce Springsteen, to play him some songs on his deathbed. The only problem, of course, is that Springsteen isn't dying, and Bern ends up getting tossed out by some gruff security guards.
In 1995, Guthrie's daughter enlisted British singer/songwriter Billy Bragg and American indie group Wilco to take some old poems by Guthrie and put them to music. These can be found on two wonderful CDs called Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 2 (Mermaid Avenue being the name of the street Guthrie lived on for many years). Guthrie's son, Arlo, still continues to play his pop's songs, and a festival in Okemah celebrates Guthrie's music every year.
It's a good thing Guthrie's music is still out there, too, because while today's downtrodden probably aren't looking to socialism to buck them up, dollars to donuts they are still looking to another communal source for inspiration: music itself.
