Robin McKie's The Face of Britain is an excellent exploration of the DNA make-up of the UK. It looks to try and find out where we all came from originally. He thinks that now is the last time anyone can do what he has been, and is, doing because there will soon be too many 'foreign' genes in the mix by the time the next generation comes along. Borrow this book from the library or, if you are feeling wealthy, buy it and read it from cover to cover at least twice. It's really interesting and does throw light on our history that documents normally can't. Will Kaufman's Woody Guthrie: American Radical explores his life through his attitudes to the rest of society and how these changed throughout his life. A good read with plenty of excerpts from his songs and some pretty good black and white photos.
Woody Guthrie, American Radical
Will Kaufman
University of Illinois Press
2011
Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the greatly exaggerated achievements of the new communist regime in the mid-late 1920s, people around the world admired Communism. Communist Parties sprang up around the world, including in the USA. They attracted people who wanted to improve their living and working conditions. In the USA a number of newspapers and radio stations developed which were sympathetic to communism. Many also expressed this by joining the International Brigades on the side of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939).
In the late 1930s Woody Guthrie had a live radio show in Los Angeles in which he composed and sang left wing songs, He also had a regular column, called Woody Sez, in a left wing newspaper.
As part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, several large building programmes were undertaken to employ the unemployed. One such project was The Grand Coulee Dam which started in 1933 and was completed in 1941. Towards the end of the construction period a film was made which showed what had been achieved. Guthrie was commissioned to compose and sing songs for the sound track. While the film was never completed, Guthrie revised and recorded several of the songs in 1944 and 1947.
In 1940 Guthrie, Pete Seeger and others performed at a benefit concert in New York for John Steinbeck. This is said to have been the spark leading to the revival of American folk song. Up to now Guthrie’s songs had been strongly anti-capitalist. Like many anti-capitalists he revised his views of communism following the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1940.
Alan Lomax promoted the work of several ringers in the 1940s. As a result, Guthrie won a commercial radio contract which paid well. But, after only a month, he left New York to return to Los Angeles.
During 1941 Guthrie was heavily involved with a group of singers called The Almanacs. They formed the hub of an American folk revival. Guthrie was concerned to stop their songs becoming too wordy and sermonising. At the same time he wrote some very strong anti-Hitler songs that were very popular. The group quickly won influential left-wing cultural followers in large measure because some of their songs supported trade unions.
Following Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Almanac found a new audience with their songs which bolstered the anti-fascist/anti-Japanese war effort. They were catapulted into the national spotlight when they became the resident musicians on the programme called This is War. They also won a recording contract with Decca and a management contract. Because of the strong political content of some of their songs, people began reporting them to the House Un-American Activities Committee. They said the songs were seditious. As a result they lost their recording and broadcasting contracts.
During 1942 Guthrie began to focus on pro-USA, anti-fascist songs and, at the same time, began a large scale rewriting of his songs. By late 1942 he had about 60 songs which went under the title of War Songs are Work Songs. He poured hate and violence into them. The opening of a second front against Germany became an obsession for Guthrie. As a result, he joined the Merchant Martine. Between June 1943 and June 1944 he completed three tours across the Atlantic. His ship was torpedoed twice, on the first and third voyages. Because of the amount of free time on board ship he was able to do a huge amount of writing and singing. Between the second and third voyages he wrote a ballad-opera called The Martins and the Coys. He was unable to find a producer in the USA, but the BBC in London broadcast it.
After his third voyage he won a prestigious slot on New York’s WNEW radio station. His first broadcast was on 3rd December 1944. Guthrie openly back Roosevelt’s campaign for a fourth Presidential term. The losers began to single out communism as a scare tactic. Guthrie was considered too left-wing and so lost his radio programme in February 1945. His seaman’s papers were withdrawn following an unsubstantiated accusation of belonging to the Communist Party. Shortly after, he was drafted into the army.
Following the dropping of the Atom Bombs on Japan in August 1945, Guthrie became an anti-war, anti-A-bomb activist.
During 1946 the trade unions became extremely militant and several held long-lasting strikes. Guthrie fought for the cause of non-unionised singers who were paid pittances. He was particularly interested in securing proper payment for radical singers like himself. Pete Seeger also fought for this cause. They and others formed People Songs. They wrote and sang songs of labour and encouraged people to send them similar songs that they had heard. As a result a library of about 20,000 songs was created. The trade unions weren’t interested in their activities but the FBI were. By the end of 1946 militant trade unions were damned for communist interference in their affairs. Guthrie was disillusioned by the crumbling of the militant labour movement. By late 1947 the House Committee of Un-American Affairs was revived.
During the late 1930s Guthrie was sensitised by racism. Between then and the end of the war he learned how much the development of white songs owed to Negro singing. He memorialised racist miscarriages of justice in song and championed anti-racism. It is in this context that his album of 12 songs about the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti on trumped up charges in 1927 was written. Guthrie thought it was one of the best albums he had ever written but it was not released until 1964 because of its attitude to authority.
In 1949 Paul Robeson was due to perform at an outdoor concert but was unable to because of police tactics. Shortly after he managed to perform at Peekskill. Guthrie was there and witnessed the police tactics personally. In the months following he wrote 21 songs. The following year he supported the integrationist presidential campaign of Stetson Kennedy. In 1951 he and his family spent time at Kennedy’s house in Florida. Kennedy was forced to go to London by the Ku Klux Klan which burned his house.
By 1952 the entire radical wing of American folk music was under siege by the anti-communist movement. But Guthrie was increasingly debilitated by advancing Huntington’s disease. In September he bought a plot of land in Topanga, California for his family to live on. He was unable to play but could still write music. In 1951-2 Jack Eliot had become a virtual member of Guthrie’s household and learned to sing Guthrie’s songs exactly like Guthrie. He went to Europe between 1955 and 1961 where he raised people’s consciousness of Guthrie’s music through live performances and influential recordings.
In March 1956 there was a tribute concert for Woody Guthrie in New York. Two months later he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in New York. People continued to write and meet him.
The folk revival of 1963-4 spread his music worldwide. His achievements were widely acknowledged and his music was played on TV and radio shows.
He was celebrated for his musical achievements but damned for his radicalism. In the course of his life he wrote about 3,000 songs of which only a limited number are vigorous protest songs.
This book is well worth reading to explore the radical background to Guthrie’s music.
Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Teheran is a fascinating account of how a group of educated Iranian women managed to keep their interests in English Literature going in spite of the Iranian mullahs.
Now for the Historical Fiction.
The incomparable CJ Sansom's Sovereign fell to my eyes this month. He is a remarkable writer and provides you with all the tiny details of Henry VIII's London and wherever the latest case takes his lawyer/detective Matthew Shardlake If you haven't read any of his books before, you have a treat in store..
Solving murders is the task of the heroes in David Hewson's Death in Seville and in Minette Walters's Disordered Minds. And then, of course, there is the amazing work of Elizabeth Salander in Stieg Larsson's The girl with the dragon tattoo.
Normal novels are down to one this month: Peter Stamm's Seven Years.
Seven Years
Peter Stamm
Translated from German to English by Michael Hofmann
Pub in Germany 2009
Other Press, NY, 2010; iv + 264
This story, set in Munich, concerns an architect couple, their daughter and the wife’s aunt as well as a Polish woman. It is told large measure as a series of flashbacks which fit smoothly into the present.
Sonia and the narrator meet as architecture students at university. They spend the next year working as interns for different architecture practices. He is in Munich and she is in Marseilles where she lives with her aunt. He visits her and, in time realises that she loves him. Rather more than he loves her. Nevertheless, they marry and, in time, found their own architecture practice which flourishes. However hard they try, they are unable to have children.
In parallel to this story is that of the relationship between the narrator and a Polish girl called Ivona. She is desperately in love with him, even when he is a student. However hard he tries she refuses to let him have penetrative sex with her but she will do anything else for him, however humiliating.
Once he and Sonia are married and working, he loses contact with Ivona for seven years. Then she finds him again and they continue their affair. Eventually he forces her to have penetrative sex. In consequence, she becomes pregnant. As a staunch Roman Catholic she refuses to countenance abortion. The very difficult solution, involving a meeting between Ivona and Sonia, is for her to let Sonia and the narrator to adopt the baby on the day of its birth, Ivona is to be allowed a very short time with the baby before handing it over. When the baby arrives it is a girl who Sonia and the narrator name Sophia. He has agreed to have nothing further to do with Ivona.
Sonia fell in love with the baby and is soon back at work with a nanny caring for Sophia. Their practice flourishes and all seems well. Then comes the disaster of 2007. The firm struggles and eventually goes bankrupt. An adviser helps them slowly regain solvency. Sophia goes and works for six months for the Marseilles practice to earn regular money. The narrator oversees the conclusion of a building project in Munich. Living with Sophia, the narrator starts to drink heavily and tries to find Ivona again. Eventually he traces her to an apartment she shares with another Polish woman. But he never meets her.
He and Sonia work extremely hard, no job being too small for them. After three years they manage to clear all their debts. The novel ends shortly after this, perhaps predictably, but it is still a surprise when it comes.
This is a tightly written novel with very few spare words and no superfluous action at all. The translation is in beautiful English which makes the story unputdownable. It is well worth reading not just for the story but also for the complex relationships between the characters.
And Jack Mapanje's extraordinary poetry collection Beats of Nalunga.
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