Communist Web Monday 10th April 2000 9.30pm gmt This land is your land: A legacy of Guthrie by - Lou Shipman This Land is Your Land: The Life and Legacy of Guthrie, The Museum of the City of New York 1220 Fifth Ave. (103rd St.), New York NY. NEWYORK-School children in the United states are often taught the song "This Land is Your Land" as a patriotic hymn, a more singable national anthem. They are usually not taught this verse, however: "As I was walking, that ribbon of highway I saw a sign which said 'Private Property.' But on the other side, it didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me." Nor are they taught about the man who wrote the song, Woody Guthrie. Woody was one of the most influential figures in the musical culture of the United States. His songs about ordinary people, their lives and struggles inspired the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s and out of that revival came the numerous rock 'n rollers, singer-songwriters and traditional musicians of today. Woody Guthrie was born in 1912 and wrote many of his songs during the 1930s as he observed the effects of the Great Depression on displaced farmers and workers. Arriving in New York in 1941, he hooked up with musicians such as Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Cisco Houston and others who make up the first generation of the folk revival. Woody lived in NYC for most of the rest of his life except for a period during WW II when he shipped out with the Merchant Marine. Rambling out of the Oklahoma "dust bowl" to California during the 1930s, Woody began to write about the people he knew. He wrote songs dealing with Okie farmers being pushed off their land by drought and bankers. He wrote about how poor people from Oklahoma and Mexico traveled to California in search of a better life, and how hard it was to find it. He sang about and for miners and seamen, and wrote about the taming of the rivers and the Grand Coulee Dam. But he didn't just describe the hardships faced by working people. He wrote about the struggles to organize, to create unions, to fight fascism and to resist the power of the wealthy. The exhibit, "This Land is Your Land" at the Museum of the City of New York through April 23 shows Woody as he really was, and he was, perhaps, more than we ever expected. It is a wonderfully designed exhibit combining artifacts, blown-up samples of Woody's writing and photographs taken at different points in his life. It shows him as a participant in the great... http://www.billkath.demon.co.uk/cw/thisland/thisland.html
