#protest folk

James H. Karales, 1965. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

:: New Vlog [07] up today!

Not too long until the travel part of this project kicks in, so getting super stoked about this now! Please do subscribe and check out our “Andy B & The World” pages on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram too, and maybe even join in and play on the album, hey? All welcome!!

Sing Out! Magazine, vol 14, iss 3, 1964

These are home recordings from Woody Guthrie's apartment in 1951-1952. They are genuinely wonderful and I am very excited about this album :)

This one is my personal favorite

"Call of the moose" Willy Mitchell, 1980 As you might know, September 30th is Truth and Reconciliation day (more commonly known as Orange Shirt Day), a national day in Canada dedicated to spreading awareness about the legacy of Residential schools on Indigenous people. Instead of just focusing on a song, I also wanted to briefly talk about the history of the sixties scoop and its influence on Indigenous American music and activism.

The process of Residential schooling in Canada existed well before the '60s, but the new processes of the sixties scoop began in 1951. It was a process where the provincial government had the power to take Indigenous children from their homes and communities and put them into the child welfare system. Despite the closing of residential schools, more and more children were being taken away from their families and adopted into middle-class white ones.

Even though Indigenous communities only made up a tiny portion of the total population, 40-70% of the children in these programs would be Aboriginal. In total, 20,000 children would be victims of these policies through the 60s and 70s.

These adoptions would have disastrous effects on their victims. Not only were sexual and physical abuse common problems but the victims were forcibly stripped of their culture and taught to hate themselves. The community panel report on the sixties scoop writes:

"The homes in which our children are placed ranged from those of caring, well-intentioned individuals, to places of slave labour and physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The violent effects of the most negative of these homes are tragic for its victims. Even the best of these homes are not healthy places for our children. Anglo-Canadian foster parents are not culturally equipped to create an environment in which a positive Aboriginal self-image can develop. In many cases, our children are taught to demean those things about themselves that are Aboriginal. Meanwhile, they are expected to emulate normal child development by imitating the role model behavior of their Anglo-Canadian foster or adoptive parents."

and to this day indigenous children in Canada are still disproportionately represented in foster care. Despite being 5% of the Total Canadian population, Indigenous children make up 53.8% of all children in foster care.

I would like to say that the one good thing that came out of this gruesome and horrible practice of state-sponsored child relocation was that there was a birth of culture from protest music, but there wasn't. In fact, Indigenous music has a long history of being erased and whitewashed from folk history.

From Buffy Saint-Marie pretending to be Indigenous to the systematic denial of first nations people from the Canadian mainstream music scene, the talented artists of the time were forcibly erased.

Which is why this album featuring Willy Mitchell is so important.

Willy Mitchell and The Desert River Band

This Album was compiled of incredibly rare, unheard folk and rock music of North American indigenous music in the 60s-80s. It is truly, a of a kind historical artifact and a testimony to the importance of archival work to combat cultural genocide. Please give the entire thing a listen if you have time. Call of the Moose is my favorite song on the album, written and performed by Willy Mitchell in the 80s. His Most interesting song might be 'Big Policeman' though, written about his experience of getting shot in the head by the police. He talks about it here:

"He comes there and as soon as I took off running, he had my two friends right there — he could have taken them. They stopped right there on the sidewalk. They watched him shootin’ at me. He missed me twice, and when I got to the tree line, he was on the edge of the road, at the snow bank. That’s where he fell, and the gun went off. But that was it — he took the gun out. He should never have taken that gun out. I spoke to many policemen. And judges, too. I spoke with lawyers about that. They all agreed. He wasn’t supposed to touch that gun. So why did I only get five hundred dollars for that? "

These problems talked about here, forced displacement, cultural assimilation, police violence, child exploitation, and erasure of these crimes, still exist in Canada. And so long as they still exist, it is imperative to keep talking about them. Never let the settler colonial government have peace; never let anyone be comfortable not remembering the depth of exploitation.

"Solidarity Forever"

Joe Glazer, 1977

"Solidarity Forever" is an adaptation of the famous abolitionist song, "John Brown's Body" published in 1861 and created by Union Soldiers, based on the famous slave abolitionist John Brown.

In 1915, Ralph Chaplin a poet, labor activist, and member of the International Workers of the World (IWW) wrote the words for "Solidarity Forever" to the tune of the abolitionist song. It was first published in the 9th Edition of the Little Red Songbook. The earliest recording was by the Almanac singers in 1941

A year before Ralph Chaplin died, he wrote: "Why I Wrote Solidarity Forever". I highly recommend reading the whole thing but I will be summarizing parts of it here.

Chaplin had first heard the term 'Solidarity' from founding IWW member Eugene Debs, and tried to instill the idea within the song

"What we were seeking was a united labor movement – 'all for one and one for all' – and it was this principle that I tried to embody in 'Solidarity Forever'. That is why, if for no other reason, that the story of 'Solidarity Fovever' may be worth the telling."

He began writing the song in 1913 in response to the Kanawha County miners' strike. The Strike resulted in 50 violent deaths if not more, and the arrests of hundreds of workers and labor organizers.

Labor Activist Mother Jones rallying Workers 1912, Wikimedia Commons

"Solidarity Forever" wouldn't be finished until January 15, 1915, two days before Lucy Parsons (another founding mother of the IWW) led a march in Chicago of over 15,000 people demanding relief from hunger and unemployment.

Since then, the song had become very popular among striking and exploited workers, especially miners and loggers

"It is true that 'Solidarity Forever' was written in Chicago, but it is also true that nobody ever heard of it until fifty thousand striking Puget Sound loggers bellered it out to a world that didn't care a hoot about the problems of vote-less and cruelly exploited 'timber beasts'. It is also true that the young author of 'Solidarity Forever' had been shaped by bitterly contested labor struggles, including a two-year strike against mine owners of Kanawha County, West Virginia, but that it took the sustained militancy of the grass-roots Western Federation of Miners, in the face of equally ferocious opposition to put the hefty punch into 'Solidarity Forever'that later on made it the theme song of the entirely latter-day labor movement."

It is now considered one of the IWW's most famous songs and has become wildly adopted by many types of unions and labor organizers, which Chaplin was critical of.

"Something also beyond the wildest stretch of my imagination was the possibility of Big Unionism competing with Big Business on fairly equal terms – and using identifcal promotional devices, including singing commercials – to keep business booming. That sort of 'solidarity', in my humble opinion is nothing to brag about, or sing about."

The Legacy of "Solidarity Forever cannot be understated. it has been translated into many languages, and sung by leftists everywhere. From its history as both an abolitionist song, a miners' song, a Chicago song, and a logger's song; it serves as a reminder that many people fought and died for basic rights and labor protections.

Many people these days wonder how Joe Hill could stop traffic on busy skid row street corners singing such hilarious songs as 'Pie In The Sky' and 'Mr. Block', or how he could refuse to be blindfolded when he faced the firing squad at the Utah State Prison, and himself give the order for the fatal volley that made his name the symbol of dedicated service to the economic underdog. Or why the striking loggers on the S.S. Verona chose to die singing 'Hold the Fort' and 'Solidarity Forever' in the rain of bullets from a mob of respectable businessmen on the docks at Everett, Washington. Or why young Wesley Everest, union organizer and World War I veteran, was lynched at midnight from 'Hangman's Bridge' in Centralia, Washington. Or why my good friend and fellow worker Frank Little was given the same treatment by hired anaconda gun-thugs for attempting to organize the mercilessly exploited hardrock miners at Butte, Montana. This could go on and on, every word of it is true, but only to be discounted as the resentment of an old codger mumbling through his beard.