Songs Of People Research Articles

Perlindungan Hukum Hak Cipta Terhadap Pemutaran Lagu dalam Live Music Performance Perspektif Undang-Undang Hak Cipta dan Hifz Al-Mal di Kafe Purwokerto

Purwokerto has several cafes that use live music to attract customers. In live music, the performers present other people's songs in public with commercial purposes or to seek profit from the song. On the other hand, there are regulations governing the use of other people's creative works. The purpose of this study is to determine the procedure for playing songs at live music performances in cafes in Purwokerto and how the legal protection for playing songs in live music in cafes in Purwokerto is from the perspective of Copyrights Act and hifz al-mal. This study uses an empirical legal approach to analyze the cafe's compliance with economic rights in copyright. The type of research is field research. The results of the study indicate that copyright infringement is more relevant and serious in the context of large concerts that have a significant financial impact, where the use of songs without permission can substantially harm the copyright owner. In contrast, live music performed in cafes with minimal income and driven by humanitarian intentions to entertain or support the community is not considered a significant copyright infringement from a humanitarian perspective and the principle of hifz al-mal. This is due to its small financial impact and underlying good intentions, however, efforts are still needed to respect copyright in the long term in accordance with the principles of justice and protection of property in Copyrights act and hifz al-mal.

Minjung Kayo: Imagining Democracy through Song in South Korea

AbstractDuring South Korea's authoritarian period (1961–87), student activists employed songs to express their anti-government and pro-democratic views. Known as minjung kayo (people's songs), these protest songs can be traced to the modern American folk music embraced by South Korean youth in the 1960s. By the late 1980s, however, minjung kayo carried emphatically anti-American, nationalistic, and socialist tones, echoing the minjung ideals that strove to achieve authentic ‘Koreanness’. This article unravels the complexities underlying the process of minjung kayo's development into an emblem of the pro-democratic movement, which entailed a shift away from its initial reflective and poetic style inspired by American folk music (exemplified in the songs of Kim Min-ki) and a move towards the militant style influenced by the Marxist composer Hanns Eisler. It argues that minjung kayo embodied the complex relationship South Korean activists held with their colonial past and autocratic present, as well as visions of their democratic future.

Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play by Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai

Reviewed by: Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play by Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai Justin R. Hunter (bio) Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play. Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai (1941). Text and translation by Naoko Terauchi. World Arbiter, 2016. One CD (77 minutes). 19 pages of notes (English), 16 pages of notes (Japanese). (CD) $15.95. Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play is a compilation of music not likely heard outside of academic archives for some 80 years. In the pre– and immediate post–World War II era, many Japanese musicologists documented musics from throughout Japan in order to capture sounds thought to be in decline during those changing times. Equally important, these musicologists sought to present the unique qualities of Japanese traditional genres to the outside world. But much of this recorded material was lost or rests in archives, largely inaccessible to the general public. This CD compilation by Naoko Terauchi is a restoration project of recordings made during the 1940s, focusing on regional folk songs. As Terauchi writes, “Each song conveys a rich musical and lyrical expression closely related to local livelihoods and life styles” (7) from all over Japan. This is an extensive project compiling information and audio from the original recordings and from various archives. These recordings allow listeners to hear music of “unique historical importance and culturally valuable as a document of musical practices in traditional Japanese genres during wartime” (5). Indeed, Terauchi’s album highlights the music of commoners, not the elite musics or high art forms of urban centers, which were less at risk of loss. The folk tunes of the countryside reflect a time when the world had particular views about a militaristic nation gearing up for aggression and seeking to solidify a homogeneous and elevated position on the world stage. Terauchi’s compilation draws on the efforts of the Kokusai Bunka Shinkō- kai (KBS, International Organization for the Promotion of Culture), begun in the late 1930s. Forerunner of what is now the Japan Foundation, the KBS was created to promote cultural exchange between Japan and foreign countries. KBS produced Nihon Ongaku- shu (Album of Japanese music) as a compilation of various music genres recorded between 1941–42. Released as a 60- disc (120 sides) sound anthology arranged in five volumes, the set was intended to demonstrate the richness of Japan’s cultural practices. As Terauchi notes, [End Page 158] it is remarkable that this project was completed at all during such a turbulent time. Ethnomusicologists Tanabe Hisao (1883–1984) and Machida Kashō (1888–81)1 were part of the original project and played a major part in selecting the music included in Nihon Ongaku- shu. The original anthology included gagaku, koto, shamisen, and other elite genres as well as folk songs. The present CD, Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play, includes 24 tracks of folk songs from the original Nihon Ongaku- shu that represent nearly every region of Japan. The original anthology included only Japanese music—I suppose appropriately, albeit unjustly—and omitted music of Okinawans, the Ainu, and other minority groups. Each track is provided with a detailed description in the liner notes, published in English by World Arbiter but available in Japanese on arbiterrecords.org. The notes in both English and Japanese resonate with the KBS original intent to make Japan’s culture more accessible to the world. As sources for the notes, Terauchi draws on the KBS compilation and from a few subsequent collections, including the major project by Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK), and from the collections of ethnomusicologists Tanabe and Machida. Terauchi’s rich liner notes are full of regional information and historical accounts. In a few instances she comments on the present. The source material for the liner notes, as Terauchi notes, is a compilation in itself. Track 13, Nishiryō no uta is a group of three songs from Hokkaido. It is related to herring fishing practices in the port town of Otaru and includes the song Okiage ondo, which today is widely known as Sōran- bushi. The interrelations of each track, most containing more than one song, presents a truly...

Legal Review of the Publication of Song Covers to Youtube without the Creator's Permission is Reviewed from Law No. 28 of 2014 on Copyright

Copyright in the field of music and songs has been supported by technological advances one of which is Youtube, with this technological advancement many things can be done by irresponsible people so that it can harm others such as making a cover version of other people's songs and uploading them to Youtube media without getting permission from copyright holders and not infrequently today many become famous and benefit more than creating songs. The collection and collection of data in this study was carried out by document study (Library Research) using skunder data that includes primary, skunder and tertiary legal materials. The results of the study stated that Copyright is an exclusive right where the song cover actor wants to cover the song and seek economic benefits, must get permission / license from the creator so as not to violate the Copyright. Even without recording, copyrighted works have received protection from the Copyright Act. But a copyrighted work would be better if it does the pencant. To cover the song must also be in accordance with certain conditions so as not to violate copyright, and uploading the video cover of the song on Youtube without the creator's permission is a form of law against copyright. Copyright infringement is caused by a factor that causes a lack of awareness of copyright infringement, cultural factors and one of them is economic factors, so many parties who make song covers without the creator's permission and upload to Youtube media benefit from the upload. Keywords: Cover Publication, Youtube, Copyright.

Songs of the Multitude: The April Revolution, the 6.3 Uprising, and South Korea's Protest Music of the 1960s

The decade of the 1960s is remembered for worldwide political upheavals, with South Korea's April Revolution of 1960 being one early episode. Protesters of the April Revolution appropriated a variety of songs, including the national anthem, Korean War songs, school songs, and children's songs. But these appropriated protest songs have received scant scholarly attention. Four years later in 1964, college students launched a protest movement known as the 6.3 Uprising to stop the military government's implementation of a deeply unpopular normalization treaty with Japan. The movement added a few original songs to the protest music repertoire, but they have since fallen into obscurity. Protest music scholarship in South Korea has largely overlooked the legacy of the 1960s, favoring more polished musical interventions by the pre-Korean War leftist movement and the People's Song Movement of the 1980s. This paper examines the forgotten protest songs of the 1960s from daily newspaper archives and other sources. Recognizing the multitude who pushed forward the April Revolution, I argue that South Korea's protest songs—"people's songs" or minjung kayo—are best understood as songs of the multitude.

Romanticism: Characteristics, Themes and Poets

This paper examines about Romanticism or Romantic era, themes and some famous writers, poets and poems of romantic era. Romanticism is one of the repetitive topics that are connected to either creative mind, vision, motivation, instinct, or independence.
 The subject frequently condemns the past, worries upon reasonableness, disconnection of the essayist and pays tribute to nature. Gone before by Enlightenment, Romanticism brought crisp verse as well as extraordinary books in English Literature. Begun from England and spread all through Europe including the United States, the Romantic development incorporates well known journalists, for example, William Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Lord Byron, Shelley, Chatterton, and Hawthorne. ‘Romantic’ has been adjusted from the French word romaunt that implies a story of Chivalry. After two German scholars Schlegel siblings utilized this word for verse, it changed into a development like an epidemic and spread all through Europe.
 Romanticism in English writing started during the 1790s with the distribution of the Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth's "Preface" to the subsequent version (1800) of Lyrical Ballads, in which he portrayed verse as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", turned into the statement of the English Romantic development in verse.
 The first phase of the Romantic movement in Germany was set apart by advancements in both substance and artistic style and by a distraction with the mysterious, the intuitive and the heavenly. An abundance of abilities, including Friedrich Hölderlin, the early Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jean Paul, Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, A.W. what's more, Friedrich Schlegel, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, and Friedrich Schelling, have a place with this first phase.
 The second phase of Romanticism, involving the period from around 1805 to the 1830s, was set apart by a reviving of social patriotism and another regard for national roots, as bore witness to by the accumulation and impersonation of local old stories, people songs and verse, society move and music, and even recently disregarded medieval and Renaissance works. The resuscitated recorded appreciation was converted into creative composition by Sir Walter Scott, who is frequently considered to have imagined the verifiable novel. At about this equivalent time English Romantic verse had arrived at its peak in progress of John Keats, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

СПЕЦИФИКА ХОРОВОЙ АРАНЖИРОВКИ РУССКИХ НАРОДНЫХ ПЕСЕН РЕБРИХИНСКОГО РАЙОНА АЛТАЙСКОГО КРАЯ (РОССИЯ) ДЛЯ СЦЕНИЧЕСКИХ НАРОДНО-ПЕВЧЕСКИХ КОЛЛЕКТИВОВ

Based on long-term experience of vocalic-choir work with academic ensembles of the Altai State Institute of Culture (Barnaul, Altai Krai, Russia) on pieces of local music folklore, the author discloses some theoretic and instructional aspect of adaptation of people's song material to people's vocal ensembles of various team compositions, and also describes specifics of choral arrangement of Russian people's songs that reflect stylistic peculiarities of ethnic song tradition of Russian areas of the South of Western Siberia (Rebrikhinsky District of Altai Krai, Russia).

ОБРАБОТКИ НАРОДНЫХ ПЕСЕН В ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ РОССИЙСКИХ КОМПОЗИТОРОВ

Briefly describes some issues of preservation of ethnic song heritage of Russians through adaptations of people's songs for various academic choirs. Several versions of interpretation of terms “adaptation”, “setting”, “arrangement”, and “transcription” outlined in classic musicological works are considered. Key design techniques of authorial adaptations of people's songs for academic choirs are analyzed. On the authors' opinion, adaptation of a Russian folk song for academic choir opens brand new performing opportunities, let to substantially enrich list of productions of any amateur or professional vocal ensemble. Arrangement lets not only to actualize primary source but also to create original source-based musical composition using various expressive means.

Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play by Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai

Reviewed by: Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play by Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai Justin R. Hunter (bio) Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play. Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai [sic], 1941. Text and translation by Naoko Terauchi. World Arbiter, 2016. One CD (77 minutes). 19 pages of notes (English), 16 pages of notes (Japanese). $15.95. Japanese Traditional Music: Songs of People at Work and Play is a compilation of music not likely heard outside of academic archives for more than seventy years. The amount of scholarly work done on Japanese music is seemingly endless. From courtly traditions to theater forms, Japanese and foreign scholars have worked in earnest to document the island nation's performing arts for centuries. In the pre– and post–World War II era, many Japanese musicologists documented musics from around Japan to capture sounds thought to be in decline due to changing times. But equally important, these documentations were crafted to present the unique qualities of Japanese traditional genres to the outside world. Much of this recorded material was lost or now rests in archives, however, and is largely inaccessible to most people. This CD compilation by Naoko Terauchi is a restoration project of recordings from the mid-twentieth century, focusing on regional folk songs. "Each song conveys a rich musical and lyrical expression closely related to local livelihoods and life styles" (7) from people all over Japan. This is an extensive project, for which information and audio from archival research and two sets of recordings was compiled to release the album in its complete form of twenty-four tracks. These recordings allow listeners to hear music of "unique historical importance, [and they are] culturally valuable as a document of musical practices in traditional Japanese genres during wartime" (5). Indeed, Terauchi's album highlights the music of Japanese commoners and not the elite musics or high art forms of city centers, which arguably were not at risk of loss. The folk tunes of the countryside speak to the people of Japan in a time in which the world had particular views of the militaristic nation gearing up in aggression and solidifying its homogeneous and lofty presentation. Terauchi's projects are a compilation of the work done by the Kokusai Bunka Shinkō-kai (KBS; International Organization for the Promotion of Culture), started in the late 1930s. The KBS was created by what is now the [End Page 165] Japan Foundation to promote cultural exchange between Japan and foreign countries. The KBS created an extensive anthology of Japanese music that was recorded between 1941 and 1942. As Terauchi notes, it is remarkable that this project was completed in such a turbulent time in Japan's history. Nihon Ongaku-shu (Album of Japanese Music) was compiled to demonstrate the richness of Japanese cultural practices by accounting for the various performing art forms. Ethnomusicologists Tanabe Hisao and Machida Kashō were connected to the original project. Terauchi notes that it is likely that Hisao and Kashō played a large role in selecting the music highlighted in Nihon Ongaku-shu, which was released as a sixty-disc (120 sides) collection arranged into five volumes. These original volumes included music from the gagaku, koto, shamisen, and other traditional Japanese forms. The compilation album by Terauchi highlights the folk songs collected in the Nihon Ongaku-shu. Japanese Traditional Music includes music from nearly every region in Japan. I suppose appropriately, albeit unjustly, the original collection included only Japanese music and excluded music from Okinawan people, the Ainu, or any other minority groups living in Japan at that time. Each track is accompanied by a detailed description in the liner notes—published by World Arbiter in English but available in Japanese on arbiterrecords.org. The use of both English and Japanese is a nod to the original intent of the KBS's mission to bring Japan's culture to the world in accessible ways. The source material for these descriptions is, as Terauchi explains, a compilation in itself. She uses references from the KBS project and a few of the follow-up collections, including the large work done by Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) and separate work done by...

SONG TRADITIONS OF REBRIKHINSKII DISTRICT, ALTAI KRAI (RUSSIA) AND ITS PRESERVATION IN EDUCATIONAL TRAINING OF PEOPLE'S CHOIR CONDUCTORS

The paper briefly describes some local peculiarities of song folklore of Russians from Rebrikha and Voronikha villages of Rebrikhinskii district (Altai Krai, Siberian federal district, Russia). Musical, stylistic, performing specifics of Russian people's songs collected by the author in ethnographic fieldworks done in 1994 and 1997 are analyzed. The author's experience in studying and preservation of Russian singing traditions and examples of Russian song folklore in the conditions of educational process run in Altai State Institute of Culture (Barnaul, Altai Krai, Russia) within the frames of program “Folk Singing Art” is described. On the author's opinion, acquaintance of students with ethnographic fieldwork materials under learning special subjects will help to develop their cultural erudition which is considered as an important condition for supplying high quality of people's choir conductors' educational training.

ЛИЧНЫЕ ПЕСНИ В ТРАДИЦИОННОЙ КУЛЬТУРЕ САХА (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ ФОЛЬКЛОРНОЙ ЭКСПЕДИЦИИ 2002 Г.)

The article is aimed at substantiating a proposition that “personal songs” in the broad sense of the term were everywhere in the Yakut traditional culture. The existence of the tradition of performing individual songs is evidenced, first of all, by the repertoire of famous singers, who preserved the “author’s” songs of people around them or legendary personalities as a kind of cultural memory. Basing on the analysis of the texts of two lyric improvisation songs and memoirs, the authors reveal that personal improvisation songs had been created up to the 40s of the ХХ century in the framework of the local tradition and have been preserved in the memory of the second-millennium culture representatives.

ACTUAL EXISTENTIAL ISSUES OF BAROQUE PERIOD IN FOLK-SONGS LEGACY (BASED ON COLLECTION “SONGS OF PEOPLE OF GALICIA” BY Z. PAULI)

The article is devoted to context specific of folk songs from the collection “Songs of people of Galicia” by polish folklorist Z. Pauli. General and subjective problems and issues of Ukrainian society in 17th and 18th centuries were revealed. Song’s lyrics were analyzed and actual problems of baroque Ukrainian’s life were highlighted. Each of these problems and issues has it’s specific worldview expression. This worldview response to society and subjective problems of Baroque was presented in folk songs. Thus, the problems of Ukrainian community and personal issues was considered in terms of worldview specific. So, in our point of view the main problems of Ukrainian Baroque society were “cossachyna” and conscription. Attitude of ordinary people to cossacks, their life and role in the state’s fate presented in historical songs, epic songs and Cossack songs. Context of these songs from Z. Pauli collection showed us some important worldview responses to the Cossacks. As a response to the historical events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries formed the cult of the warrior’s force. So the main virtues were agility and courage of the warrior. “Cossack glory” was one of the main values in the mass perception of Ukrainians. And was defeating during the battle was the most threat in terms of the relatives of warrior. In the song’s lyrics of 18th century the theme of soldier’s military duty hade wide spreading. Many families had to say good bye to their close relatives. That’s why the frequently motives of soldier songs are farewell, anguish and sorrow. Social problems such as insecurity, orphanhood and gender imbalance, caused by man’s military service, became a relevant for ordinary citizens. Personal existential problems presented in lyric songs and ballads. Widespread subjective problems such as freedom of someone own choice, choice contrary to the social or family opinion, contradictory feelings, emotions and actions outlined in folk-song’s lyrics. Frequently such song’s lyrics expressed metaphysical meditations about loneliness, person’s place in the world, happiness and desire to be happy, the influence of fate on human life etc. This group of songs present a typical Baroque pessimism. So, us our research showed ancient folk songs are real rich source for understanding worldview of our ancestors.

"We Can't Feel Our Language": Making Places in the City for Aboriginal Language Revitalization

"We Can't Feel Our Language":Making Places in the City for Aboriginal Language Revitalization Natalie J. K. Baloy (bio) The Squamish teens . . . show an appreciation of their culture. It may not be to the same level or depth as their elders, but it may help to ensure that it lives on, even if in a different form. They have all heard their traditional language spoken at story-tellings, and at gatherings and funerals. Even though they don't understand it, they enjoy hearing it. "It sounds better," says Ralphie, "it's a lot more pretty than English." Belinda, growing up in urban Port Alberni, is one teen who feels a strong and deep connection to both her language and culture. Yet she still faces numerous stumbling blocks in her quest to learn more about it. . . . "I want to learn more prayers. When we go to workshops, I want to hear the prayers from beginning to end. If I knew the prayers, I would say them. I told my grampa that, so he's been teaching me, taking me out on the road, and now I'm learning about medicinal plants and foods." Belinda recognizes that there are teachings associated with her people's songs and dances. "I want to understand what they mean, so I go and ask my grampa. I don't want to sing without knowing what it means." Native language revitalization efforts are overwhelmingly located in rural environments, despite the fact that aboriginal people are increasingly choosing to live and raise families in urban settings.1 This profoundly affects aboriginal people living in cities, many of whom, like the Squamish and Port Alberni teens quoted above, are anxious to learn, speak, hear, see, and feel their languages. This article explores possibilities for extending aboriginal language education opportunities into the urban domain based on qualitative research in Vancouver, British Columbia. I [End Page 515] argue that aboriginal language revitalization efforts have a place in the city, as demonstrated by emerging language ideologies of urban aboriginal people expressed in interviews for this study. I identify three central challenges facing language workers and learners. I suggest possible ways to address these issues through urban language revitalization projects. First, language workers and learners must work against the sometimes subtle but pervasive idea that a strong aboriginal identity and an urban lifestyle are mutually exclusive.2 Many people acknowledge that urban aboriginal people can and do maintain strong connections to their heritage and homelands; however, language revitalization projects are located primarily on reserves, perpetuating a divide between language and the city. I present several approaches to reconceptualizing urban aboriginal identity that can support urban-based language initiatives. Second, language workers must consider how to address linguistic and cultural diversity among urban aboriginal people through language projects. Research participants suggested that attention to the local languages ought to be the first step, particularly for public use of language. Participants emphasized important links between land, language, and identity. Acknowledgment of local peoples, their lands, and their languages offers a starting point for addressing diverse language needs in the city. I call this step "placing language." Third, language workers and learners must identify how ties between land, language, and identity can be fostered and nurtured in urban spaces not only for local peoples but also for those who have moved to the city from elsewhere. For nonlocal urban aboriginal peoples, connections with homelands can be strengthened through enhanced access to language and culture.3 I suggest several approaches for "making places" for language and culture in the city. Including the urban dimension in language revitalization efforts is of pressing importance as languages continue to lose speakers and aboriginal people continue to dwell in urban spaces.4 Through recognition and promotion of connections between land, language, and identity, language workers and learners can make places for aboriginal language education in the city. Talking About Language: Language Ideologies Linguistic anthropologists and other scholars have recognized the sociocultural implications of language and examined its social functions. [End Page 516] The study of "language ideology" has emerged as a "mediating link between social structures and forms of talk."5 Language ideology refers to the social connections people make...

Work and sing: a history of occupational and labor union songs in the United States

In this wide-ranging and accessible survey of American labor songs, Ronald D. Cohen chronicles the history behind the work songs of cowboys, sailors, hoboes, and others, as well as the singing culture of groups ranging from the Industrial Workers of the World to Pete Seeger's People's Songs. He discusses protest songs, the links between labor songs and the Left, the importance of labor song leaders such as Joe Glazer, labor musicals and songsters, and the folk music movement from Lead Belly and the Almanac Singers through Woody Guthrie.

The Strangest Dream: Communism, Anti-Communism and the U. S. Peace Movement, 1945-1963

Strangest Dream: Communism, Anti-Communism, and the US. Peace Movement, 1945-1963. By Robbie Lieberman. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Pp. 272. Illustrations, index. Cloth, $34.95. A volume in the Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution series. Robbie Lieberman, associate professor of history at Southern Illinois University and author of the award winning Song Is My Weapon: People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture (1989), has long been involved in promoting and studying peace movements. Combining her various academic interests, she now directs her attention to the convoluted connection between the always controversial Communist Party and the struggle to promote peace from the 1930s into the 1960s. As a fitting touch, the book's title and each chapter title are drawn from a song dealing with matters of war, peace, and social change. Using a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, including a number of stimulating interviews, Lieberman begins with the ups and downs of the peace movement during the depression years, when lingering memories of World War I propelled many college students to support pacifism. The Communist Party dropped this position with the outbreak of civil war in Spain in mid-decade and increasing fears of escalating fascism in Europe. Others on the left became increasingly suspicious of communists, however, particularly after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet peace pact in 1939 and the party's turn towards non-intervention as Germany launched World War II. Then, two years later, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union, soon followed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, pacifists were in short supply as the vast majority of Americans, particularly communists, became pro-war. Following the war, Lieberman makes a distinction between the Soviet Union's vocal struggle for peace and the U.S.'s preference for freedom, with the two goals increasingly clashing and diverging. Part of the early controversy centered on the use and future of the atom bomb, with perhaps international control, although the author does not explore this topic in depth. She does detail the Henry Wallace presidential campaign in 1948, on the Progressive Party ticket, which, for some, clarified the split between the Communist left and its supporters opting for negotiations versus the Truman administration's increasing emphasis on a Cold War confrontational style (which the Republican Party thoroughly supported). Anticommunism fueled the attack on Wallace and the peace movement, which fared poorly in the election, as communism and liberalism permanently parted company. The following year two events drove home the message. A peace conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, attracting a range of prominent individuals, faced a firestorm of criticism, as it coincided with the opening trials of the Communist Party leadership also in New York City - although the conference ended with eighteen thousand attending a rally at Madison Square Garden. Then, a few months later, a concert for peace and civil rights at Peekskill, New York, featuring Paul Robeson, became a battleground as thousands of concert-goers were viciously attacked by screaming patriots as they left the grounds. As the fifties dawned, Lieberman notes, peaceful coexistence became an extreme and isolated position, associated exclusively with the Communist Left. Pressure to accept the cold war consensus came from government agencies and private citizens alike. …

Southern Roots and Branches: Forty Years of the New Lost City Ramblers

In the early spring of 1999 I drove out of Lexington, Virginia, and halfway up a mountain turned onto the private drive that led to Mike Seeger's home. Soon enough John Cohen arrived from New York and Tracy Schwarz from West Virginia. Over a weekend I taped hours of interviews with the New Lost City Ramblers, one of the premier folk revival groups. The incubator for both bluegrass and country as we now know it, the Ramblers were the first to take their inspiration and repertoire from the hillbilly or that had been commercially recorded in the South from the late 1920s through the 1930s. I also had access to a significant part of their paper archive, including personal letters and business contracts, and was in contact by email with Tom Paley one of the Ramblers' original members who now lives in London. What follows is the complex story of a group of northern, urban musicians who made it their life's work to bring rural, southern onto the national stage and in the process significantly contributed to what became a world-wide movement in roots music. Modern interest in rural played by white southerners -- what we now call old-time music -- began as part of the Folk revival, a complex, multi-layered cultural movement that nurtured the individual talents who first performed as the New Lost City Ramblers (NLCR) in 1958. Beginning in the 1930s, the study and performance of American folksong had been associated with politics. Many of its proponents across the political spectrum believed that the contained enduring but forgotten values that could still speak to contemporary social problems. Inspired and encouraged by such pioneering scholars as John and Alan Lomax, Charles Seeger, and others, urban performers like the Almanac Singers and the Weavers in the late 1940s and early 1950s joined Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and other traditional musicians to awaken audiences to their commonality with the folk. With the House Un-American Activities Committee's increasing intimidation of the Left, however, politically inspired folksong was forced underground, the people's songs appropriated by such popular musicians as Harry Belafonte, the Highwaymen, and the Kingston Trio. Those who religiously read each issue of Sing Out!, a journal devoted to the notion that folksong could promote social change, held their noses at such rank commercialism and sought new venues for their music. One of these venues was Beat culture, whose influence was widespread in American art and as well as in literature. Centered in New York City's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's North Beach, but with outposts in many other cities and university communities, the Beats saw through the thin veneer of consumer culture to the emptiness within and shunned a political system that, from their point of view, ignored the nation's social ills. The Beats spoke to many folksingers' own disenchantment with the American way and welcomed them into their coffee-houses and lofts. By the late 1950s, interest in folk music, as much as in jazz, was a trademark of the counterculture. Before moving to clubs folk flourished in the open air, nowhere more so than in Washington Square, near New York University and Greenwich Village. Since 1940 this had been the city's meeting place for folksingers, including NLCR'S Tom Paley, an admired virtuoso on guitar and banjo. Raised in Queens by politically progressive parents, Paley studied at City College before entering graduate school in mathematics at Yale, where he crossed paths with John Cohen, a freshman fine arts major whom he had previously met in the city. In the early 1950s, Cohen and Paley organized hootenannies in New Haven, while still frequenting the Sunday afternoon sings in Washington Square. By the early 1950s, Paley and a few others began to steer an important segment of these urban musicians away from the then popular English ballads and political songs toward country music. …

"My Song Is My Weapon": People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950

"My Song Is My Weapon": People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950

"My Song Is My Weapon." People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950

"My Song Is My Weapon." People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950

"My Song Is My Weapon": People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950.

"My Song Is My Weapon": People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950.

"My Song Is My Weapon": People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950.

"My Song Is My Weapon": People's Songs, American Communism, and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950.