By Harrison Zeiberg
From WCCS
This is the script from a presentation given as part of WheaTalk 2021.
Hi everyone, my name is Harrison
From the title you're probably wondering what it is I'm actually talking about here. Well, let's get started.
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What connects these two pictures? Well what connects them beyond the fact that they are both musicians, and you know, both pictures of people? The man with the guitar is Woody Guthrie. You have all at least probably heard one of his songs, "This Land is Your Land". The other man you probably already know but if you don't it's a picture of rapper, actor, writer, and comedian Donald Glover, or in this picture as his stage name Childish Gambino.
Around the time of World War Two Woody Guthrie, who was a long time political leftist, wrote the song "Tear the Fascists Down". Change Slide. As you can see in the lyrics this song is a call to action to the American people. Guthrie lived in a society that was largely ambivalent towards Nazism and facism and you can tell from the lyrics he didn't really understand or accept this. Guthrie knew he had a gift, and he knew he had political views, and he knew he had to say something. So he used his talents and wrote a song that said something. As others died fighting against the hordes of fascists that swept across the world, Americans sat by and, largely as the song said, did nothing. As the lyrics say, "Good people what are we waiting on?" This song is not only a call to action but a song about trying to end the willful ignorance of the American people to an existential threat to freedom.
Now let's move on to the Childish Gambino song, "This is America". This is obviously a much more recent song, a song more of you have probably heard, and it's in a totally different style of music. We aren't here to argue about which song is better but to look at the commonalities between them. "This is America" through its lyrics and music video depict scenes of violence, and racism. This song speaks about police brutality, gun violence, and American's unwillingness to do anything to stop it. Once again we have a song calling people to take action and to right wrongs. We have a song speaking out against the willful ignorance of Americans.
Both of these songs, although again different in style and context, are speaking to similar thematic elements. They both speak to the American people's inaction in the face of grave and existential threats. These songs are also influenced by the artists backgrounds and the cultural contexts they lived, or continue to, live in. The circumstances surrounding the creation of these songs are different but what is similar is that these songs are a reflection of those circumstances. These songs are very different in important ways, but they're also very similar, and they are similar because they are both folk songs.
But before we move on, we do need to answer an important question. Change Slide. What is folk music?
Well when I say folk music most people probably think of banjos and jug bands and at least in part they wouldn't be wrong. I know that's what I thought folk music was until very recently and that's because I was listening to the sound of it, not the message.
Then I started to work on a project for the radio station. I wanted to do a small series about the history of music, and the first musician I chose to cover was Pete Seeger. If you don't know who Pete Seeger is, he's one of the most famous folk musicians of all time, as well as a huge environmental and civil rights activist. He actually introduced MLK to the song "We Shall Overcome". He's the man on this slide with the guitar.
For the radio project I was doing I tried to read a book about every musician I was going to cover, and I found one online that was a collection of Pete Seeger's writings. Throughout the book one of the interesting things was that one of the most famous folk musicians of all time could never really come up with a definitive answer as to what folk music was. His answer kept changing or he basically said that folk music is what you think it is.
There was also another interesting thing. This was only a page long or so and from what I remember the only mention of the topic but Pete Seeger argued that rap should be considered folk music.
Well I didn't know what to think at first. Admittedly I knew more about Pete Seeger and what I considered to be folk music than the average person my age, and I knew much less about rap music, and musicians like the other picture on this slide, Kendrick Lamar. By the end of this talk I hope to convince you that both of these people are folk musicians, but we'll get back to that later.
I didn't want to discount the idea that rap could be folk music, and so I thought about it. And in thinking about it I realized that I would never really be able to decide if I didn't have a definition of what folk music actually was.
So putting the definitions I had read together, along with my own thoughts, and what the internet told me, I came up with a, if not totally original, definition for folk music. Change Slide For at least the rest of this talk we will classify folk music as music that expresses either the hardships or joys of a specific cultural and societal background usually with reference to a greater cultural, societal, and political context.
What's most important though is what is left out. I included no reference to how the music sounds. We will get into that later but keep that in mind as we keep going.
Now let's talk about the history of folk music in the United States. Change Slide Around the 1920's to 1940's during the early days of the music industry folk music was pretty popular. Of course it was nothing compared to what modern musicians make and even during this time period the most popular folk musicians tended to be pretty poor.
These musicians would travel performing songs and collecting them and spreading music across the United States. Many of them were largely on the far left politically. Some were unabashed socialists and some were members of the Communist Party. Now it's not like Leftists were ever really liked within the United States but it was largely not dangerous to be one during the earlier days of folk music. During World War Two Leftists were at least accepted in part because there was a greater enemy and some folk musicians did their part to help in the war effort. Although persecution didn't stop, it was for a time somewhat lessened. And then came the Cold War.
During the Cold War Americans turned on other Americans and lives were ruined even on the accusation of being a Communist. Here we have two pictures. One is HUAC, or for its full name the House Un-American Activities Committee. Many musicians like Pete Seeger were called in front of it, and forced to testify, and many lives were ruined.
The most moving testimony in my opinion comes from Paul Robeson. If you've never heard of this man please after this event look him up. We don't have time to go into even a tenth of his career but just for context know that he was probably the most famous American in the world during the height of his career, and he was a black man. He was also a folk musician. His career had been on the decline before HUAC, but after he was called in front of it it became non-existent. The American government even confiscated his passport so that he couldn't leave the country.
Now what distinguishes his testimony from many others is that he didn't back down. He was defiant in the face of persecution. This is somewhat of a tangent but it bears being said. When asked by the committee why he didn't just stay in the Soviet Union, a place he had praised beforehand, he said this:
"Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no facist-minded people will drive me from it."
This was not the only time of stigma or persecution that folk music faced. The other picture on this page shows just one example of what I am talking about. Here we have parental advisory stickers. These are a much more recent development than HUAC. These were placed on music deemed not acceptable for children to listen to because of the explicit lyrics or content of the songs. Since rap tended to have explicit lyrics they were quite a large target of these stickers. In effect this also means that the messages conveyed in rap music was being kept, at least nominally, from children in a way that traditional folk music was not. This was by no means the limit to the stigma that rap musicians and rap music faced. Not only was their music stigmatized but they were associated with violence by the mainstream press, concert venues refused to have them, their music was censored on the radio, and amongst all of this since rap was a music that came out of the black community the artists had to go through everyday suffering the persecution that black people do in the United States.
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Both the folk music of the 1950's and folk rap music faced a significant amount of backlash before their acceptance, but they were both accepted. Pete Seeger was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors, and even performed at President Obama's first inauguration. Today rap musicians make millions of dollars a year and take up a substantial percentage of music streams. Kendrick Lamar has won a Pulitzer Prize for his music, and rappers have ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Although it was a long struggle and by no means is it over, acceptance has happened.
Now I've been speaking for a while now, and I realize that I should probably actually convince you that rap is folk music. I guess we should qualify that statement first.
Not every rap song is folk music just like not every song with a banjo is folk music. Woody Guthrie has a song called the "Car Song" which involves him making car noises for several minutes. This is not a folk song although it comes from a traditional folk musician. Remember that sound is not a part of the definition of folk music we are working with here, but rather the message being the song. And the message is important. Think of the songs "Fight the Power", "Alright", "This is America", and "Straight Outta Compton" amongst many more songs. All of these speak to societal problems affecting the communities that these rappers were coming out of. All of them are reflections of their time and the greater societal context that surrounds them. All of these songs have deep personal meanings to many people that are affected by the issues that these songs discuss. Why shouldn't they be considered folk music? They are in effect doing the same thing that Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Paul Robeson were doing, it just sounds different. If we don't treat folk music as something that is defined by the sound but rather the meaning, then there really isn't a reason why rap isn't considered folk music. Folk rap music does exist, and some of the most famous rap songs are these. Being folk music doesn't make these songs not rap music but rather places them within a broader musical and historical context, framework, and tradition.
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Let's talk about two minor but interesting points that I think may better convince you that rap music and traditional folk music share more in common than you may think. If you think the rest of what I said is just plain wrong then at least listen to this. Traditional folk music is very geographically specific, because think about it, it has to be. It's music that reflects the cultural background, and so the geography to it is very important. The same is true for rap. There's East Coast rap, and West Coast, and rap centered in Texas. But then you get more specific it's not just East Coast rap but it's New York rap, and it's not just New York rap but it's Brooklyn rap, and it's not just Brooklyn rap but it's this street in Brooklyn. Rap and traditional folk music both are highly influenced by the specific geographic conditions that they are created within, and once again the specific cultural context that that geographic placement helped create.
Here's another minor point. Both rap music and traditional folk music are heavily influenced by sampling, but in different ways. In rap music sampling is very common, whether it be a specific beat or a moment in another song, but it tends to be relatively short. In traditional folk music it's the exact opposite. It's not that they take a small portion of another song, it's that they take the entire song and then just add another verse to it or change a few words around which often confuses who has authorship of the song, and in doing so makes it more belong to a time or a people rather than an individual.
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So let's ask ourselves, what separates the song "We Shall Overcome" the anthem of the Civil Right Movement, and "Alright" one of the anthems of the Black Lives Matter movement? Sound? Yes. Context? Yes. But they are both reflections of their time, speaking to issues that affected them and their communities and both have a deep cultural and personal backgrounds. They are both folk songs.
Now let's get to the real reason why you've been listening to me for the past few minutes. It's not just that folk music isn't what you think it is. That's the content but it's not the point. Folk music which truly is a music without a sound tells us something about who we are as people, actually it tells us many things.
For one it shows how oppressed people have always turned to music to express themselves, and that listening to that music can not only tell you about musical notes but the lives of the people who were creating that music and the people who were listening to it.
But really as I worked on this I started to think about something. It's very easy to box ourselves in. To separate ourselves from each other, and to live our lives by narrow definitions. Folk music is folk music, rap music is rap music. There's no cross-over. Of course defining differences is important and so is celebrating them especially when we think of groups that have not been allowed into the mainstream, that have been marginalized.
But we also have to look at the commonalities. We can at the same time celebrate differences and what we share in common. We can realize that we are stronger together. It isn't binary, we can have both of these ideas and principles inside of us at the same time, and we are better off for it.
The persistent presence of folk music tells us that sadly yes oppression has existed always, but it also tells us that joy has always existed. It tells us that we live in this long tradition of people who refused to remain silent, who lifted up and used their voices when others told them not to.
It tells us that we aren't alone. That the struggles we face as a people are not aberrations but long standing issues that people have been fighting for generations, and we can look back to those generations and find strength. We can listen to their music and find solidarity.
Rap music is unique and at the same time part of a long and proud tradition reaching back decades if not hundreds of years into American history. And as long as there are struggles in life, and as long as there is joy, as long as people continue to fight for what is right, and those people fill the world with music, then folk music, in all of it's forms, will always exist.
Thank you.
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