How much can one fan of OKOM (Our Kind Of Music) accomplish in just a couple of years?
Plenty, if it's Rockzilla, aka photographer Michael Johnson.
From 2003 to 2005, rockzilla.net was a chronicle of the alt.country scene from a uniquely Texan perspective.
But all good things must end, and Rockzilla has retired from the online 'zine scene.
This mirror site was copied from the rockzilla.net site with the express permission of
Rockzilla hisself. If you don't believe me, go to the
KHYI-Fans email list and ask him! Buddy will back me up, too.
Can these bones live? Can these
dry bones live? Ezekiel answered the Lord, "Only You know."
This Land is Your Land:
Songs of Freedom consists of sixteen songs representing the
folk music movement from 1950 through the arrival of Bob Dylan,
who had both reinvigorated and destabilized the folk music world
by 1965. Vanguard recorded many of the most important folk musicians
of the period, including the Weavers and Joan Baez. Unfortunately,
they missed out on signing up Bob Dylan. He's nonetheless represented
on this collection by three songs--a previously unreleased recording
of Joan Baez singing "The Times They Are A-Changin',"
Judy Collins performing "Blowing in the Wind," and
Baez and Dylan himself, close to the time when he was hungry
and it was her world, doing a duet version of "With God
On Our Side."
By powerful--and even terrible--historical synchrony, Vanguard
Records released This Land is Your Land: Songs of Freedom,
a sampling of pro-Civil Rights, anti-war folk music, in the weeks
following the September 11th attack. If these songs are to be
listened to right now, as living music, they may inspire. They
may also offend.
That is as it should be. Fifty, forty years ago, they offended
and inspired people too, when some people believed that American
folk music might change the world. (For more on this curious
belief, see Robert Cantwell's history of 1950s folk music, When
We Were Good.) Songs of Freedom is not just songs about war,
but right now those are the ones that strike my ear.
There are anti-war songs on this album. There are pro-war
songs on this album. The folk music movement, after all, had
been nurtured by both New Deal liberals and by radicals who discovered
Woody Guthrie as the working class American hero. The cd opens
with a patriotic anthem from Civil War, "Rally 'Round the
Flag."
We are springing to the call of our brothers gone before
Shouting the battle cry of freedom
And we'll fill the vacant ranks with a million freemen
more
Shouting the battle cry of freedom
This was a hugely popular song for the Union during the war,
written before Emancipation became an official goal of the war.
But surely the Weavers were singing it in the 1950s precisely
with Emancipation and the contemporary Civil Rights movement
in mind.
We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, pure, and brave,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
And although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave
Shouting the battle cry of freedom
The cd also presents the black folk singer Odetta (among
other things, a wonderful antidote to the bloodless campfire
singing on some songs on this collection) performing "Battle
Hymn of the Republic," which could well be retitled, for
this collection, "God Really is on Our Side." It was
written for the war as anti-slavery crusade.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish'd rows of steel
As ye dealt with my condemners, so with you my grace shall
deal
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his
heel,
His truth is marching on.
A song recommending righteous violence that any war advocate
could appreciate. Of course, so could anybody else who thinks
God has instructed him to kill.
Even Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!," adapted
from Ecclesiastes, here sung by Judy Collins, popularized by
the Byrds, which was in its day a peace song, announces
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
But the album, representing how divided and contradictory
the folk music movement was, also presents songs that unequivocally
condemn war, either American patriotic war ("With God on
Our Side") or war in the era of mass armies (Buffy Sainte-Marie's
"The Universal Soldier.") How will people hear "The
Universal Soldier" in 2002?
And he's fighting for democracy
He's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
Who's to live and who's to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall
Not to hard to update that, is it: He's fighting against
terrorism/He's fighting for jihad...
Buffy Sainte-Marie ends her song by saying:
He's the universal soldier
And he really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him and you and me
And brothers can't you see
This is not the way we put an end to war
Right now, the American people are feeling a lot more like
singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" than they do
singing "With God on My Side." ("If God's on our
side, he'll stop the next war.") This makes 2002 precisely
the wrong and precisely the right time to re-release many of
the songs on Songs of Freedom.
These songs are important cultural and historical documents.
Will they move people today? Are they too corny for a hipper
generation? Conversely, are they too leftist for the New American
Patriotism?
