Folk music revival

The folk Music revival flourished throughout the decade of the 1960s and into the 1970s. Songs with a clear political message led to the development of an urban folk music revival that intertwined with the political upheaval of the 1960s.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration brought traditional African-American folk songs to the attention of urban middle-class audiences at the same time that singers with left-wing political sympathies promoted folk songs that they felt reflected the voice of the people. Singers such as Woody Guthrie and Sarah Ogan Gunning were among those who encouraged the spread of folk songs. In the 1950s Pete Seeger and the Weavers carried on the tradition of Woody Guthrie by bringing their music and political message to a wider audience as they began to develop their music on college campuses. With such hit songs as “Good Night Irene,” and “The Midnight Special,” the group paved the way for the folk singers of the 1960s to bring the revival to main-

Pete Seeger performing on stage at Yorktown Heights High School, Yorktown, New York, 1967 (Library of Congress)

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Stream culture. Seeger was one of the leading influences in developing folk music as a new form of popular music in the United States. Along with many other members of the entertainment industry, Seeger and the Weavers were targeted in the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s and blacklisted, making it difficult for them to work.

There were four kinds of folk music singers who emerged during the 1960s. Traditional performers learned their folk music through the culture in which they were raised. Many of these performers stayed away from the mainstream and instead sang at folk festivals, on college campuses, and in coffeehouses. This first type of folk music included singers such as Sarah Ogan Gunning, Mississippi John Hurt, and Glenn Ohrlin. Other performers, many of them white middle-class suburban or urban young people, immersed themselves in both the culture and music of traditional singers and began to popularize it. Among those who could be called “emulators” were the New Lost City Ramblers, Dave Van Ronk, and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.

Still other performers took traditional text and music and rewrote songs to appeal to mainstream urban audiences. They included such groups as the Kingston Trio. Finally, there were singers who attempted to blend traditional and urban aesthetics in their performance without losing the political messages they were conveying. The music of this group blended folk, classical, jazz, and pop styles. The fourth group created the mainstream sound of the urban folk song revival in the 1960s. Singers in this category remain popular and include Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary; and Bob Dylan.

Folk music became intertwined with the Civil Rights Movement. Singer Guy Carawan revived the old spiritual “We Shall Overcome,” taught it to civil rights volunteers, and helped it become the marching song of the movement. Baez and Dylan sang songs to protest the Vietnam War and racism, and also sang in support of the movement for women’s status and rights. Dylan’s song “Blowin’ in the Wind,” sung by Peter, Paul and Mary as well as Dylan himself, became a standard protest song.

The folk music revival contributed to the antiwar protests of the late 1960s and continued through the turbulence of the 1970s. Many folk singers found the greatest forum for their political messages with the counterculture of the “hippie” generation. The folk music revival truly reached a high point with the participation of many folk singers in the most historically significant concert of the era, Woodstock. Woodstock brought together such folk and rock greats as Baez, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Jefferson Airplane, who sang the war protest song “Volunteers.” Woodstock, which was intended to be only a small gathering, caught the attention of the nation as it became the largest gathering of entertainers and fans up to that time to protest peacefully the war in Vietnam and the injustices of the era.

Folk music captured the attention of the population in the 1950s through the 1970s with its political messages criticizing the problems of the era.

Further reading: R. Serge Denisoff, Great Day Coming: Folk Music and the American Left (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971); Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986).

—Sarah Brenner