“Hand of Man” Video About Mountain Top Removal

Music for the Mountains cd. Released 2011.

The band Magnolia Mountain recently released a video for their song “Hand of Man” about the horrors of Appalachian mountaintop removal.  The song appears on the Music for the Mountains compilation cd, which was released last year (to read about that project go here).

According to the band’s web page, the video took about a year to make. It’s filled with footage detailing the destruction that comes from this form of coal mining, including reference to high cancer rates and polluted waterways.  The video takes its cues from a long history of Appalachian organizing.

From Jeff Bigger’s post in the Huffington Post:

The Hand of Man” takes the listener to White Star Holler in Kentucky, where seven generations of mountain families have struggled to defend their lives and livelihoods from the toxic fallout from coal company destruction:

White Star Holler was my home
Shared the crops that we had grown
Shared the water from our well
Shared the life we loved so well
Coal men brought the mountain down
Leaked their poison underground
Mother, neighbor, friend, and son
Cancer took them, every one  (to read the whole post go here)

The band is asking that this video be shared far and wide to spread the word about mountaintop removal.  Want to know and/or get involved?  Visit I Love Mountains.org and be sure and check out the work of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

Friday Video for July 22, 2011: A Book About Zilphia Horton.

Taken from NYfolklore.org

Thanks to a friend who works for Highlander Research and Education Center, I found out that writer and roots music scholar Kim Ruehl is writing a book about organizer, activist,  folksong collector, and Paris, Arkansas native,  Zilphea Horton.   Using the grassroots fundraising method of KickStarter, Ruehl has already reached her financial goal needed to research and write the book and is now in the research phase of her work.  As part of her Kickstarter campaign she created this video, which provides an overview of Zilphia’s work and Ruehl’s research goals.

I can not wait to get my hands on the published copy of this book.  For years I’ve been fascinated with Zilphia Horton, the wife of Highlander Folk School founder Myles Horton.   Reading about Myles Horton and the founding of the Highlander Folk School was a turning point in my life as a folklorist. His writings, along with the current work of the school, have greatly influenced our vision for the McElroy House: Center for Folklife, Oral History and Community Action.

Reading Myle’s Horton’s autobiography, The Long Haul, I was surprised to learn Zilphia Horton was raised not too far from where the McElroy House is located.  I began to wonder, what led her to organize workers in the Paris, Arkansas mines?  What fostered her drive to resist injustice?  How did she come to love folk music?  In short, how did her upbringing in Paris, Arkansas influence the woman she became?   According to this video by Kim Ruehl, pretty soon the aswers to these questions will be available, and I am beyond excited.

If you’d like to read more about Zilphia Horton, Julia Schmidt-Pirro and Karen M. McCurdy wrote an excellent article about both Horton and Ruth Crawford Seeger entitled, “Employing Music in the Cause of Social Justice,” published in the 2005 edition of Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore.

Below is a snippt of the article, but you can read the entire piece by clicking here.

Horton was a pioneer at Highlander in the use of folk music as a tool of political mobilization. She adapted songs to serve in the political struggles—both labor and civil rights—of the mid—twentieth century. Of the many examples of her adaptations of the folk music heritage, one stands out as a powerful demonstration of her success: the transformation of the song “We Shall Overcome.” Originally an old Baptist hymn, “I Will Be All Right,” the song came to Highlander from the picket lines of the 1945 American Tobacco Company strike by the South Carolina CIO Food and Tobacco Workers Union in Charleston (Glen 1996, 177).

The lyrics of the song had already undergone many changes. In the era of slavery, the line of text was “The Lord will see us through.” This was altered by southern workers after World War II to “The union will see us through,” “We will win this fight,” and “We’re on to victory.” Horton saw a broader potential for the music, and in discussion with the Charleston strikers, planned new verses for the song to appeal to people other than unionized workers fighting for their rights (Austin 1991, 51). Horton continued to adapt the song’s text to suit the occasion. In 1947 she taught the song to Pete Seeger, who changed “will” (the original verb) to “shall” and added some new verses, including, “We shall end Jim Crow/ We shall live in peace/ All the world around” (Glen 1996, 177). Martin Luther King, Jr., first heard the song when Pete Seeger performed it at Highlander’s 25th anniversary celebration. In the 1960s Guy Carawan, who succeeded Horton as music director of the Highlander Folk School after her untimely death in April 1956, added other verses and further adapted the lyrics (Austin 1991, 51).

In her work at the Highlander Folk School, Horton made it a point not only to transform the songs she encountered, but also to preserve them…She was exposed to a variety of song traditions, including mountain folk music, American labor songs, international songs of political struggle, and Southern spirituals. She notated and published songs in a Highlander Songbook (Austin 1991, 49) and in a songbook entitledLabor Songs published in 1939 (Cohen 2002, 60)….

Hazel Dickens Has Passed Away.

I just sat down at my computer and read the news that Hazel Dickens died today.

A songwriter from West Virginia whose writing focused on human struggles, women and worker’s rights, she     was a staunch advocate for justice.

I remember the first time I heard her voice in the early 2000s. I’d grown up with traditional music, and I loved the raw and rough-hewn sound of mountain-dialect vocals. But Hazel’s music (and her work with Alice Gerrard) helped me to recognize more layers in traditional music than I’d seen before. Singing about the horrors of war, the rights of working people, and the loneliness of forgotten elderly in a nursing home, her songs called attention to injustices society prefers to ignore.

But her songs weren’t just portrayals of loneliness and injustice. They were fighting songs—-stories of people resisting and organizing and pushing ahead.  Steeped in traditional and bluegrass music, the songs themselves are about the realities of present day life and the fight for the future. They are calls to action, to organizing, to freedom for everyone. She was one of my favorite songwriters and singers of all time, and her music inspired me toward a path in social-justice based folklore.

What about you? How did Hazel inspire or change you? What are your favorite Hazel songs and why?

Continue reading »

Charles Neblett, Founding Member of Freedom Singers, on WKYU Discussing His Work and the Russellville Community.

From WKYU webpage.

WKU Folk Studies graduate student Rachel Hopkin produced a wonderful radio program for WKYU Public Radio in Bowling Green about Charles Neblett, founding member of the Freedom Singers. The radio program features  Neblett discussing the death of fourteen-year old Emmitt Till, which led him to fight in the Civil Rights Movement as well as stories of how and why he still fights today. The program also touches on Neblett’s work in the Black Bottom Historic Neighborhood in Russellville, Kentucky and the the importance of working with young people in the community.  Click here to listen to the radio program.

Also featured in this story is Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, fellow founding member of the Freedom Singers and founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock,  who will be performing this evening at Western Kentucky University.

Click here for information about this evening’s program at WKU.

While living in Kentucky I had the opportunity to work in Russellville in the Black Bottom with the West Kentucky African-American Heritage Museum where I got to know Charles Neblett and his family. He’s an amazing man and dedicated fighter for social justice.  His involvement with youth and their role in future of human rights inspired me greatly, as it has so many.

The Freedom Singers still perform today. Here’s a a wonderful recent performance of the Freedom Singers at the White House.

Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens by Bill C. Malone

At this year’s American Folklore Society conference (something I intend to write more about very soon)my wonderful friends Mike and Rachel Reynolds-Luster surprised me with a belated birthday gift: a paperback copy of Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens (Music in American Life Series, University of Illinois Press, 2008). It’s so good I have to tell you about it. Continue reading »