AMERICAN
PROTEST SONGS
From Leadbelly
to Woody
Guthrie
What is a protest song?
A protest song is a song which is associated with a movement for
social change and which is connected to current events. The lyrics
address topical issues. It may be folk, classical, or commercial in
genre.
Protest songs are frequently situational, having been associated with a
social movement through context. "Goodnight Irene", for example,
acquired the aura of a protest song because it was written by Lead
Belly, a black convict and social outcast, although on its face it is a
love song.
VOCABULARY: claim (revendiquer), express grievances (exprimer des
doléances), convey a message (transmettre un message), criticize,
castigate (fustiger) unfairness, condemn social injustice, support a
cause (défendre une cause), advocate social changes (être en faveur
de changements sociaux), side with the oppressed (être du côté des
opprimés).
From the Allan Lomax archive
Leadbelly (1885-1949) was an
accomplished 12-string
guitar player from the
Texas-Louisiana border.
During his life, Leadbelly
served four prison terms for
assault. At one of his
performances in prison, he
was discovered by John
Lomax, a Harvard-trained
musicologist. Lomax
introduced Leadbelly to
American audiences of the
1930s and 1940s. Although
Leadbelly never sold many
records during his lifetime,
he strongly influenced
several generations of folk
musicians.
Huddie William Ledbetter was born on Jeter Plantation in Mooringsport, Louisiana, in
1885 into a family that farmed land, first as sharecroppers in Louisiana, then as
landowners on the Texas-Louisiana border.
Taught to play accordion and then guitar by his uncle, Leadbelly began to employ his
talents at local parties.
After fathering a second child at age sixteen, Leadbelly was propelled by an outraged
community to leave home.
He became an itinerant minstrel and a farm laborer. He roamed around Dallas with the
legendary blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson.
He got his nickname, Leadbelly, in prison because of his physical toughness. He
escaped from prison and returned home, went to New Orleans and lived under
the assumed name Walter Boyd. However, he got into a fight with a relative who
was shot in the head and killed. Though Leadbelly always maintained his
innocence, he was convicted of murder, and was sentenced as Walter Boyd to a
long term of hard labor on the Shaw State Farm.
His musical gifts served him well in the prison camps, where he became a favorite of
the guards. Legend has it that in 1925, Leadbelly pleaded for (and was given) his
release in a “please pardon me” song composed for and addressed to Governor
Neff.
Leadbelly returned to Mooringsport, Louisiana, but his womanizing and rough ways
led to another conviction for assault with intent to murder.
In the 1930s, the Texas folklorist John Lomax was traveling through the South under a
Library of Congress grant, among other things recording the “musical treasury
locked up” in the prisons. Lomax discovered Leadbelly at Angola in July 1933. He
was astounded by Leadbelly's enormous repertoire and intense vocal style. Using a
bulky recorder Lomax began recording Leadbelly.
Thème (CONDITIONNELLES)
Observez:
If the American roots music concert shows in
Dijon, I’ll get myself tickets.
If Lomax was still alive, he would be surprised at
the country revival.
If John Lomax had not recorded Leadbelly’s
songs, no one would have been aware of his
talents.
OU Had Lomax not recorded…
Traduisez:
Si la country redevient populaire, la guitare à 12 cordes
sera à nouveau utilisée.
Si Guthrie n’avait pas rencontré Leadbelly, il n’aurait pas
été influencé par le blues.
Si Lomax n’avait pas eu de subvention de la NLC, il
n’aurait pas acheté son appareil enregistreur.
Si Lomax n’avait pas été soucieux de préserver le
patrimoine oral de l’Amérique, il n’aurait pas enregistré
les chants de Leadbelly.
Si de nouveaux enregistrements de Leadbelly pouvaient
être réalisés, les paroles seraient davantage mises en
valeur.
John A. Lomax is internationally known as the person who spearheaded the Library of
Congress's Archive of American Folk Songs with his field recording trips. He, and
later his son Alan, were responsible for preserving roots music.
Under “double good time” measures adopted to save costs, Leadbelly was released
early from prison. Lomax decided to take Leadbelly to New York, where he
performed before audiences of musicologists at elite universities, inspiring fear
and admiration. The mystique of his convict past and his commanding physical
presence, replete with horrific scars, added to his allure.
His eclectic repertoire, performed on a twelve-string guitar — which was not widely
used then — was largely unknown, and harked back some thirty or more years to
near-forgotten rural traditions. John Lomax also wrote a book (Negro Folk Songs as
Sung by Leadbelly) with transcripts from his repertoire and explanations of the
background of his songs and their place in American folklore.
Lomax also arranged a recording contract with the American Record Company, which
had recording studios and equipment. However, the commercial success of rural
blues had passed some ten years earlier, and the records sold poorly. This was
compounded by the company's insistence that Lead-belly record blues rather than
the folksongs that dominated his repertoire, most of which predated the blues and
were the chief source of his attraction for white audiences.
As the stay in New York and environs wore on, the relationship between Lomax and
Leadbelly deteriorated, and they parted company in March of 1935.
It was John who encouraged Lead
Belly to perform in prison clothes,
and John who suggested Lead
Belly sprinkle his performances
with historical context of his songs.
As a result, Lead Belly became less
blues artist and more novelty act
during his partnership with John
Lomax. His history as an ex-convict
was used in promoting concerts.
To the media of the day, Lead Belly
wasn't a brilliant artist with a
unique voice, he was an example
of how the prison system could
successfully reform a killer. John
Lomax treated Lead Belly as a
lecture tool, but what Lead Belly
sought was artistic and
commercial success.
Woody Guthrie
Woody came up in a frontier place in Oklahoma,
Injun territory, which was new country, in an
oil boom. And everything was happening
there. The town was full of Injuns, Mexicans,
blacks, people from all over the country, and
Woody lived in those honky-tonks, and he
picked up his guitar, and he learned how to
make music that would make sense to all those
folks. It was composed of ragtime, hillbilly,
blues, of all the currents of his time. He made
a new idiom that really represented the
opening of this new Western frontier of new
highways and power lines and Dust Bowl
migrants and all that. It had the sound of
movement in it. His guitar has the sound of a
big truck going down the highway with the
riders bouncing around in the front seat. He
wrote America's unofficial national anthem,
"This Land Is Your Land." He had the feel of the
relationship between language and melody
such as nobody else in our time had except
maybe his protégé, Bobby Dylan.
Alan Lomax
THE DUST BOWL
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region
devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America.
The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the
Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections
of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall,
light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive
combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the
soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor,
so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled
it into dense dust clouds, called "black blizzards." Recurrent
dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture
lands and driving 60 percent of the population from the
region. Most of these "exodusters" went to agricultural
areas first and then to cities, especially in the Far West.
THE DUST BOWL
Migrant mother, aged
thirty-two with seven
hungry children,
Nipomo, CA )Courtesy
of Library of Congress
Dust bowl refugees
Alan Lomax on Woody and Leadbelly
Back in the early 30s, Woody and Lead Belly were musical cronies. At all the New York folk-song parties of
that Lead Belly and Woody were the stars. And usually after all of us had decided to go to bed, Woody
would go home with Lead Belly and they'd sit up and play until morning. Really, the spirit that Lead Belly
and Woody have stems back to the New Deal. That was a time when the whole country was opening up,
America was learning about itself. And a great deal of what we learned was through those two guys who
suddenly turned up. There was a real affinity between them, I think, because both of them came from a
new part of the Western frontier - both came from oil boom towns, in the far west of the South, that is,
one from Shreveport, Louisiana, and one from nearby oil-rich hills of Oklahoma. Both of them,
therefore, were Western singers, in a sense, and the Western styles sum up the whole of America,
where America had got to. And it was a new West. It not only had the sound of cowboy ballads in it, but
both of them had the sound of trucks and fast railroads and oil-well pumps and the new opening up of
the country, and it also had all the woes that go with it, the feeling of the fragmentation of society that
was happening under the pressure of industrialism. Their music has grabbed the attention of the world
because it sums up the whole country. It has everything in it: ballads, mountain music, ragtime, jazz,
blues, and yet remains a genuine rural folk music that doesn't depart from the canons of that.
Basically, they just loved to play together. Woody just absolutely venerated Lead Belly. You see, Lead Belly
had gone through an experience that very few other people had gone through and even survived
physically. And he came out of these American concentration camps that were the penitentiaries of the
South at that time; he came out of it whole and laughing and joyous and confident. And who couldn't
admire a person like that? And he had this incredible voice, he had a musical fire that just didn't exist in
other people.
Even by the 30s, American folk music was being commercialized. And what did that mean? That the guy in
back of the glass there, a person who had no knowledge of what the songs actually signified
emotionally, was saying, "Oh, put in a little bit more of that, do a little bit more this way. No, no, that's
too long. No, speed it up! Slow it down! Stomp your foot harder!" and so forth. Lead Belly and Woody
managed to escape that and brought their pure country style right to town.