Sing Out! 2003 Folk Alliance International Lifetime Achievement Award RecipientSing Out! magazine, now 50 years young, grew out of a legacy of social commitment and a tradition of singing both to effect change and to share the pure enjoyment of songs. The original idea for a magazine was served up by the aspirations of a group of urban singers who believed in the power of song -- musicians who raised their voices in harmony and against injustice. After World War II, a number of artists and enthusiasts including Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Lee Hays, Paul Robeson, Alan Lomax, Irwin Silber and Earl Robinson sought to combine political activism and music as they had before the war. They banded together as People's Songs, Inc. and began publishing a monthly bulletin to "create, promote, and distribute songs of labor and the American people." People's Songs, the newsletter, was a novel idea. The bulletin printed songs that would not, as a rule, be available via popular music outlets. The fare would include union songs, peace songs, traditional ballads, children's songs, blues, gospel, songs of civil rights and international material. Pete Seeger remembers those seminal days which began in the basement of his apartment on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village in New York City ... "A number of us who loved to sing folk songs and union songs thought it the most natural thing in the world to start an organization which could keep us in touch with one another, which could promote new and old songs and singers. We called our organization People's Songs to distinguish it from the scholarly folklore societies and started a bulletin." What started as a mimeographed bulletin in short time grew to become a printed magazine. People's Songs began handling bookings, too, as People's Artists. Now folk performers would be treated as professionals when they played concerts and hootenannies. New singers and new songs were encouraged, but the bulletin never failed to feature traditional songs, many of which were gathered in the archives of the office. Songs were collected from around the country and around the world. Most were songs about people from all walks of life -- they were folk songs People's Songs also featured reviews and articles including a sharp, entertaining column by Weaver Lee Hays. Although People's Songs at one point reached a respectable circulation of 3,000, a dwindling subscriber base and a lack of funds meant closing the office after a three-year run. A combination of finances and politics can be blamed for the demise of People's Songs. The Cold War was on, and the political climate was changing, with anti-communism and anti-everyonewho-is-differentism on the rise. On the plus side, this fueled the advent of an active folk song and topical song movement. But on the negative side, the bulletin grew ever more estranged from the labor unions for which People's Songs originally dedicated its efforts. Redbaiting swept though the labor unions, which sought to distance themselves from folk musicians and the like for fear of appearing "disloyal." Increasingly, the publication and its participants were on the defensive against the fierce witch hunting that lumped all liberals, leftists, socialists and communists together as the enemy. The magazine finally went bankrupt shortly after the 1948 presidential election during which People's Songs and its resources had been pressed into service for the candidacy of Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party. Although hardly a comfortable political climate for a renewed attempt at publishing a left-wing music magazine, the notion of People's Songs persisted. A few months later, following a keen reassessment of People's Songs' strengths, some of the same group who brought out People's Songs went back to the drawing board, and returned in May of 1950 with the first issue of Sing Out! code pour embarquer la vidéo : >>> http://www.youtube.com/embed/TvN-vED_DOQ <<< |