Mike Schneider: Stirring Up the “Great Folk Scare”
There’s nothing easy-going about the folk songs of the Greenwich Village revival, not the ones Dylan sang — a man-killing woman, catastrophic floods, a man driven insane by love — songs that taught him there’s nothing new on Earth.
Marlowe Starling: Unsilencing the Desert
“Nomads are in contact with nature every day, surrounded by rivers, mountains, and deserts. The silence of the desert allows them to hear nature.”
KATIE MYERS: How Folklore Can Shape Our Climate Futures
As climate change fractures communities, folklorists help stitch them back together.
Video: The Bridge | Shaun Johnston & Amber Marshall (from Heartland)
Walk me over this bridge
River so deep and so wide
Just walk me over the bridge, my darling
We’ll get to the other side
Video: Odetta | Waterboy
Martin Luther King Jr. called Odetta “The Queen of American Folk Music.”
Mike Schneider: A Hammer not a Mirror
A Discussion with Anne Feeney & Utah Phillips
Audio: Australian Aboriginal Didgeridoo Music
Australian indigenous music has existed for 40,000 years and is still widely performed.
Daniel Burston: John Prine, Working Class Poet (1947-2020)
John Prine was a national treasure, whose songs about love, loss and aging – many written while he was still a relatively young man! – reflect his working class roots. But even so, they have a universal and timeless relevance.
Will Kaufman: Woody Guthrie, ‘Old Man Trump’ and a real estate empire’s racist foundations
In 1950, Woody Guthrie moved to an apartment building in Brooklyn. His landlord: Fred Trump, father of Donald. And yes, Woody wrote a song about it.
