Today marks the Woody Guthrie Centennial and the culmination of many celebrations this year in honor of the musician's life and work. Woody captured the strife, honor and reality of working-class America with his music and lyrics. A few years back, a friend of mine Jonathan commissioned a portrait of the musician featuring the Socialist Rose to symbolize Guthrie's efforts to further workers' rights in our country throughout his life. A devout fan, Jonathan traveled to the Woody Guthrie Archives last year and presented them with a print of the portrait which he helped me design. Today, Jonathan is at WoodyFest in Okemah, OK where he's taken a moment from the five day festival to share with us today...
Today, I’m sitting in a
pasture in Okemah, Oklahoma – the town where Woody Guthrie (most famous for
writing “This Land is Your Land”) was born 100 years ago today. Okemah is typically a small, quiet town but
the town’s population doubles around this time each year to honor Woody, much
like it doubled literally overnight during the oil boom in the 1920s when the
musician lived here. Okemah is where
Woody began to learn about the life of the working class as he said in Bound for Glory, it “was one of the
singingest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest,
walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest,
bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns
and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns.” This is also
where he first saw the oil boom workers in their miserable shacks which were built
for around $10 and apt to catch on fire. This added to their already hard-working
conditions. He saw these workers as an
oppressed people, and he saw that people shouldn’t be oppressed. Woody also saw
the working people could overcome these conditions and live.
Woody continued to see the workers’
connection with each other and their sense of community as they struggled
during the Great Depression in the Dust Bowl.
He lived it and saw the dust which he described as being so thick that a
light bulb at noon looked like the end of a lit cigarette at midnight. He saw the dust bowl refugees turned away at
the California border by the LAPD.
Seeing the mistreatment of workers led Woody to fight for workers’ right
to unionize and to fight back against oppression. Throughout his travels and experiences, Woody
never gave up hope, which we can see in the more than 3,000 songs he
wrote. As he said, “I hate a song that
makes you think that you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think
that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for
nothing. Because you are either too old or too young or too fat or too slim or
too ugly or too this or too that ... songs that run you down or songs that poke
fun of you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to
fight those kinds of songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of
blood.” Woody wanted his music to uplift
the people who listened, to take away a small part of their hardship for a few
moments, and to give them hope. Even
though he suffered many tragedies throughout his life, Woody held on to his
hope until he died of Huntington’s disease in 1967.
-Jonathan Beasley
