*For The Folkies From Muskogee And Elsewhere- The Bob Feldman Music Blog On "My Space"-Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 1

Click on the headline to link to the Bob Feldman Music Blog( for lack of a better name) on My Space.

Markin comment:

This is great stuff for any music aficionado, especially of folk, social protest, and roots music. I am going to be "stealing" entries off of this site periodically but you should be checking it out yourselves. Kudos, Bob Feldman.

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Barbara Dane's Speech To GI Movement Revisited: Part 1
Current mood: thoughtful

Category: Music

In her speech to the GI Movement of the Vietnam War Era (whose text can be found in the booklet that's included in Paredon Records' FTA! Songs of the GI Resistance vinyl album of 1970), Barbara Dane said the following:

"When I was a kid, I loved to sing for teenagers, and made a big hit with marvy songs like "Blue Moon." I tried to get jobs doing that, and quickly found out how insultingly easy it is to get ahead in show business if you were "a smart girl with a little looks" who was willing to play by the rules: Look like and act like a Barbie doll, be for sale at a price, and complain about as much as Barbie if the male society sees you only as a cute commodity without ideas or feelings. I decided that the price was too high...

"I sang for the youth movements, the labor struggles which spread after WW II to most of the auto plants, and in the election campaigns of progressive and left candidates, as well as black candidates, in which case even a liberal was considered a threat to the status quo. I worked in factories and offices so I wouldn't have to mix singing with money making, but some times the organizations and unions could afford a few bucks in the name of building and supporting our own culture. Then I was able to spend full time organizing and singing. Now and then I was offered some "Golden Opportunity" but the more I saw of how little the system respected its artists, particularly when they were women, the less I was interested in buying the deal.

"Then the fifties came. Repression of political ideas spread with the coming of the "cold war" and the Korean war...

"I decided the best thing to do was to keep on singing, as publicly and loudly as possible. And I always used my own name, in spite of the frequent visits from the "boy scouts" as we used to call the tall men in suits who flashed FBI badges and asked a lot of questions. We understood they were mainly trying to intimidate us, so we just told them to get out and don't bother coming back. Most of the organizations either fell apart or sank underground, and soon there was no place to sing or talk about what was on our minds, so some of the artists who wanted to find an audience to influence went into the nightclubs..."


Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music/blog?page=4#ixzz0xwlVXNMZ