Today
is election day and my father’s birthday. He was born before the turn
of the last century, and saw a lot of changes in his seventy-seven
years—women gaining the right to vote in 1920, hunger marches and the
start of social security in the thirties, the integration of the army
and of big league baseball in the forties, Brown v. Board of Education
in the fifties, the civil rights movement in full swing in the sixties,
and, locally, the Black Panthers. Still, I wonder if he might be
surprised that I have a choice between a woman and a black man to run
for president on the Democratic Party ticket. He would certainly be
pleased. I mentioned this to the guy I know who always works at our
polling place. “It’s amazing,” we agreed. Then I turned to the young
African-American woman working next to him and said, “You’re too young
to know how amazing it is.” She smiled and nodded. “I’m eighteen,” she
said. We don’t usually have eighteen-year-olds working at the polls.
Whether he wins or loses, we all win by Obama’s candidacy because he is
bringing young people back into politics. The two women holding an Obama
banner at University and Sacramento yesterday were white, and they
looked as young as the woman at my polling place.
TRIP REPORT:
The opening concert of this year’s People’s Music Network
gathering in Boston January 25-27 put the theme of the gathering,
Generations of Change, right in our faces. Along with the folk-style
songs of Aileen Vance and Charlie King, and the rousing traditional jazz of the Second Line Social Aid Pleasure Society Brass Band (I loved their parody of “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” about George W. Bush) we got to hear some music I don’t usually listen to. Riot Folk (Making Folk a Threat Again) was intense, fast, loud, young. Foundation Movement
(Cultural Fusion) performed hip-hop containing the (for me) single most
memorable line of the weekend: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on
the menu.” Rap was represented by Professor Louie of New York, whose piece on the Katrina debacle said just about everything that needed to be said.
I
was sitting at lunch (fabulous soup!) across from one of the young men
of Riot Folk. He was having a conversation about somebody having trouble
being a performer but feeling pushed to perform because she was writing
songs. I broke in to say that was what happened with my mother.
“Malvina Reynolds!” said the guy, “she’s always been one of my heroes.” I
explained that she’d been in little theater when she was young, so she
was not a stranger to being on stage, but putting forth your own
material is different.
In contrast to the gathering of PMN’s offshoot, Children’s Music Network,
we only saw one performance by a kid at the Saturday night open mike.
Her mother lifted her up to the mike and announced “a song about public
transportation.” The little girl did a charming rendition of “The Wheels
on the Bus,” showing that not all political songs look political at
first glance.
The last day, Graham and Barbara Dean, who host Common Sense Songs on WBCR-LP in Great Barrington, MA (streaming live at www.berkshireradio.org)
caught up with me to ask if I would do a telephone interview about
Malvina on their program. I agreed, and said that March would be a good
time since March 17 will be the thirtieth anniversary of her death.
We’ll be setting a date and I’ll keep you posted on their plans for the
show.
©2008 by Nancy Schimmel
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
GENERATIONS OF CHANGE
