LEN WALLACE FOLK MUSIC, CULTURE, POLITICAL LINKS I had a chance to visit an old Flea Market store in the town of LaSalle, Ontario and I pawed through an old pile of Down Beat magazines from the 1940s. This was a Chicago magazine devoted to stories and reviews on jazz and blues musicians, music and recordings. I bought a pile of them.
What was interesting was not only their defence of jazz and blues music against the upholders of “morality” and “public order”. One article from a 1946 issue outlined how the “Gestapo” of Memphis, Tennessee destroyed and banned hundreds of blues recordings, considering them “immoral”. The magazine also featured Black musicians, integrated bands.
One article from the December 1, 1944 edition caught our attention. The column was called “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”, the article written by Mike Levin. He wrote in reply to an editorial that read:
Levin wrote back that “I think it is the heart of what’s wrong with our way of thinking about things” and he further wrote:
Musicians and the music world hate war for no other reason than they hate the discipline that fighting it entails. Musicians, more than almost any other group, hate few people, because they are of different races, religions, or nationalities. They are instinctively amongst the most liberal people in any country in any period of history.
And this is the group that our editorial wants to silence as not being “professional” politicians!
There is no such thing as a professional politician. Those men who make their living as ward-heelers are often crooks rather than politicians. Politics is the greatest of all arts, and the only artists capable of playing in its band are the people as a whole - because only they have the necessary aggregate talent.
What frightful additional tragedy is it going to take to make this country, and we musicians in general, see that “politics for politicians,” “music for musicians,” “ditches for ditchdiggers” is the malarkey. It’s a way of life foisted on us by the boys who want to run things for their own benefit, so that they can rob in peace and quiet, while we cozily remind ourselves that politics is for politicians, and let the little thugs have a good time with their pelf.
Politics is not for politicians - it’s for all of us. It took the Spanish people a holocaust they’re still living through to learn that. It has taken Europe five years under the Nazis to realize that democracy is something you purchase day by day battling, not just on alternate Tuesdays, or when somebody sticks a gun in your hand and says go fight."
ACCORDIONS:
Len Wallace performs on EXCELSIOR ACCORDIONS, head office in Italy. "I’ve played many types of accordions and Excelsior’s have the best feel, best tonal qualities. I’m still performing with the model my parents bought for me back in 1964. I wouldn’t part with it for the world.”
There is now a new Excelsior store in Burlington, Ontario - Accordions Exclusively - Excelsior Sales & Service which carries all models. Technicians are factory trained by Excelsior Accordions
in Italy. Website for ACCORDIONS EXCLUSIVELY
ACCORDION ASSOCIATIONS:
Accordions have been given a bad rap by cultural barbarians. Accordion Players, ARISE! Take that old squeezebox out of the closet. The word is that today accordions are COOL!
Closet Accordion Players of America (CAPA) is an organization that believes accordionists who can laugh at themselves are more likely to be taken seriously when they go on to point out what a wonderful instrument the accordion really is. CAPA uses humor to get attention, and, once they have people's attention, they go on to make serious points about the accordion.
Accordion: An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.
- from The Devil's Dictionary
Folks Like Us is a weekly radio program produced live at WDET-FM (101.9), public radio in Detroit. The show, hosted by Matt Watroba, can be heard on Saturdays from 11:00 am ti 2:00 pm. The program features traditional and contemporary folk music recordings, interviews and live performances, and annoucements of local concerts, dances, and other events. Folks Like Us
Isn't it time to construct a sane society based on freedom and democracy
in the community and the workplace where those who actually do the work of
the world own and enjoy the fruit of their labours?
We can change the world
It CAN be done and it's time to get wise.
"If the workers took a notion
They could stop all speeding trains.
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill.
Fleets and armies of the nation
Would at our command stand still."
- Joe Hill, "Workers of the World Awaken"
"We are a network of people committed to inspiring a vision of
an alternative way of living where all the world's resources are owned
in common and democratically controlled by communities on an ecologically sustainable
and socially harmonious basis."
OBJECT The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and
democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing
wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
"Too many years in prison cell torn from his native home.
Too many years from family, the eagle stands alone.
Too many years a white man's court erased the white man's crime
Too many years to hope for freedom's time."
- from "Sing The Eagle Home", by Len Wallace Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
"Then let us pray that come it may
As come it will for a' that
That sense o' worth owre a' the earth
May bear the gree for a' that.
For a' that and a' that
It's comin' yet for a' that
That man to man the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that"
- Scottish songwriter, poet, radical ROBERT BURNS
William Morris: Poet, Painter, Writer, Organiser,
Textile and Craft Maker, Socialist Visionary: William Morris Internet Archive
"One man with an idea in his head is in danger of
being considered a madman; two men with the
same idea in common may be foolish, but can
hardly be considered mad; ten men sharing an
idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention
as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand?
Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth?"
- William Morris, "Art and Plutocracy"
LabourStart
