The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #165278   Message #3962710
Posted By: Joe Offer
21-Nov-18 - 08:47 PM
Thread Name: Woody Guthrie: A Place of Celebration and Pain
Subject: RE: A Place of Celebration and Pain
Book review, By Brittany Bounds, Texas A&M University

Woody Guthrie: American Radical, by Will Kaufman. Champaign: University of Illinois, 2011. Pp. 304. $29.95 (cloth) Woody Guthrie is an American folk icon, best known as the father of “This Land is Your Land” — a song often considered the second national anthem. Will Kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie, American Radical, demonstrates that this song, which is sanitized when sung today, was originally a stinging criticism of American capitalism. Through his lifetime Guthrie “disguised his bite with a veneer of faux naivete,” allowing him to expose harsh realities with safe melodies and playful words (Kaufman 3-4). Guthrie’s musical impact was able to become memorable through music’s ability to penetrate consciousness and culture, which attests to the staying power of his fame and his songs.

Will Kaufman is a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire, England. He has a personal investment in this manuscript, as Kaufman is an amateur folksinger as well, showcasing his talents both in the classroom and during his musical lecture titled “Woody Guthrie: Hard Times and Hard Travellin',” which he has presented across Britain and Europe. His brother is also the better-known America blue-grass guitarist, Steve Kaufman. This book is published at an opportune time when Oklahoma is finally welcoming Woody Guthrie back as one of its own, as the George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa has bought the Guthrie archives from his children and is building a permanent exhibition to his legacy. Kaufman was able to write this biography with the assistance of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives and the BMI-Woody Guthrie Fellowship, as both allowed him to research Guthrie’s in numerable writings and songs. The book is also supported by the living mainstays of folk music — Pete Seeger, Ralph McTell, and others.

And for good reason. The book is rich in Guthrie’s lyrics and personal writings and successfully incorporates other folk artists such as Pete Seeger into the narrative. Kaufman focuses more on Guthrie’s political convictions than his personal biography, and it lacks the depth of character a traditional biography would display. He skims over Guthrie’s personal connections with his family, three wives and his children, as all appear only in brief passages. Kaufman only gives an occasional nod to Woody’s childhood and formative experiences. Instead, he provides an insightful analysis of Woody’s lyrics and mordant commentary on American ironies and injustices. He was hired to compose songs for the Library of Congress for projects under the guidance of Alan Lomax, such as the Dust Bowl and the Columbia River during the Depression. He also actively wrote songs against the unjust convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti, and contributed union songs through the collaboration of People’s Songs. Many of Guthrie’s radical leanings got him fired or scrutinized under the Red Scare. His songbook project “Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People” was not even published until his death in 1967. Kaufman analyzes these debates over the radicalness of folk music and Guthrie’s influence on the genre. Although Guthrie was an avowed Stalinist communist, his radical leanings have traditionally been downplayed in biographies. Kaufman, however, has restored Guthrie to his political convictions, even if they seemed a bit confused. He unashamedly brings out Guthrie’s contradictions. For example, although he opposed World War II in its infancy and supported Stalin, Guthrie became strongly anti-fascist after Pearl Harbor, and later in the war sang that America should have stopped the war much sooner.

Kaufman usually leaves his own personal convictions out of his narrative, which leaves a relatively objective account of the development of folk music. The book is organized chronologically, with the chapters arranged thematically around musical chapters of Guthrie’s life. Although twenty-one pictures are included, they are clustered near the bookends, and would be even more welcome in a larger quantity spread throughout. It is unusual that so many of the visuals are of situations around Guthrie and not particularly of him (only seven are of Guthrie himself). More pictures of Guthrie himself would have made for better illustration. The two biographies written of Woody Guthrie’s life by Joe Klein and Edwin Robbin would serve the reader looking for a more personal biography better. Kaufman instead presents a thorough analysis of Guthrie’s radical leanings as presented through his music and associations. It is a valuable book for folk musicians and aficionados alike.

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