"This Machine Kills Fascists"

Woody Guthrie is an almost mythic character in American music. I think his status has slipped in the past few years, due in no small part to the fact that the country is run by conservatives who've been villifying Guthrie for the past half-century. What else do you do with a good ol' boy who believes in tradition but also believes in allowing people to live free? That's a dangerous combination, an enemy within that must be destroyed, right?

Guthrie's history is the stuff of legends. He was born in Ofuskee County--Okemah, Oklahoma, to be specific. If you've never heard of the place, it's not surprising--Okemah is a town of only a few hundred people. There are no stoplights, no Wal-Mart, no movie theater. You can walk clear across town in about five, ten minutes, depending on how much of a hurry you're in. And folks are never in a hurry in Okemah--there's no reason to be. Life is measured in very rural terms--harvest time, day and night, and with very little attention paid to hours and minutes and the city. And this is what Woody Guthrie came from, only moreso--remember, he was born in 1912. Oklahoma had only been a state for five years at that time.

There are two nods to Woody Guthrie in Okemah. The first is the water tower, visible from the interstate, which reads "Home of Woody Guthrie." The other is the annual Woody Guthrie Music Festival, held every summer, when musicians from all over the state and the nation converge on Okemah, sit around campfires late into the night, and just play music. Hundreds of guitars strumming Woody's songs, Dylan's songs, old traditional shanties from New England and Appalacia and whatever else strikes the musicians' fancies. I plan on attending this coming summer. I feel I need to, at this point.

Guthrie's music was full of heroes, villains, and real-life people just trying to survive and get by. His words conjured the Dust Bowl, the heroism of World War II soldiers, the humor and warmth of humanity at its noblest and with a biting, angry twang when he was describing the dark underbelly of humanity in general and America in particular. Guthrie didn't shy away from either side of the coin--he was equally concerned with the simple, everyday pleasures of life and the evils man would commit in the name of greed, hatred, and stupidity.

Guthrie is probably best known for the song "This Land is Your Land," which concerns itself with the state of Depression-era America and how, contrary to songs like "God Bless America," the country seemed to be in pretty dire straits. The song is drenched in irony and sarcasm, but folks usually ignore this fact and treat it like a patriotic call to love the country (much like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA"--it occurs to me that some people just don't bother looking very deep beyond the surface of something, or sometimes even at more than the chorus of a song. It also occurs to me that people like to ignore facts if those facts contradict one's "reality"). But Guthrie was always trying to battle someone or protest something. He saw himself as a member of a hurting community of middle Americans who were suffering at the hands of big business, and saw it as his duty and purpose to fight for that disaffected community. And fight he did--until he was bedridden by a neurological disease, Guthrie played his songs, wrote his sings (and he continued to write even after he was bedridden--but more on that when I review Mermaid Avenue), and did everything he could to defeat the "fascists" he saw all around, and not just in Germany. It's no wonder Guthrie had "This Machine Kills Fascists" written on his guitar in big, bold letters.

Guthrie's music is an American institution--a body of work that runs the gamot from wry, amusing little ditties to children's songs, protest songs, old folk ballads about death and robbery and pain and betrayal, and everything in between. Guthrie expressed the American Dream, railed against those who were attempting to destroy it for the common man, and fought for the Dream every chance he got. Guthrie is a hero, an icon, a figure in American music who ought to be revered and honored. And he came from Oklahoma.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land"