This is the companion website for the event. Follow along with the speakers to see images that accompany their talks. Scroll to see other images of the 1965 Newport Festival as well as information about the 1960s - one of the most dramatic decades in American history.
The bands for the event in order of appearance:
RISO, El Surco, Cadillac Mountain, and Kevin Pakulis and his Band
The following images and recordings accompany Tyina Steptoe's remarks on the Texas Prison Worksong Group.
The tradition of singing during the grueling labor had origins in the period of African American enslavement. Later, incarcerated people were required to do similar kinds of tasks as part of their sentences, and they incorporated the songs into their work to help alleviate the mundane nature of repetitive tasks. The music shows the importance of folk song for endurance and survival - both bodily and spiritual. The Texas Worksong Group performed at Newport in 1965.
"...As one inmate told Bruce Jackson, the photographer capturing this work at a prison in Texas in 1966, the practice of “rockin’” allowed them to keep time. 'The way we do it,' he explained, 'we do it by time. We have a steady rock. Everybody raise their axe up and come down at the same time, just rock.'"
Photo by Bruce Jackson. Educational use permitted from Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
"...As their axes strike the earth, providing a steady, rhythmic accompaniment for their song, the inmates use a call and response pattern to criticize the white guard who rested while they “chop cotton, cane, and corn” in the hot Texas sun: 'I see the captain sittin’ in the shade/He don’t do nothin’ but he gets paid.'"
Photo at Ellis Prison Farm, Texas, 1978 by Bruce Jackson. Educational use permitted from Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
Story from an article by Tyina Steptoe, in the Journal of African American History, entitled, "'Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone': Gender, Folklore, and the Black Working Class,"Volume 99, Issue 3, Summer 2014, page 261.
The above short is from a film was created by Toshi Seeger (who was married to Newport Folk Festival organizer and folk singer Pete Seeger). To watch the full film, go to Folkstreamers. Folkstreamers has digitized much of the material collected by folk researchers throughout the 20th century. Like so many projects, Folkstreamers was created, in part, thanks to funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the funding of which has been cut in recent weeks and the priority of work is being completely changed. There is an opportunity to support the work of Folkstreamers on its website.
The YouTube recoding above is the Johnnie Taylor version of the song "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone" that Dr. Steptoe discusses in her remarks.
Dr. Jennie Gubner will explore the global importance of folk music especially as it existed in Latin America in the pivotal 1960s. Many of the musicians she mentions were exiled during the dictatorships of the 1970s.
Folk music in many places in Latin America underwent important transformations in the 1960s. One of the biggest folk festivals got its start in 1961. The Cosquín Folk Festival remains one of the largest folk music festivals in Argentina and the most important in Latin America. It lasts nine days and takes place in the second half of January.
The following recording is of Chilean Víctor Jara. He played a pivotal role among neo-folkloric musicians who established the nueva cancion chilena (New Chilean Song) movement in the 1960s.
Dr. Gubner also discusses the importance of Chilean Violeta Parra who many say was the voice of a generation. She was devoted to saving the folkmusic and folks stories of the Chilean countryside.
Dr. Kevin Gosner's talk highlights the important history of folk music and specifically the background for Newport Folk Festival, 1965.
The grid below shows what often dominates collective memory about the 1960s - especially the protest culture that demanded Civil Rights for many disenfranchised groups, environmental justice for humans and morethanhumans, and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.
Newport 1965, like so many events in that year, was groundbreaking and, for some, earth shattering. 1965 witnessed some of the most important legal milestones in American history. Here are photos of some of them.
A century of activism manifested in the Selma march for civil rights which culminated in the Voting Rights Act signed by President Johnson in August, 1965. Britannica has created an excellent infographic of the historic walk(s) for justice.
There are so many extraordinary recordings of GLOBAL folk music and the documentation of it over time at the Library of congress and THe association for cultural equity.
Thank you for joining us for an afternoon of history and music.
Please feel free to make an additional donation to the Tucson Folk Festival, the Public History Collaborative, or any of the organizations working to share the vibrant stories of our collective past and are committed to keeping the history of folk music alive.
Credits:
Created with images by itim2101 - "Old classical acoustic guitar on white wall background" • Tanu - "A vintage banjo with a weathered finish displayed against a transparent background, showcasing its intricate craftsmanship and historical charm" • aszfoto - "bombo leguero" • Szasz-Fabian Jozsef - "Hat and violin"