It all began in 1915 with a double homicide. A union activist-musician was convicted of the murders and then executed in Utah even though he probably didn’t commit the crimes. In his final telegram to another union organizer he wrote: “Don’t waste time mourning —organize!” He also included a request to be buried outside the state because “I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.” A legend was born.

Fast forward to 1969 and the Woodstock Music Festival where Joan Baez performed a song commemorating the union organizer who had been executed, but not buried, in Utah: Joe Hill.

I am fascinated with the correlation between social movements and music. The two share a long history. I often wonder: Do social movements arise and music responds; or, do musicians grab hold of a burgeoning cause and promote it through song; or, do activism and music emerge independently only to unite into a powerful force? However you might answer that question there is no denying that a nexus exists between social movements and music, often with an underlying view of religion thrown into the mix.

Many historians credit union organizer Joe Hill as the founder of 20th century political folk music. Hill, who immigrated to the US from Sweden in 1902, started out as a hobo of sorts, roaming the country taking whatever jobs he could find. His exposure to the poverty, injustice, and horrible working conditions of the early 20th century led him to join the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Also known as the Wobblies, this union, rooted in socialist philosophy, welcomed all members regardless of race, sex, or ethnicity.

Hill became famous for his songwriting. While the Wobblies often used pamphlets and leaflets for their organizational efforts, early on they understood the important role songs played in getting their message across. Then Joe Hill came along and took the power of music to an entirely different level. Recognizing the influence of song lyrics, Hill wrote the following letter to the IWW publication Solidarity: “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over; and I maintain that if a person can put a few cold, common facts into a song, and dress them [the facts] up in a cloak of humor to take the dryness off of them, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers….” (Political Folk Music in America From Its Origins to Bob Dylan by Lawrence J. Epstein, 24)

American political folk music has an interesting, often complex relationship with religious faith. Hill did not like religion. He thought, in true Marxist tradition, that it discouraged people from addressing social ills by promising them salvation in the afterlife. One of his songs, “The Preacher and the Slave,” mocks the Salvation Army (who he refers to as the “Starvation Army”) with the following lyrics:

Long-haired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right
But when asked how ’bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray, live on hay
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

And the Starvation Army, they play
And they sing and they clap and they pray
Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they tell you when you’re on the bum

Woody Guthrie, Hill’s heir apparent, transformed Hill’s musical style into a tradition. Guthrie had also been a vagabond deeply touched by poverty and injustice. One distinct difference between Hill and Guthrie was their attitudes about religion. While Hill did not like it, Guthrie embraced his own style of Christianity. As I mentioned in an earlier post I did on Guthrie, he often wrote, sung, and spoke about God, Jesus, and the Bible. In the foreword of Guthrie’s autobiography, Bound for Glory, Pete Seeger notes: “In the desperate early Depression years, he developed a religious view of Christ the Great Revolutionary.” (p. viii)

A direct line can be drawn from Hill to Guthrie to Bob Dylan, considered in the early 1960s to be the voice of the next generation of folk singers. Dylan carried his mission dutifully for a few years but eventually left the folk scene behind. His relationship with religion has been complicated, to say the least. In the late 1970s he went through a well-documented “Christian” phase writing beautiful songs like “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Since then he seems to have gone through a series of religious and secular phases.

Dylan, an eternal chameleon, recently had some new religious “insights.” In an interview published in the September 27, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone magazine (issue 1166, pp. 42-51, 80-1) he even upstaged himself by giving his most peculiar interview ever. About a quarter of the way into his talk with Mikal Gilmore, Dylan mentions a odd experience he’d had which he describes as a “transfiguration.” He goes on to say “you can go and learn about it [transfiguration] from the Catholic Church” and then defines the term as “what allows you to crawl out from under the chaos and fly above it” (p.46). The topic came up in a discussion about a book he’d read concerning a Hells Angels motorcyclist who shared Dylan’s birth name, Bob Zimmerman. The Hells Angel had died in a motorcycle accident in the 1960s around the same time Dylan’s motorcycle accident had occurred (or so he thought; the magazine points out Dylan was mistaken, the accidents actually had happened several years apart). The interview got more and more bizarre and frankly, I couldn’t follow what he was talking about. Dylan appears to make some unintelligible connection between the motorcyclist who died, himself, and his interpretation of transfiguration. The Rolling Stone interviewer tried to pin him down, attempted to make some sense of what he was talking about, all to no avail.

Of course, you never know with Dylan. Is he conjuring up stuff to amuse himself? Does he enjoy shocking or confusing people? He has a history of making up wild lies. Many Dylan fans learned early on that when it comes to interviews, he has the last laugh. All I can say is that I’m glad his music makes more sense than his interviews.

Regardless, Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan all touched many people with their poetry, prophecy, and passion. Their lyrics are peaceful weapons that speak to our souls, implore us to seek higher ground, inspire us to do the right thing (except when it comes to interviews). Religion has influenced each of them in different ways. One reacting against it, another embracing his own style of Christianity, and the third… let’s just say it’s complicated.

Mary McDonough

2 Comments »

1. 

   Mary, thank you for this evocative primer on social action, music and religion. I think that it suggests that theology cannot afford to be “sectarian” in its approach to politics in general, and social justice in particular, but must be pragmatic, to cooperate as much as possible with persons of different religious affiliation or of no evident affiliation.

   Comment by TB — February 17, 2013 @ 12:34 am

2. 

   Utah Phillips and Pete Seeger have said that Joe Hill and other IWW writers loved the old Methodist hymns for their music and changed the lyrics so they made sense.

   The Catholic Worker house in Salt Lake city-located near the railroad yard-was named Joe Hill House of hospitality.

   At a time in the 50s and early 60s-an era when Catholic social thought was more influenced BY Cardinal Spellman and a “for God and country” vision, it was people like Seeger, Guthrie et al who kept an alternative vision alive that nourished ecclesial communities.

   Utah Philliops has argued that many of our children’s heroes today are fantasy characters-Luke Skywalker etc and not folks like Mother Jones and their own parents or grandparents who have lived lives of heroic virtue. Imagine a world where children’s bedtime stories were about Joe Hill, Dorothy Day or Dr. King.

   Comment by fred herron — February 25, 2013 @ 8:40 am

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