Folk Wisdom

Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan

by Lawrence J. Epstein

McFarland, 213 pp., $35

Reading Lawrence J. Epstein’s wonderful, lively, and politically incorrect survey of political folk music, a reader cannot help but think of the sarcastic old lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s “Folk Song Army,” written in the heyday of the
sixties folk revival.

Remember the war against Franco?
That’s the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs.
So join in the Folk Song Army,
Guitars are the weapons we bring
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice.
Ready! Aim! Sing!

Many others have attempted to write in mordant, respectful tones of the folkies’ desire to inspire left-wing activism through song, but Epstein presents a different take. The academic-sounding title of his book does not do justice to the lively, informative writing and the spirit he reflects of the singers he writes about and the music they wrote and performed. What Epstein says is that the effect the singers had was precisely the opposite of what they intended. Singers like Pete Seeger may have wanted to rally the working-class, but as Epstein writes, “the Left had simply very little support from the proletarians they sought to organize.” Instead, their audience was a new generation of middle-class radical students, those entering the university surroundings on their parents’ dollar, at a time of rising postwar prosperity.