Oakland Symphony was forced to cancel its season but they’ve continued to rehearse through Zoom. In lieu of its regular in-person concert, they performed their version of “This Land is Your Land” and posted it on YouTube. Its conductor, Michael Morgan, says of the song choice, “It’s often misinterpreted as just another patriotic ditty. The reputation of its composer, Woody Guthrie, is smoothed over and sanitized. But the fact is, it was written in 1940 when many patriotic songs seemed to either exclude or present a very narrow vision of what it was to be American. ‘This Land is Your Land’ comes out of the bedrock of the social justice movement. It was an anthem of inclusion when inclusion was not mainstream. This song is radical. Woody Guthrie was a socialist, if not a communist, and his song is for everybody…”
Yes, he’s talking about the same Woody Guthrie who had a sticker on his guitar that read, “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”:
screengrab via Oakland Symphony/YouTube; image via United States Library of Congress/Wikipedia