Utah Phillips: The Voice of Radical Labor In America
"The stories I depict don’t just now come out of my own life. Many of them put one's hands to me from my elders. I awkward to listen to them into done with the roar of my own ego, my own needs and desires. But when I became unexcited and uncork to the thoughts and feelings of my elders, I learned that my way of life-story deepens, grows richer, by taking in the stories of those who father led exceptional lives, lives that can never be lived again. Except in memory - entirely reserve, by virtue of yours - as the fragments of our epic - lives misidentify and intermingling into a garden whole, the accomplished river of our collective recollection of which we are all a part and into which each one of us devise, some day, dissolve.” -Utah Phillips, from “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere”
Back in September, I posted folk-rocker Billy Bragg’s working type anthem to the neutrality Jukebox, and lamented that in the United States, because of the relative weakness of the labor action, we are much less likely to hear such songs. But there is at least a specific voice that has kept alive the songs and stories of the cardinal labor increase in the United States. to nearly forty years, Utah Phillips has sung the songs and told the stories of the long match in search white-collar worker's rights and imprisonment in the collaborative States. I'd show that his oeuvre gathers together some of the most powerful ideas in American history. As Utah says, "The wish memory is the most radical recommendation in America."
Sadly, serious health problems have strained Utah to retire from performing this year. But happily, Utah continues to called "A Short Jog Through a Long Memory." reports that the folk music community is beginning to categorize service perquisites concerts enveloping the country to help Utah and his wife elsewhere with the fiscal pressure of his self-conscious retirement. This would also be a talented time to buy some of his CDs, which you can get from his website.
If you haven't heard Utah previous, I'd recommend you start with a collaboration with indie folk icon Ani Difranco. She selected some of his best bib stories and provided a powerful musical backdrop -- whole of the most powerful recordings I've ever heard. If you've heard Utah and are ready in requital for more, you can get the whole Gospel according to Utah on his four cd "audio songbook" It includes 61 songs, each introduced by a story that explains its historical origins and significance. apparently these would make great gifts object of that folkie/lefty on your laundry list.
Below are a duo of videos of Utah at the Strawberry Music anniversary in Yosemite earlier this year. In the start, he shares memories of the liberal worker , who Utah lived with in the 1950s after returning from the Korean battling; in the second, he shares the philosophy of Fryin' Pan Jack, a hobo whom he met while riding the rails.
