Brooklyn gathers to celebrate not-quite-native son, Woody Guthrie
There were plenty of 50-somethings and 60-somethings in the audience, but also a fair smattering of younger people, as children of the 60s and those who perhaps wished to have been children of the 60s descended on Brooklyn Colleges Whitman Auditorium on Saturday, September 22, for This Land is Your Land, the Woody Guthrie Centennial Concert.
Orchestrated by the Grammy Museum and Guthries daughter Nora, the concert featured folk legend Pete Seeger as the headliner, with performances by a slew of other folk musicians including bell-voiced minstrel Judy Collins and Steve Earle, whose witty, ironic song Christmas in Washington which includes a plea for the return of Woody Guthrie, as the peoples champion was the only non-Guthrie number performed.
The Guthrie songbook provided a rich and deep archive for the present-day performers who reinterpreted both well and little-known songs penned by the man who was a pivotal figure in the rise of folk music on the American scene, from something the rose through the darkness around a campfire or was sung in a living room to a performance sensation that yet has steadfastly declined to leave its modest roots behind.