We're Still Here
Si Kahn We’re Still Here o measure the success of a folk e’re Still Here is a tribute to Tsongwriter, the usual pop yardsticks are useless, like using a level to measure Wthe persistence and resistance a river. Count Si Kahn’s career in Grammies, Billboard bullets, MTV of working people everywhere. videos, or wardrobe malfunctions, and you miss him entirely. Flying overhead is the spirit of the But by the unique, timeless, grassrootsy measures with which great folk songs great labor radical Mother Jones, have always been judged, it can be born Mary Harris in County Cork, argued that he is the most successful folk songwriter of his generation. This Ireland about 1836. is all the more remarkable, given that he is also among the most unrepentantly The Road To Wigan Pier by George Orwell radical political songwriters of his age. exposed working and living conditions in English mining villages in the 1930s. “Colliery” is British His songs have been recorded by over English for coal mine. The cable that lowers the 100 artists, including some of the most miners’ cage down into the shaft is powered by the respected voices in folk music today: “colliery wheel.” “Davey Lamps” are early miners’ June Tabor and the Oyster Band, Robin safety lamps. Coxey’s Army of unemployed workers, and Linda Williams, Dick Gaughan, having marched to Washington, DC from around John McCutcheon, Laurie Lewis, Irish the country, gathered on Capitol Hill on May singing legend Dolores Keane, and Day, 1894 to demand public works jobs. Celtic groups Planxty, the Fureys, and Patrick Street.
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