Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Voices from the Mountains by Guy Carawan Guy Carawan. Music was a tool of cultural change for Guy Carawan. Music director and song leader of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, Carawan consistently wove his musical talents with his commitment to freedom and the advancement of the working class. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, he and his wife, Candie, who came to the Highlander Center on an exchange program with Fisk University, participated in sit-ins and protests against racial discrimination. In 1960, Carawan introduced a song that he had been taught by Pete Seeger in 1952, "We Shall Overcome," at the founding convention of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee at Raleigh, North Carolina. Within a few weeks, the song became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement. Carawan, in collaboration with his wife, wrote and edited three books on the civil rights movement -- Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, We Shall Overcome! Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement, and Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs. Carawan's ethnomusicological explorations of the culture and music of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina were documented by a book, Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina -- Their Faces, Their Words and Their Songs, and an album of field recordings, Been in the Storm So Long: A Collection of Spirituals, Folk Tales and Children's Games from John's Island, South Carolina. Their experiences and the songs they collected in the coal-mining counties of the Appalachian region were chronicled in the book Voices from the Mountains. Carawan, who first visited the Highland Center in 1953, was initially motivated by his interests in his genealogical roots. Although he was born in Los Angeles, his father hailed from rural North Carolina, while his mother was raised in the city of Charleston. In 1959, he asked the center's founder and director, Miles Horton, if he could use the center as a base for his research on Southern folk culture and music. When he was told he could stay only if he worked at the center, he agreed to become the center's music director and began using his large repertoire of topical songs to draw people out at workshops. In addition to his own recordings and folkloric collections, Carawan recorded with his son, Evan, a hammer dulcimer player. They recorded a duo album, Hammer Dulcimer Music, in 1988 and, joined by Candie, a Carawan family album, Home Brew, in 1991. Late in life Guy Carawan suffered from dementia, and died at his home in New Market on May 2, 2015; he was 87 years old. Portside. Millions of people around the world have sung the words to 'We Shall Overcome,” but few of them know the name Guy Carawan. Possessed with prodigious talent and a deep passion for justice, Carawan was modest and self-effacing, and little-known outside of a small circle of social activists and folklore enthusiasts. Of course, that’s part of the folk tradition. Carawan didn't write “We Shall Overcome,” but he transformed it, turning it into an international anthem for human rights. I had long been a fan of Carawan, who for over fifty years worked as the music director for the Highlander Research and Education Center in rural Tennessee, an interracial training center for grassroots activists, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and John Lewis—but until 2000 I didn’t know he had attended Occidental College, where I teach, when I read an article about him in Sing Out, the folk song magazine. I called his home in New Market, Tennessee near the Highlander Center, and asked him and his wife Candie if they’d be interested in doing a concert at his alma mater. Although the Carawans, both originally from Southern California, had occasionally traveled to the area to visit family members, Guy hadn’t been back to the campus since he graduated, with a degree in mathematics, in 1949. He was grateful for the invitation. It took several years to orchestrate the visit, but in March 2003, Guy and Candie arrived on campus. In the meantime, I had persuaded the college president and trustees to give Guy an honorary degree for his lifetime commitment to social justice and his immense contributions to music and folklore. The Carawans spent two days on campus. They gave workshops in several classes and performed a concert in the college chapel. Before the concert, Guy had a reunion with a dozen of his former ATO fraternity brothers, none of whom he’d seen since his graduation fifty-four years earlier. Carawan’s first experience singing in public was with an ATO quartet. He played the ukulele and the group sang tunes like "Ain't She Sweet." It was pouring heavily that night but by the time the Carawans entered the chapel it was standing-room-only, filled with college students, local activists, and many friends that Guy had made in LA’s folk music scene in the 1950s. One of them was Beth Lomax Hawes, an original member of the Almanac Singers with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Guy and Candy were joined on stage by their son Evan, an accomplished hammer dulcimer player, and by Simeon Pillich, a world-renowned bass player who teaches at the college. In between sets, Occidental president Ted Mitchell (now deputy secretary of the US Department of Education) bestowed Carawan with his honorary degree. Guy was proud of the honor but somewhat embarrassed by the ceremony—especially when Mitchell placed Occidental black-and-orange hood around his neck—but he kept it on during the second set. During his visit to Occidental, Guy recalled his personal, political, and music journey. Born in Los Angeles in 1927 to parents with Southern roots, Carawan was drawn to folk music after taking a folklore course at Occidental. His interest grew when his mother gave him copies of Carl Sandburg’s The New American Songbag, and musicologist Alan Lomax’s Folksongs: USA. He listened to records by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Burl Ives. By the time Carawan arrived at UCLA—where he earned a master’s degree in sociology—his curiosity about society and culture had grown considerably. In 1953, Carawan joined folk singers Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Frank Hamilton and struck out on the road, performing as the Dusty Road Boys. They stopped for a few weeks at Highlander (then in Monteagle, Tenn.), where Carawan got his first exposure to the burgeoning civil rights movement and the importance of songs to the struggle. The folk music boom was just beginning, and Guy hoped to make a living playing music. In 1958, he played the opening night of LA's legendary folk club the Ash Grove. Later that year, he embarked on a world tour, where he caught the attention of the flourishing British folk scene. In England, he recorded "America at Play" with Peggy Seeger, an album largely composed of songs collected by Alan and John Lomax and Cecil Sharp. Carawan played guitar, banjo and hammer dulcimer. When he returned to the US, he traveled to Highlander to volunteer his services, and soon became its music director. The civil rights movement was underway and Highlander was at the center of it. Founded in 1932 by Myles Horton, an educator and minister who believed in the "social gospel," Highlander sponsored interracial workshops for labor and civil rights activists. Southern segregationists branded Highlander as a “communist” operation and tried several times to shut it down. During his visit to Occidental, Carawan spoke to students and recalled his connection to the song "We Shall Overcome." The tune’s origins go back to a refrain that slaves would sing to sustain themselves: "I'll be all right someday." Southern Black churches adopted the song and by 1901 a Methodist minister, Charles Tindley, published a version titled, "I'll Overcome Someday." In 1945, Black members of the Food, Tobacco, and Agricultural Workers Union from Charleston, South Carolina revised the song as part of their struggle and sang it on their picket lines. They sang: "We will overcome, and we will win our rights someday." Two years later, several of the union's activists brought the song to Highlander, Zilphia Horton, Myles' wife and then Highlander's music director, learned the song from the tobacco workers and included it in all of her workshops. In 1947, she taught it to folksinger Peter Seeger, who was a frequent visitor to Highlander. Seeger made a few changes to the tune, including turning "We Will Overcome" to "We Shall Overcome. It was at Highlander that Carawan first heard Seeger's version of the famous song. Carawan made his own changes to the tune. He showed Occidental’s students how he had fastened the tempo and revised some words, making it easier to sing in large groups. "They were singing it like this," he explained, singing the gospel song without his guitar and lacking a beat. “I thought it was a touching song, but at a certain point I began to add these chords." Carawan started strumming his guitar, then began singing in a firm voice that belied his age. Students recognized the familiar song and started singing along. Then Candie, singing harmony, joined in. After a few stanzas, Carawan paused and told a story. “One night at Highlander, the police came in and ransacked everybody's luggage, trying to scare people off, and a young teenage girl from Montgomery started singing, 'We are not afraid,' and that became part of the song." The Southern sit-ins, led by college students, had begun in Greensboro, North Carolina in February 1960. During a weekend workshop at Highlander, Carawan taught his new version of “We Shall Overcome” to leaders of the Nashville sit-in. A few weeks later, he taught the song to more than 300 activists at the historic founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC. They were preparing to launch sit-in demonstrations throughout the South, and they spread the song that became the anthem of the civil rights movement. Believing that singing and music could be a unifying force, he also taught the SNCC activists many other Southern gospel and religious songs, changing a word here and there to adapt it to their cause. These include "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, Hold On" and "I'm Going to Sit at the Welcome Table." A few weeks later, civil rights leader Rev. C.T. Vivian invited Guy to "bring your guitar" to a demonstration protesting the bombing of the home of prominent black Nashville lawyer, Z. Alexander Looby. Four thousand demonstrators marched to Nashville's City Hall. Carawan led the singing of "We Shall Overcome," including the new verse, "We are not alone." While based at Highlander, Guy pursued a career as a folklorist, a teacher, and a live performer at nightclubs, college campuses, and public rallies for social change. But his ties to Highlander and the freedom movement, his marriage to Candie (whom he met during a civil rights protest in 1960 when she was a Pomona College student spending a year as an exchange student at Fisk University in Nashville), and their growing family—kept him in the South. The Carawans spent several years on the South Carolina Sea Islands, where they helped civil rights icon Septima Clark teach songs to the islands’ rich Gullah culture. They began recording and documenting the local culture, and persuaded Folkways Records founder Moses Asch to release a couple of albums highlighting Gullah shouts and spirituals. In the 1970s, the Carawans immersed themselves in the Black Lung movement, the anti-strip-mine movement, and other regional issues, facilitating workshops for activists, teaching them songs to energize the movement, and documenting, through books and records, the culture of Appalachia and the civil rights movement. Guy’s records include "Tree of Life"; "Sing for Freedom"; "The Nashville Sit-in Story"; "We Shall Overcome: Southern Freedom Songs"; "Freedom in the Air: Albany, Georgia"; "The Story of Greenwood, Mississippi"; "Birmingham, Alabama, Mass Meeting"; "Been in the Storm So Long"; "Moving Star Hall Singers: Folk Festival on Johns Island"; "Come All You Coal Miners"; and "They'll Never Keep Us Down." He recorded a children's album, "My Rhinoceros & Other Friends." They also produced an album of field recordings, "Been In the Storm So Long: A Collection of Spirituals, Folk Tales and Children's Games from John's Island, South Carolina." The Carawans' books on the civil rights movement include Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs; Freedom Is a Constant Struggle; and We Shall Overcome: Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement. They also wrote Voices from the Mountains: The People of Appalachia and Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina—Their Faces, Their Words and Their Songs. In addition to his own recordings and folkloric collections, the Carawans recorded several albums with their son Evan, including "Appalachian Irish Tunes on Hammer Dulcimer" and "Home Brew." Carawan also produced albums for other performers (including the Stanley Brothers), written songs recorded by other performers (including Peter, Paul and Mary), and played guitar on albums for other performers and producers (including Alan Lomax). A documentary film by the Carawans' daughter, Heather, "The Telling Takes Me Home," recounts her growing up at Highlander in a family and community of activists. [Peter Dreier, Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of PoliticsChair, Urban & Environmental Policy Department, Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA ] Copyright c 2015 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be reprinted without permission . Distributed by Agence Global . Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription to The Nation for just $9.50! ISBN 13: 9780820318820. A rich mosaic of photographs, words, and songs, Voices from the Mountains tells the turbulent story of the Appalachian South in the twentieth century. Focusing on the abuses of the coal industry and the grassroots struggle against mine owners that began in the 1960s, Guy and Candie Carawan have gathered quotations from a variety of sources; words and music to more than fifty ballads and songs, laments and satires, hymns and protests; and more than one hundred and fifty photographs of longtime Appalachian residents, their homes, their countryside, the mines they work in, and the labor battles they have fought. The "voices" that speak out in these pages range from the mountain people themselves to such well-known artists as Jean Ritchie, Hazel Dickens, Harriet Simpson Arnow, and Wendell Berry. Together they tell of the damage wrought by strip mining and the empty promises of land reclamation; the search for work and a new life in the North; the welfare rights, labor, antipoverty, and black lung movements; early days in the mines; disasters and negligence in the coal industry; and protest and change in the coal fields. Dignity and despair, poverty and perseverance, tradition and change― Voices from the Mountains eloquently conveys the complex panorama of modern Appalachian life. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. A rich mosaic of photographs, words, and songs, Voices from the Mountains tells the turbulent story of the Appalachian South in the twentieth century. Guy and Candie Carawan have gathered quotations from a variety of sources; words and music to more than fifty ballads and songs, laments and satires, hymns and protests; and more than one hundred and fifty photographs of longtime Appalachian residents, their homes, their countryside, the mines they work in, and the labor battles they have fought. About the Author : Guy Carawan (Author) GUY CARAWAN (1927–2015) was an educator, writer, musician, and collector who dedicated himself to preserving the culture of the South and fighting for the civil rights of its common people. He and his spouse, Candie Carawan, had a decades-long association with the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee. The Carawans served as consultants to the public television productions of "Eyes on the Prize" and "History of the Song 'We Shall Overcome.'" Their books include Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life? (Georgia), We Shall Overcome , and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle . Candie Carawan (Author) CANDIE CARAWAN is an educator, writer, musician, and collector who is dedicated to preserving the culture of the South and fighting for the civil rights of its common people. She and her spouse, Guy Carawan, Candie Carawan, had a decades-long association with the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee. The Carawans served as consultants to the public television productions of "Eyes on the Prize" and "History of the Song 'We Shall Overcome.'" Their books include Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life? (Georgia), We Shall Overcome , and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle . Honoring Guy Carawan. Friends and fans of Guy Carawan will honor the legendary singer, folklorist, and activist whose arrangement of "We Shall Overcome" became the anthem of the American civil rights movement. The "Singing for Justice" celebration will take place on Saturday, October 23, 2:30-5 pm, at the home and garden of Jan Goodman & Jerry Manpearl, 939 San Vicente Blvd., Santa Monica, CA (NW corner of Larkin). Tickets are $35. To purchase tickets, go to this website: www.highlandercenter.org. For over 50 years, Carawan has worked as the music director for the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, a training center for grassroots activists, including Rev. Martin Luther King and Rosa Park. The concert will feature Guy and his wife Candie Carawan, Len Chandler, Ross Altman, The Get Lit Players, Betty Mae Fikes of the Freedom Singers, Bernie Pearl, S. Pearl Sharp and special surprise guests. Carawan is best-known for recovering and popularizing the song "We Shall Overcome." The song is based on "I'll Overcome Someday" which was sung in many African American Baptist and Methodist congregations. In the 1940s, African American members of the Food, Tobacco, and Agricultural Workers Union from Charleston, South Carolina revised the song as part of their struggle. Zilphia Horton, Highlander's music director, learned the song from tobacco workers and included it in all of her workshops. She taught it to Pete Seeger, a frequent visitor to Highlander, who had encouraged Carawan to join the center's staff. Then Carawan, who was Horton's successor as Highlander's music director, changed some of the words and the tempo. During a 1960 spring weekend workshop he taught the song to Nashville student sit-in leaders. A few weeks later, he taught "We Shall Overcome" to activists at the historic founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Raleigh, N.C. They were preparing to launch sit-in demonstrations throughout the South, and they spread the song that became the anthem of the civil rights movement. Believing that singing and music could be a unifying force, he also taught the SNCC activists many other the Southern gospel and religious songs, changing a word here and there to adapt it to their cause. These include "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, Hold On" and "I'm Going to Sit at the Welcome Table." A few weeks later, civil rights leader Rev. C.T. Vivian invited Guy to "bring your guitar" to a demonstration protesting the bombing of the home of prominent black Nashville lawyer, Z. Alexander Looby. Four thousand demonstrators marched to Nashville's City Hall. Carawan led the singing of "We Shall Overcome" adding the verse, "We are not alone." Since the 1960s, while based at Highlander, Carawan pursued a career as a folklorist, a teacher, and as a live performer at nightclubs, college campuses,and public rallies for social change. He and Candie, who met during their involvement with the civil rights movement, have been avid collectors of freedom songs and prolific producers of books and recordings documenting the music of both the civil rights movement and of Appalachian culture. Carawan plays guitar, banjo and hammer dulcimer. Guy's role in the civil rights movement and in the folk music revival of the 1960s is documented in many books, such as Ronald Cohen's Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 and William Roy's Reds, Whites, and Blues: Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States. Stuart Stott's children's book, We Shall Overcome: A Song That Changed The World, was recently published. A documentary film by the Carawans' daughter, Heather, "The Telling Takes Me Home," recounts her growing up at Highlander in a family and community of activists. There is also a website devoted to the Carawans' work. His records include "Tree of Life"; "Sing for Freedom"; "The Nashville Sit-in Story"; "We Shall Overcome: Southern Freedom Songs"; "Freedom in the Air: Albany, Georgia"; "The Story of Greenwood, Mississippi"; "Birmingham, Alabama, Mass Meeting"; "Been in the Storm So Long"; "Moving Star Hall Singers: Folk Festival on Johns Island"; "Come All You Coal Miners"; and "They'll Never Keep Us Down." He has also recorded a children's album, "My Rhinoceros & Other Friends." The Carawans' books on the civil rights movement include Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs; Freedom Is a Constant Struggle; and We Shall Overcome: Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement. Their study of the culture and music of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina were documented in several books, including Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina -- Their Faces, Their Words and Their Songs, and an album of field recordings, "Been In the Storm So Long: A Collection of Spirituals, Folk Tales and Children's Games from John's Island, South Carolina." In addition to his own recordings and folkloric collections, Carawan has recorded with his son, Evan, who plays hammered dulcimer. They recorded a duo album, "Appalachian Irish Tunes on Hammer Dulcimer", in 1988 and, joined by his wife Candie, a Carawan family album, "Home Brew", in 1991. He has also produced albums for other performers (including the Stanley Brothers), written songs recorded by other performers (including Peter, Paul and Mary), and played guitar on albums for other performers and producers (such as Alan Lomax). Born in Los Angeles in 1927 to parents with Southern roots, Carawan started listening to folk music when he was 21 years old, inspired by artists such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Burl Ives. After graduating from Occidental College in 1949 and getting his master's at UCLA, he traveled to New York, and stayed for the next few years with performers Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Eric Darling and Frank Hamilton. Carawan developed his knowledge of the folk music of the deep South by touring North Carolina and Tennessee in the company of Hamilton and Elliott. He first caught the attention of the British folk scene during his world tour in 1958. That same year, he recorded "America at Play" with Peggy Seeger, an album largely made up of songs collected by Alan and John Lomax and Cecil Sharp. Occidental College, his alma mater, gave Carawan an honorary degree in 2003 for his lifetime commitment to social justice causes and his contributions to music and folklore. Founded in 1932 by Myles Horton, the Highlander Center has played a critical role in training generations of activists in the union, civil rights,environmental justice movements. Highlander was one of the few places in the South where Black and white workers struggling to organize unions could meet together. For safe traveling, white and Black members from the same town never attended the same workshop. Conservative groups frequently tried to shut down the center for its inter-racial and radical activities. It is based a 106-acre farm in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, twenty-five miles east of Knoxville, Tennessee. The October 23 concert. which will benefit Highlander, is presented by Ash Grove Music, with the support of Highlander alum Rev. James M. Lawson, friend and co-worker of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and pastor emeritus of Holman Methodist Church in Los Angeles. Guy Carawan. Guy Carawan and wife Candie Anderson Carawan are noted for their long association with Highlander Research and Education Center in East Tennessee, their work in documenting southern folk music, and their participation in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Born in July 1927 in Los Angeles to parents native to North and South Carolina, Carawan had developed a strong interest in folk music by the early 1950s. He met and toured with many folk revivalists including Pete Seeger, Peggy Seeger, Jack Elliott, and Frank Hamilton. In 1959 Myles Horton invited him to join the staff of Highlander as music director, along with Candie, whom he married in 1961. Carawan’s contributions include collecting original folk songs and integrating new forms of those songs into the social movements supported by Highlander, in part through field work in the Carolina sea islands and the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Carawan is widely credited with contributing new lyrics to the Baptist hymn “I’ll Overcome Someday” to create the essential civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.” Carawan himself assigns primary credit to Zilphia Horton, wife of Myles and first music director for Highlander, but recalls disseminating the song to civil rights protesters in Nashville in 1960 and at the founding convention of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Carawan is responsible for nearly thirty albums, many in association with Candie, both of their own performances and of folk performers. His respected books include Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?, Sing for Freedom; and Voices from the Mountains.