Gordon Friesen (1909 - 1996) [1] [2] was a novelist and co-founder, along with his wife Agnes Sis Cunningham, of Broadside , the political song magazine that first published many of the most popular songs of the folk revival, including compositions by Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs.
Friesen was born March 3, 1909, in Weatherford, Oklahoma. He grew up in a Russian Mennonite family in Oklahoma, and was also an important early contributor to Mennonite literature. His novel Flamethrowers, which was critical of Mennonite traditions, is regarded as one of the earliest novels by an American Mennonite author about Mennonites. [3]
Friesen and his wife Cunningham were also members of the Almanac Singers during the 1940s, a Greenwich Village urban folk music revival group with a shifting membership.
"At its peak, Broadside appeared monthly, but as the folk revival lost momentum, its publication dwindled to bimonthly and ultimately semi-annually by the end of the 1960s. Although its circulation never exceeded four figures, the Friesens kept Broadside afloat until 1988, publishing 187 issues in all." [4]
In 1999, Cunningham published their collaborative memoir, Red Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography :
In 2000, Smithsonian Folkways Records collected the magazine’s most notable songs on the five-CD box set The Best of Broadside 1962-1988 .
He died October 15, 1996.
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He inspired several generations both politically and musically with songs such as "This Land Is Your Land", written in response to the American exceptionalist song "God Bless America".
Hermann Sudermann was a German dramatist and novelist.
The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa. Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."
"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1962. It was released as a single and included on his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. It has been described as a protest song and poses a series of rhetorical questions about peace, war, and freedom. The refrain "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" has been described as "impenetrably ambiguous: either the answer is so obvious it is right in your face, or the answer is as intangible as the wind".
Agnes "Sis" Cunningham was an American musician, best known for her involvement as a performer and publicist of folk music and protest songs. She was the founding editor of Broadside magazine, which she published with her husband Gordon Friesen and their daughters.
Thomas Richard Paxton is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than fifty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions.
Broadside magazine was a small mimeographed publication founded in 1962 by Agnes "Sis" Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friesen. Hugely influential in the folk-revival, it was often controversial. Issues of what is folk music, what is folk rock, and who is folk were roundly discussed and debated. At the same time, Broadside nurtured and promoted important singers of the era.
"Midnight Special" is a traditional folk song thought to have originated among prisoners in the American South. The song refers to the passenger train Midnight Special and its "ever-loving light".
Larry Towell is a Canadian photographer, poet, and oral historian. Towell is known for his photographs of sites of political conflict in the Ukraine, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Standing Rock and Afghanistan, among others. In 1988, Towell became the first Canadian member of Magnum Photos.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Billie Holiday, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Vincent Gordon Harding was an African-American pastor, historian, and scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society. A social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Martin Luther King Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River, Hope and History, and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, he served as co-chairperson of the social unity group Veterans of Hope Project and as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. When Harding died on May 19, 2014, his daughter, Rachel Elizabeth Harding, publicly eulogized him on the Veterans of Hope Project website.
Contemporary folk music refers to a wide variety of genres that emerged in the mid 20th century and afterwards which were associated with traditional folk music. Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "contemporary folk music" or "folk revival music" to make the distinction. The transition was somewhat centered in the US and is also called the American folk music revival. Fusion genres such as folk rock and others also evolved within this phenomenon. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional folk music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional folk music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two.
Matthew McGinn was a Scottish folk singer-songwriter, actor, author and poet. Born in Glasgow in 1928, McGinn was a prolific songwriter and is recognised as an influential figure in the British folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
People's Songs was an organization founded by Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax, Lee Hays, and others on December 31, 1945, in New York City, to "create, promote, and distribute songs of labor and the American people." The organization published a quarterly Bulletin from 1946 through 1950, featuring stories, songs and writings of People's singers members. People's Songs Bulletin served as a template for folk music magazines to come like Sing Out! and Broadside.
The gospel song, Palms of Victory, also called "Deliverance Will Come", and "The Way-worn Traveler", was evidently written in 1836 by the Rev. John B. Matthias, a Methodist Episcopal minister in New York state. This attribution is not well documented, and Matthias had no known history of song-writing, but there is no other author to whom it can be attributed.
Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune is a documentary film on the life and times of folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs. The film, released theatrically in January 2011, was written and directed by Kenneth Bowser. Its title is taken from one of Ochs' best known songs, "There but for Fortune" (1963).
Gil Turner was an American folk singer-songwriter, magazine editor, Shakespearean actor, political activist, and for a time, a lay Baptist preacher. Turner was a prominent figure in the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s, where he was master of ceremonies at New York City's leading folk music venue, Gerde's Folk City, as well as co-editor of the protest song magazine Broadside. He also wrote for Sing Out!, the quarterly folk music journal.
Diana Davies is an American photographer, playwright, painter, graphic artist, illustrator, and musician who was one of the leading photojournalists documenting the feminist and gay liberation movements of the 1960s and '70s. Her photographs cover the early days of diverse women's and LGBT social movements, as well as the Civil Rights, Peace, and farmworkers' rights movements.
"The Unfortunate Lad", also known as "The Unfortunate Rake", is a traditional folk ballad, which through the folk process has evolved into a large number of variants.
Frances Fink Taylor was a New York music and film critic and a lyricist whose best-known song, "Those Three Are on My Mind" was a lament for the murdered civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.