“Seeds Blowin’ Up the Highway in the South Wind”: Woody Guthrie’s Angry Sons and Daughters

Authors

  • Roxanne Harde University of Alberta, Augustana

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26443/boss.v3i0.40

Abstract

Both anger and hope drive Woody Guthrie’s protest songs. Lyrics like “This Land Is Your Land” offer a hopefully angry voice that continues to be heard in the work of contemporary American singer-songwriters. This essay analyzes the ways in which Guthrie’s voice and vision continue to inform the songs of Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle, Patty Griffin, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and Mary Gauthier. By bringing Guthrie’s hopeful anger that insists on justice and mercy and precludes sentimentality, hostility, and nihilism into conversation with the artists who continue his legacy of activism, this paper looks to the “Seeds” Guthrie sowed.

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Published

2018-08-28

Issue

Section

Articles