Hoot, Brother

They say in Harlan County,

There are no neutrals there.

You either are a union man

Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

Which side are you on, buddy,

Which side are you on? . . .

This, Laura, was a protest song back in the thirties. They really cared which side you were on, then. Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers Talked Union all up and down this great land of ours. Detroit to Frisco, Pittsburgh, Bethlehem. Left wing, they called them. Unpatriotic--Moscow agents.

The bit now, though, is world brotherhood. Finish the bomb tests or we'll all be finished. Leadership, peace. Down with fence-straddling. Down with wishy-Washingtonism.

You didn't really have to be against anything to come to the Hoot. Some were attracted by the singing. Some by the unescorted girls--four of them with guitars. The novices sat quietly and beat their lips in time to the music. If you had a tie on you were a novice.

But there was also the hard-core, the part of the folk song crowd which really believes that if you're gonna split atoms, well, you can't split ranks. They knew most of the words. They sat on the floor. One caried a copy of No More War. There were too few of them.

A lanky Southerner in casual garb attracted a small crowd. "Just passing through town. Heard about this Protest Hootenanny." A few minutes later he grabbed the spotlight.

"I learned this song from a buddy down home," he drawled, motorcycle boot pounding in time to the strum-scratch arpeggio-scratch of his guitar. "A member of the Party. There's two kinds of party, you know. He was in the one with a capital P."

He tucked his cigarette behind his ear, lit. One girl snickered. "Well, anyway, he used to work for all these causes. You know, the dockworkers, integration, the miners--there's always a cause to work for if you've got the ambition." He flicked the ash into his dungaree cuff.

"Once he was working for the Jews, and fell for this girl. One day he called at her home and her parents threw him out. Wrote this song about it."

Worked for equal rights

All over this world,

The Jews give me the thank you,

But they won't give me the girl.

Ah got the non-Kosher blues, oh lawd

Ah got the non-Kosher blues....

He settled down into the Union couch. (There's two kinds of union. This one with a capital U.)

Two girls strode in. One brandished a guitar as if the Protest were against the paucity of girls.

"Where's the band, Blanche? I thought you said we were gonna sing for a bunch of Harvard boys."

"That's what Bob told me. Said there was a party up at the Union and for us to bring guitars."

One of the tie and jacket lads moved in. "We're singing songs of Protest," he instructed. 'We've been Protesting about everything. Franco, the Bolsheviks, being rich, being poor. You name it."

They sat down in a corner trying to look modestly in-group. One of the leader-organizers asked if anyone had a Protest song he wanted to sing.

"Why don't we sing Wake Up Little Susie," twittered Blanche.

"You see, that isn't a Protest song," one of the sweater set explained, trying to keep his eyes on her face.

"Oh well yes it is too. It protests against people who sleep too much." He hid behind his copy of Sing Out.

"We wrote this Protest song about Harvard," shouted one of the leaders. "Songs like it should be sung in every Harvard Club across the country."

Tuition goes up, up, up,

And the values go down, down, down,

Quincy House is the reason,

More room rents next season.

If you're in the red, try Dudley instead.

The students may groan, groan, groan,

But Seymour Harris says loan, loan, loan

The time is growing near

For 3000 bucks a year....

As the evening wore on most of the audience seemed to be singing itself into belief. They romped through This Land Is Your Land, The Banks Are Made of Marble, Dark As A Dungeon, and Die Gedanken Sind Frei.

The discontents and out-numbered conservatives had left early. Can't accomplish anything by singing about it. You can just confuse yourself. Solid citizens of the bourgeoisie singing union songs. Not even radical any more, just left-wing. Peace songs, brotherhood songs. Stop bomb tests? Hopeless idealism--may even be subversive. Can't stop them by singing anyway.

Their material's so corny,

Their motives are pure

And their spirits will never be broke,

As they go right on singing

In their noble crusade

Of teaching folk songs to the folk.