Performed last night to an audience that included President Obama. From the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:
Slack-key celebrity Makana used his performance at an APEC dinner last night at the Hale Koa Hotel as an opportunity to get his pro-Occupy Wall Street movement views out to President Barack Obama and other world leaders. Makana wore an "Occupy with Aloha" t-shirt under his black blazer and sang his newest song, "We are the Many," an anthem of sorts for Occupy protestors. The lyrics include, "Ye come here gather 'round the stage; The time has come for us to voice our rage."
The president took no apparent notice of the song's lyrics.
Peter, Paul & Mary To NOM: Stop Playing Our Song At Your Hate Rallies
The Courage Campaign reports that sixties folk music star Peter Yarrow is NOT happy that NOM has been playing Peter, Paul & Mary's cover of This Land Is Your Land at NOM's hate rallies. Yarrow has sent Brian Brown a cease and desist letter. I bet NOM doesn't even know that Woody Guthrie wrote This Land as an counterpoint to God Bless America. Sadly, Mary Travers passed away last year.
Folk music legend Kate McGarrigle, mother of Rufus and Martha Wainwright, has died at 63.
The Canadian McGarrigle and her younger sister Anna started the duo Kate & Anna McGarrigle -- sometimes billed as the McGarrigle Sisters -- in the mid-1970s, creating a modern permutation of folk music notable for their crystalline harmonies. Their self-titled debut was a masterpiece of this new folk. The group recorded regularly in the '70s, though after 1983's Love Over and Over their output slowed. McGarrigle was married to singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III in the '70s; he is the father of Rufus and Martha. They divorced in 1976.
Here's an old clip of the entire family performing in a documentary about the Civil War. That's Rufus behind his mother.
The celebrity death toll of 2009 continues to gain speed. Mary Travers of the famed 1960's folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary has died at the age of 72.
The band's publicist, Heather Lylis, says Travers died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut on Wednesday. She was 72 and had battled leukemia for several years. Travers joined forces with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey in the early 1960s. The trio mingled their music with liberal politics, both onstage and off. Their version of "If I Had a Hammer" became an anthem for racial equality. Other hits included "Lemon Tree," "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and "Puff (The Magic Dragon.)" They were early champions of Bob Dylan and performed his "Blowin' in the Wind" at the August 1963 March on Washington. And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream. The group collected five Grammy Awards for their three-part harmony on enduring songs like "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" and "Blowin' in the Wind." At one point in 1963, three of their albums were in the top six Billboard best-selling LPs as they became the biggest stars of the folk revival movement.
The band always denied that their most famous song, Puff The Magic Dragon, was about marijuana, as popular legend had it. All I know is it used to make me tear up when I was little. Still does. My green scales are falling like rain tonight.
Jimmy Sommerville - Where Have All The Flowers Gone?
JMG reader Ray tips us to this new track from former Bronski Beat / Communards lead singer Jimmy Sommerville. Written by folk singer Pete Seeger, Where Have All The Flowers Gone? has been covered hundreds of times by artists ranging from Peter, Paul & Mary, and Joan Baez to less folk-y takes by Earth Wind & Fire and Johnny Rivers. I've always loved Marlene Dietrich's version, but this one by Sommerville is gorgeous.
