Through-out the show we played clips from famous songs written by members of the Industrial Workers of the World who, as Utah Phillips liked to put it, stole the hymn songs because they were pretty and changed the words so they'd make more sense. In the end, our radical musicologists, Brad Duncan and Josh Wise, talk about the litirgical and popular origins of the songs and how they spoke to both where people found themselves, where they've been and where they wanted to go.
The Industrial Workers of the World is still alive, building unions, fighting capitalism and singing. This is not just history. Every last Wednesday of the month at the Red and Black Cafe (SE 12th and Oak in Portland) members of the IWW and fellow travellers meet for an evening of Music for the Working Class starting at 7pm.
This segment starts with one of the songs we played, "Dump the Bosses Off Your Back", though can find them all through Youtube below.
- One Big Industrial Union
- Preacher and the Slave (mistakenly called "pie in the sky" by the host)
- We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years
- Dump The Bosses Off Your Back.
- KBOO