Old Man Trump

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Old Man Trump
Ryan Harvey feat. Ani DiFranco & Tom Morello
publication June 2016
length 3:05
Genre (s) Folk , rock
text Woody Guthrie
music Ryan Harvey
Label Firebrand Records

Old Man Trump (Alternative title Beach Haven Is not My Home ) is a song of American Folk - singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie . The text about his landlord Fred Trump was probably written in 1952 and remained unpublished for more than six decades. It wasn't until 2016 that Ryan Harvey, Ani DiFranco and Tom Morello took up the title for the first time on the occasion of Donald Trump's upcoming presidential candidacy .

background

With the return of large numbers of conscripts, social housing became a priority in the United States from 1945 onwards. When the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) began helping cities financially with federal loans and subsidies, many real estate entrepreneurs sensed the opportunity for high profits. One of them was the New Yorker Fred C. Trump , father of the future US President Donald Trump . Woody Guthrie signed a lease on an apartment in December 1950 in Beach Haven, one of Trump's residential complexes near Coney Island , Brooklyn . After two years, his wife Marjorie broke the contract after Guthrie was diagnosed with Huntington's disease.

Will Kaufman, Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Central Lancashire , sifted through several handwritten texts Guthrie had written about Fred Trump while researching a book in the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa . As can be seen from the documents, the musician was particularly bothered by the systematic racism of his tenant. Due to the lack of black roommates, he described Beach Haven in a letter to his friend Stetson Kennedy as " JimCrow (sic!) Town" and imagined in his notebooks a peaceful coexistence of different cultures in that place. In 1979 - more than a decade after Guthrie's death - the weekly newspaper Village Voice reported on the racially discriminatory procedures in the allocation of apartments in the Trump empire; two specific cases were reported to the relevant department in the Justice Department in 1973 and 1978 .

content

Old Man Trump is one of several texts by Woody Guthrie in which the following legend clearly positions himself against racism. The song consists of two verses and a chorus, the first line of which is "Beach Haven ain't my home!" An allusion to Guthrie's own Dust Bowl ballad I Ain't Got No Home . Before he greets everyone in the second verse, he makes the racial discrimination by the building contractor and landlord clear:

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project

I suppose old Trump knows exactly how much racial hatred
he stirred up in the blood of human hearts
when he drew that line of paint
here on his Beach Haven family project

Recordings

Tom Morello contributed a guitar solo and vocals to Ryan Harvey's version.

A few months after the text was first published, the folk-singer-songwriter Ryan Harvey composed and arranged a piece of music to go with it. Together with Ani DiFranco and Tom Morello , he recorded the title in the studio and published the result in June 2016 on the social media channels of his label Firebrand Records. While Harvey does the lead vocals in the verses alone and accompanies himself on the acoustic guitar, he is supported vocally by his two fellow musicians during the chorus. After the second chorus, Morello also plays an approximately 20-second solo on the electric guitar . A music video published via YouTube shows a young black family who cannot afford the rental costs and who ultimately oppose their landlord, alternating with the three musicians. At the end of the video, people of different skin colors and sociocultural backgrounds hold up signs with anti-Trump statements. As a tribute to Woody Guthrie, Harvey's guitar bears the inscription "THIS MACHINE STILL KILLS FASCISTS".

The band US Elevator, whose frontman Johnny Irion is married to Woody Guthrie's granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie, recorded their own version under the alternative name Beach Haven Ain't My Home in April 2016. The musicians offered to perform the title at democratic and progressive events. In October, the band released a YouTube video as part of the playlist project 30 Days, 30 Songs , which shows people holding the lyrics to the camera on blackboards , based on Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues .

reception

Will Kaufman made Guthrie's texts about Fred Trump public in January 2016 with the following statement:

“These writings have never before been published; they should be, for they clearly pit America's national balladeer against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire. "

“These papers have never been published before; they should be because they are putting America's national songwriters against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire. "

- Will Kaufman (2016)

The literary scholar said that he had already viewed the texts before Donald Trump's presidential candidacy became known, but that he had consciously turned to them again after the Republican had increasingly represented racist positions in his campaign . Various media at home and abroad, including the New York Times , the Guardian and Die Zeit , reported on the text finds and emphasized the political topicality of Old Man Trump .

The Irish musician Glen Hansard worked parts of the title into a cover version of Guthrie's Vigilante Man during a concert in Vienna in February 2018 . He added a swipe to Donald Trump, "Like father, so like son, he's rotten to the core" ("Like father, like son, he's rotten to the core").

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Will Kaufman: Woody Guthrie, 'Old Man Trump' and a real estate empire's racist foundations. The Conversation, January 21, 2016, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Clara McCarthy: Old Man Trump: Tom Morello gives new life to Woody Guthrie's protest song. The Guardian , June 30, 2016, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Old Man Trump. Woody Guthrie Publications, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Ryan Harvey - Old Man Trump (ft. Ani DiFranco & Tom Morello). Firebrand Records / YouTube , July 18, 2016, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  5. ^ US Elevator [featuring Mac McCaughan and Tim Bluhm] - "Old Man Trump". 30 Days, 30 Songs , October 18, 2016, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  6. ↑ US ELEVATOR "Beach Haven Ain't My Home" Words Woody Guthrie. Billy Baldwin & Mac McCaughan. US Elevator / YouTube , October 18, 2016, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Thomas Kaplan: Woody Guthrie Wrote of His Contempt for His Landlord, Donald Trump's Father. The New York Times , January 25, 2016, accessed August 14, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Christian Staas: No, no, no, Old Man Trump! Die Zeit , February 9, 2017, accessed on August 14, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Samir H. Köck: "Old Man Trump": A message in a bottle from Woody Guthrie. Die Presse , February 20, 2018, accessed on August 14, 2020 .