"more Mark Twain."

This points out a few interesting issues:

"You knew [Woody] wasn't some dark, dark agitator angry leftist guy. He was more Mark Twain."

First of all, Nora Guthrie is right on about her dad--his faith in people didn't force him onto the side of any one party or clique, he simply told it like it was from the outside, from a place where he could survey the whole scene honestly. Second, Woody's legend and image suffers in much the same way that the upheaval of the 60s suffers--it gets muddied, romanticized, and blurred with oversimplifications. Here was a man with communist sympathies who joined the merchant marine and wrote songs for hire to promote practices of the largest capitalist society in existence. Woody's perspective wasn't simple, and he was no populist simpleton. He was a deeply complex artist and person.

At the end of the article, Nora says,

"I think we're kind of slowly, with technology, inching towards really hearing Woody Guthrie for the first time, in a way."

This fascinates me because while I studied at the Woody Guthrie Archives (where Nora is chief overseer of the rights to Woody's songs, writings, and legacy), the archivist there told me, "If Woody were alive today, he'd have a blog." I soon agreed with her once I began reading over thousands of pages of Woody's various writings. What Woody would have done with the internet is delicious to wonder about.

I find it stupendously fascinating that Nora seems to be saying, "Digital technology is allowing us to hear Woody in a way we never have." One thing I most dig about Woody is the unpolished nature of his voice and of the quality of the recordings made of him. I believe that time transforms the way we hear Woody, not technology. And by "time" I mean the transformations wrought by time upon the relationship between imagination and reality. But saying that makes me realize that Nora is actually right: technology is the major factor in recent alterations of this relationship. The internet has made our relationship to recorded music entirely different, and the populist nature of the internet prompts the question of what mighty populists such as Woody would do given this radical tool.

If there's one thing we can use today, it's more voices with a wry edge, that tell it like it is with a sly slant of some sort. Let's all be a little more Mark Twain.

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This post makes me realize I need to write another post later on about how the Internet changes the role of the folklorist in society. Also, I need to explore how it changes the relationship of people to recorded music.