Obama’s “We Are One” Concert Sends Strong Message of Change

[Refugee 7]

Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen

Barack Obama’s “We Are One” concert on Sunday, which HBO televised for no charge and NPR aired lived, was a progressive milestone. At one level, the concert situated Obama in a continuum with FDR’s and JFK’s inaugural calls for change. More deeply, the event revived and relegitimized the cultural left of the 1930’s. This was initially glimpsed through the footage of Marian Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, with public recognition given to Eleanor Roosevelt’s intervention to prevent the denial of the singer’s appearance on racial grounds. A more powerful statement occurred when Pete Seeger, blacklisted during the 1950’s, was given a preeminent role in the event. Following Obama’s speech, Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen in leading the crowd in singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Seeger sang the original version, with its stanza criticizing private property, not the whitewashed version that the traditional media has substituted for nearly sixty years. The notion that unrepentant radical Pete Seeger would ever be given a prominent role involving a presidential inauguration seemed like a left-wingers fantasy, but that is what occurred under the watch – literally – of Barack Obama.

Sunday’s “We Are One” concert was so amazing that I first listened to it live on NPR and then watched HBO’s free viewing later in the day. It was if I needed to be sure that a concert for a new president had really occurred in which Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pete Seeger, John Mellencamp, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Jack Black, John Legend, Rosario Dawson and Samuel L. Jackson, not to mention many others, were featured performers.

Pete Seeger and the Revival of the Cultural Left

It was the appearance of 89-year old folk legend Pete Seeger that sent the event’s most powerful message.

Seeger was blacklisted during the 1950’s, and the career of The Weavers, his bestselling singing group, destroyed by the forces of reaction. A cultural icon among the left, political cowardice denied Seeger the mainstream media access he long deserved.

Now Seeger was following President-elect Obama in leading the crowd in singing the original version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” And, while Obama watched from nearby (and, according to press accounts, joined in the singing), Seeger sang the following verse:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;

Sign was painted, it said private property;

But on the back side it didn't say nothing;

That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me.

http://www.woodyguthrie.org

The fact that Barack Obama invited this song to be played, and joined in singing these long forbidden verses, tells us much about our new President. Guthrie wrote this song in direct response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America. He provided the “other side” of Berlin’s paean to national patriotism and loyalty, and, not surprisingly, Berlin’s song rather than Guthrie’s became the most commonly heard and politically acceptable (and is still sung during the seventh inning stretch at Yankee Stadium).

But upon completion of This Land is Your Land, Beyonce ended the concert not by singing God Bless America, but rather the more soothing and unifying America the Beautiful.

Culture and Politics Are Linked

Many if not most of the songs and speeches featured in the concert focused on a theme of change. There is no reason to believe Barack Obama would have picked these artists, to give these particular presentations, if he were not serious about transformational change.

The event’s best moment? Aside from the Seeger-Springsteen song, my picks were Mary J. Blige for Lean on Me, Jon Bon Jovi and Bettye LaVette for a duet of Sam Cooke's seminal civil-rights movement song, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and (believe it or not) Garth Brooks for leading the crowd in the iconic “American Pie,” which had the crowd rocking.

And special props to Jamie Foxx, whose imitation of Barack Obama’s Grant Park election night speech was so good that I did not realize when listening on the radio that it was Foxx, rather than Obama, saying the words.

The Obama family appeared to savor the Stevie Wonder, Usher, and Shakira trio – and it’s no secret that Wonder is Michelle Obama’s favorite.

The times are clearly changing …