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Joe Hill Award
The Joe Hill Award is awarded annually at the Great Labor Arts Exchange by The Labor Heritage Foundation. The award is named for Joe Hill (activist), Joe Hill, a radical songwriter, labor union, labor activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was executed for the murder of a Salt Lake City grocer and his son, a crime for which the police released a more likely suspect.BBC.co.uk"Joe Hill: Murderer or Martyr?"February 19, 2002. Hill's conviction and unsuccessful appeal generated international calls for clemency, including by President Woodrow Wilson. Hill was memorialized in a tribute poem written about 1930 by Alfred Hayes (writer), Alfred Hayes, titled "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" (often referred to simply as "Joe Hill"). Hayes's lyrics were turned into a song in 1936 by Earl Robinson. Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger often performed this song and are associated with it. Joan Baez's Woodstock performance of "Joe Hill" in 1969 is the most well-known recordin ...
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Joe Hill (activist)
Joe Hill (October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915), born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund and also known as Joseph Hillström, was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, familiarly called the "Wobblies"). A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York to San Francisco. Hill, an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular songwriter and cartoonist for the union. His songs include "The Preacher and the Slave" (in which he coined the phrase "wiktionary:pie in the sky, pie in the sky"), "The Tramp (song), The Tramp", "There Is Power in a Union", "The Rebel Girl", and "Casey Jones—the Union Scab", which express the harsh and combative life of itinerant workers, and call for workers to organize their efforts to improve working conditions. In 1914, John G. Morrison, a Salt Lake City area grocer and former policeman, and his son we ...
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Songwriter
A songwriter is a person who creates musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. A songwriter who mainly writes the lyrics for a song is referred to as a lyricist. The pressure from the music industry to produce popular hits means that song writing is often an activity for which the tasks are distributed among a number of people. For example, a songwriter who excels at writing lyrics might be paired with a songwriter with the task of creating original melodies. Pop songs may be composed by group members from the band or by staff writers – songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Some songwriters serve as their own music publishers, while others have external publishers. The old-style apprenticeship approach to learning how to write songs is being supplemented by university degrees, college diplomas and ...
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Labor Union
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages and Employee benefits, benefits, improving Work (human activity), working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting and increasing the bargaining power of workers. Trade unions typically fund their head office and legal team functions through regularly imposed fees called ''union dues''. The union representatives in the workforce are usually made up of workplace volunteers who are often appointed by members through internal democratic elections. The trade union, through an elected leadership and bargaining committee, bargains with the employer on behalf of its members, known as t ...
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Industrial Workers Of The World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The Industrial Workers of the World philosophy and tactics, philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to History of the socialist movement in the United States, socialist, syndicalism, syndicalist, and Anarchism in the United States#American anarchism and the labor movement, anarchist labor movements. In the 1910s and early 1920s, the IWW achieved many of its short-term goals, particularly in the Western United States, American West, and cut across traditional guild and union lines to organize workers in a variety of trades and industries. At their peak in August 1917, IWW m ...
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Alfred Hayes (writer)
Alfred Hayes (18 April 1911 – 14 August 1985) was an American screenwriter, television writer, novelist, and poet, who worked in Italy as well as the United States. His well-known poem about " Joe Hill" (''"I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night"'') was set to music by Earl Robinson, and performed by Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and many other artists. Life Born in Whitechapel, London to a Jewish family that moved to the United States when he was three, Hayes grew up in New York, and attended the City College (now part of City University of New York). At the age of seventeen, he joined the Young Communist League. Hayes worked briefly as a copy boy for the ''New York American'' newspaper, before moving on to a job as a crime reporter for the ''New York Daily Mirror''. He began writing fiction and poetry in left-wing magazines in the 1930s, such as the poem 'In a Coffee Pot', published in the first issue of Partisan Review. During World War II he served in Europe in the U.S. Army Specia ...
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Earl Robinson
Earl Hawley Robinson (July 2, 1910 – July 20, 1991) was an American composer, arranger and folk music singer-songwriter from Seattle, Washington. Robinson is remembered for his music, including the cantata " Ballad for Americans" and songs such as " Joe Hill" and "Black and White", which expressed his left-leaning political views. He wrote many popular songs and music for Hollywood films, including his collaboration with Lewis Allan on the 1940s hit "The House I Live In" from the Academy Award winning film of the same name. He was a member of the Communist Party from the 1930s to the 1950s. The jazz clarinetist Perry Robinson (19382018) was his son. Career in music Robinson studied violin, viola and piano as a child, and studied composition at the University of Washington, receiving a BM and teaching certificate in 1933. While at Washington, Robinson was a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a men's music fraternity. In 1934 he moved to New York City where he studied with H ...
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Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional American football, football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances. In 1915, Robeson won an academic scholarship to Rutgers University, Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he was the only African-American student. While at Rutgers, he was twice named a consensus College Football All-America Team, All-American in football and was elected class valedictorian. He earned his LL.B. from Columbia Law School, while playing in the National Football League (NFL). After graduation, he became a figure in the Harlem Renaissance, with performances in Eugene O'Neill's ''The Emperor Jones'' and ''All God's Chillun Got Wings (play), All God's Chillun Got Wings''. Robeson performed in Britain in a touring melodrama, ''Voodoo'', in 1922, and in ''Emperor Jones'' in 1925. In 1928, he sc ...
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Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s and had a string of hit records in the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 14 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthyism, McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest song, protest music in support of nuclear disarmament, international disarmament, civil rights, workers' rights, Counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture, environmentalism, environmental causes, and ending the Vietnam War. Among the prolific songwriter's best-known songs are "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (with additional lyrics by Joe Hickerson), "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), "Kisses Sweeter than Wine" (also with Hays), and ...
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Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (, ; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more than 30 albums. Baez is generally regarded as a folk singer, but her music has diversified since the counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture era of the 1960s and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, Country music, country, and gospel music. She began her recording career in 1960 and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, ''Joan Baez (album), Joan Baez'', ''Joan Baez, Vol. 2'' and ''Joan Baez in Concert'', all achieved Music recording sales certification, gold record status. Although a songwriter herself, Baez generally interprets others' work, having recorded many traditional songs and songs written by the Allman Brothers Band, the Beatles, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, Woody Guthrie, Violeta Parra, the Rolling S ...
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Woodstock
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. Billed as "an Age of Aquarius, Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Woodstock Rock Festival, it attracted an audience of more than 460,000. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite overcast and sporadic rain. It was one of the largest music festivals in history and became synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s. The festival has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history, as well as a defining event for the Silent Generation, silent and Baby boomers, baby boomer generations. The event's significance was reinforced by Woodstock (film), a 1970 documentary film, an accompanying Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, soundtrack album, and a Woodstock (song), ...
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Great Labor Arts Exchange
The Great Labor Arts Exchange is an annual arts festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, which celebrates the labor history of the United States as well as preserves, advances and promotes the culture of the American labor movement. In June 1979, Joe Glazer, a composer, musician and educator active in the American labor movement, invited 14 other labor musicians to the George Meany Center for Labor Studies in Silver Spring to share labor-related musical and written compositions, and to discuss the effective use of music, song, poetry and chants in labor activism. The three-day event became an annual one, becoming known as the Great Labor Arts Exchange (GLAE). Over the next five years, the concept of "labor culture" and how the labor movement and the arts interacted which Glazer and others held expanded. In 1984, Glazer incorporated the Labor Heritage Foundation as a parent body for GLAE as well as to curate and promote the culture of the American labor movement. GLAE remains the la ...
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Arts Festival
An arts festival is a festival that can encompass a wide range of art forms including music, dance, film, fine art, literature, poetry and is not solely focused on visual arts. Arts festivals may feature a mixed program that include music, literature, comedy, children's entertainment, science, or street theatre, and are typically presented in venues over a period of time ranging from as short as a day or a weekend to a month. Each event within the program is usually separate. Arts festivals are largely curated by an artistic director who handles the organizations' artistic direction and can encompass different genres, including fringe festivals, fringe theater festivals that are open access, making arts festivals distinctive from greenfield festivals, which typically are weekend camping festivals such as Glastonbury Festival, Glastonbury, and Visual Arts Festivals, which concentrate on the visual arts. Another type of arts festivals are music festivals, which are outdoor musi ...
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