Jack Chernos (born 1961) is a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

-based activist singer/songwriter. In the tradition of

Woody Guthrie Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American Left, American socialism and anti-fascism. He ...

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notabl ...

and

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

, Chernos plays his rousing, inspirational songs for social justice at rallies, pickets, and protests across the country and around the world. He performs on five-string

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

in the "old-timey"

clawhammer Clawhammer, sometimes called down-picking, overhand, or frailing, is a distinctive banjo playing style and a common component of American old-time music. The principal difference between clawhammer style and other styles is the picking direct ...

style, as opposed to the three-finger Scruggs style developed by Earl Scruggs. Chernos has written several political songs of historical significance, including: * "Sold Down the River", the song played in continuous-loop from the billboard truck of the United Steel Workers of America during the

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and ...

protests in Seattle in late 1999; * "My People Are Rising", which was also written for the WTO protests;Egelko, Bob (October 16, 2009). "Obama brings left, right together in Union Square", ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pap ...

'', p. A16. * "The Union Grand", which was the theme song of the Million Worker March on Washington, D.C. in October 2004, where it was performed as a sing-along at the Lincoln Memorial; and * "The Silence of Good People", which was inducted into the

National Civil Rights Museum The National Civil Rights Museum is a complex of museums and historic buildings in Memphis, Tennessee; its exhibits trace the history of the civil rights movement in the United States from the 17th century to the present. The museum is built aro ...

in Memphis, Tennessee.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chernos, Jack 1961 births Living people Singers from San Francisco American male singer-songwriters Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area Songwriters from San Francisco Singer-songwriters from California