Dust Bowl Refugee Analysis

Superior Essays
I see the smiling faces attached to eager bodies shuffling with anticipation. On the edges of their seats they hover awaiting the next song. In their eyes, there is a sparkle, an impressive amount of awareness to the space they have just filled with sound. The people came to sing with a community, and what they experienced was a communal celebration of solidarity. For thousands of years music has brought people together. Along with their voices, they intertwined their souls for a specific cause. For worship, to get through hard times, or to celebrate music, communal song has been utilized to facilitate unity. Communal song is a beautiful anomaly. One can’t quite put to words the feeling of a room, a church, a stadium, or an entire parade …show more content…
They suffered from famine, sickness, and extreme poverty. However, they kept a beautiful spirit about them. A spirit which artists like Woody Guthrie picked up on, and wrote songs which truly embodied the sense of hopefulness the “Okies” exuded on their trek to find the American Dream which was taken out from under them. Songs like, Dust Bowl Refugee and Dust Bowl Blues highlight the struggle of the migrant workers who Guthrie was traveling with. In these Lyrics from Dust Bowl Refugee a picture of an “Okie’s” family is painted, and the lingering question is asked “Will I always be a dust bowl …show more content…
Higher wages, better hours and working conditions were all on the list of what these workers were unionizing for. They would often use songs to recruit other workers to the union. In Songs of Work and Freedom, Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer explain their hypothesis of why such powerful union songs were born out of coal mines and textile mills.

The textile workers and coal-miners have worked mostly in lonely mine-patches and mill villages, many of them located in the rural south or in isolated mountain communities. Many of these workers come from a great singing tradition --secular or religious, or both. Miners and mill-workers have had along, fierce, and often tragic struggle to build a union. This combination of isolation, singing tradition, and bitter struggle has provided what might be called the perfect climate for the production of protest songs. (Fowke,

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    “How did the protest music performed by Pete Seeger empower people during the 1960s to stand against social norms when the United States was faced with multiple problems, such as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement?” Title For many centuries, music has been an unwavering force in society, offering entertainment for various ceremonies and events, while also providing an outlet for creative expression. Most people see the entertainment factor in music, but fail to realize the power music has to influence social change.…

    • 1374 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The American Dream, or promise of freedom and equal opportunities, is still accessible to all Americans because America rewards hard working citizens that can better their lives by going through pain and hardships to achieve success. To begin, the American Dream gives all Americans an opportunity to achieve freedom and success, but citizens have to be determined to put in hard work and go through pain and suffering to accomplish it. In the poem “Europe and America”, David Ignatow explains how the father went through misery and torture, but fought through it to try and make his son’s life better. Throughout his life, the father faced many difficult challenges compared to his son, who explains that “While I am bedded upon soft green money…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The overall approach tries to show that the migrants were of many different background and experiences, and argues against the hillbilly portrayal of the migrants. Gregory’s book is a general survey of the Dust Bowl migration that challenges the previous portrayals of this event, and tries to provide an objective portrayal of them. The central theme of the book focuses around the Okie experience with discrimination from the local Californians. Gregory brings up how many migrants came with a…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dust Bowl Thesis

    • 1691 Words
    • 7 Pages

    During the 1930’s, the American people were suffering a horrible depression, also during this time something equally awful, maybe worse, was occurring in the southern plains. It’s name was the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a number of dust storms that occurred in the southern plains (grasslands). The land during this time was very dry, therefore the wind easily picked up dirt and topsoil. The dust accumulated so quickly, it infested households, churches, and any building, car, or human in its way.…

    • 1691 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I’m sitting alone in the front pew of the University of Virginia Chapel on a cold December night. In front of me there is a tall metal stand with a set of bongos perched precariously atop. Behind me sits the entire crowd of the sold out Virginia Women’s Chorus Candlelight Concert. When I arrived in Charlottesville months earlier, I could have never expected to be here. I have just finished performing a piece with the chorus minutes earlier, when a member of the chorus steps forward and addresses the audience to explain and introduce the next piece.…

    • 1638 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There were few things that a slave could do to end the daily torture. One way of dealing with life was to sing about the condition of slavery. “The songs of the slave represent the sorrow of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. ”[7] Part two, how he got educated Frederick Douglass was lucky to be sold to another master slave-holder, and he left the plantation to move to Baltimore, Maryland.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Devastating Dust Bowl Would you sell your farm if the only weather were dust? Would you stay and try to farm, with no water? The Dust Bowl is a natural disaster that only happened once. There were only a few unlucky enough to witness it.…

    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Life In The Dust Bowl

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Pioneers settled in the Great Plains started in Kansas—Nebraska an went westward. The Dust Bowl and the Depression of the 1930s caused settlers to retreat. There was an abundance of land and pioneers were eager to go west to settle and claim the land. The land could be cultivated to raise crops.…

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Dust Bowl Analysis

    • 114 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The covetousness of the eighteenth century prompted the Dust Bowl on the grounds that agriculturists over developed their territories, attempting to furrow up each section of land accessible to transform them into a lucrative, cash making establishment. They overlooked judgment skills cultivating practices, slighted the evolving atmosphere, and this prompted the dirty thirties. This is particularly huge to the Great Depression in light of the fact that before the Depression hit, the thundering 20's was portrayed by unreasonable spending and overindulgent ways of life that in the long run prompted the extreme over-plowing of fields. Individuals were more worried with profiting than looking into the environment. They languished over their carelessness…

    • 114 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Brendan Schiltz 24 February 2015 Professor Sweetin MUS-109 Home Assignment 1 African American work songs were originally developed during slavery, between the 1700’s and 1900's. Because they were part of a culture where they couldn’t write, they decided to record the songs orally when the era of slavery came to an end after 1865. Many of their origins in African song traditions may have been sung to remind the Africans of home, while others were forced to sing these songs by their owners to raise morale and keep Africans working efficiently. They have also been known to help with the struggles they experienced and expressing anger and frustration through code words to let their feelings out against their “owners.” African Americans who…

    • 1129 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    When I left this community, I left with a new found knowledge that will forever stay within me and my love for the art behind music. I write this to inform you, my peers, on what goes into the performances that people sit, watch and enjoy. After reading my analysis, you should trust that I understand the fundamentals of rhetorical appeals and you will know one of the discourses that I was a…

    • 1442 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Essay On The Dust Bowl

    • 1787 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Natural disasters are unavoidable events caused by the forces of nature working together. There is a great deal of man-made environmental disasters that left lasting impressions on the habitats humans and animals were and are still compelled to share. Some include “Door to Hell” caused by a drilling rig made by Soviet geologists, Ecocide in Vietnam during the Vietnam war where American military strategists destructed farmland in order to damage their opponent’s food sources, and The Love Canal in the 1940’s that improperly disposed of toxic industrial waste (Dimdam). The major cause of said disasters developed from excessive greed and improper use of the land. Humans do not understand the impact their actions have on the environment until they are obligated to endure the consequences.…

    • 1787 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, citizens live without individuality, intelligence, and emotions, all of which can be connected to the absence of playable music. In the real world, everyone is affected by music that they listen to or create themselves, but it is truly underestimated. People have the distinguished ability to express their individuality through the varying types of music in the world and how they react to it. Being a musician can challenge someone’s mental and physical abilities and, if they accept the challenge, can make them more intelligent and capable members of society. Music can also cater to one’s differing emotions and help them to understand their feelings and coping methods.…

    • 1044 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Grapes of Wrath is a renowned American classic written by the author John Steinbeck, a man who lived during the time of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. The title was discovered by his wife, Carol, in a popular song called “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe. Encompassed by two major, reoccurring themes, the book depicts tales that demonstrate man-to-man brutality and the companionship of people during times of great struggle. He illustrates these intense topics with both broad characterizations and with the example of the Joads, a family experiencing the effects of the Dust Bowl firsthand.…

    • 1119 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What is Music? When words fail, music speaks. Music is an unavoidable part in everyone’s life. Whether its music you play by personal choice or music you hear in supermarkets or on the radio in the car.…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics