JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Again in 2017, after a Trump administration journey ban brought on chaos at airports across the nation, protesters rushed to the scenes. They gathered in help of detained vacationers from a handful of majority-Muslim international locations. These protesters chanted, held indicators, and so they sang a easy music by Woody Guthrie.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Singing) This land is my land, from California to the New York island.

SUMMERS: It was a reminder that “This Land Is Your Land” is not only a campfire music for varsity youngsters. It is a celebration of the American panorama. However it’s a celebration with edge. At the moment, on the nation’s Independence Day, we’re revisiting this 2019 story from NPR’s Elizabeth Blair.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

ELIZABETH BLAIR: To know the music, it helps to know the man who wrote it. In February 1940, Woody Guthrie was sitting in his room in a midtown Manhattan lodge known as Hanover Home.

NORA GUTHRIE: Which was a form of fleabag lodge.

BLAIR: Standing the place that fleabag lodge as soon as stood, the late Woody Guthrie’s daughter, Nora Guthrie, says her dad won’t be eager in regards to the company financial institution throughout the road, however he’d be thrilled to know what remains to be on the nook.

N GUTHRIE: And I am certain he ate at a sizzling canine stand proper on this nook many occasions.

BLAIR: And did Woody Guthrie like sizzling canines?

N GUTHRIE: Cherished (laughter).

BLAIR: Scorching canines, fries and root beer had been Sunday brunch, says Nora. Woody Guthrie was a no-frills form of man, a deeply curious wanderer. Nora says he’d exit for a pack of cigarettes and never come residence for per week or two.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”)

WOODY GUTHRIE: (Singing) I roamed and rambled, and I adopted my footsteps to the glowing sands of her diamond deserts. Throughout me, a voice was a-sounding, this land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: When Woody Guthrie sings “This Land,” Nora says he is not simply singing about deserts and wheat fields.

N GUTHRIE: The entire thought of a land is your spot on earth, you recognize, a spot the place you possibly can declare security, sanity.

BLAIR: Security and sanity – rising up in Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie did not have a lot of both. Cyclones, mud storms, fireplace and heartbreak – a brand new home his father constructed burnt to the bottom. Later, when Woody’s older sister Clara, was 14, she was ironing on a kerosene range that caught fireplace.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

W GUTHRIE: This one blowed (ph) up, caught fireplace. And she or he run round the home about twice earlier than anyone might catch her. The following day, she died.

BLAIR: A choked-up Woody Guthrie advised the story to folklorist Alan Lomax in 1940 for the Library of Congress.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

W GUTHRIE: And my mom – that was slightly bit an excessive amount of for her nerves.

BLAIR: Ten years later, Woody’s mom died in what was then known as a hospital for the insane. She suffered from Huntington’s illness, a genetic mind dysfunction that was misunderstood on the time and the identical illness that later killed Woody. Woody’s father misplaced all the things. Woody and his siblings had been despatched to reside with family and friends.

Ultimately, he ended up in Pampa, Texas. When the brutal mud storms hit, he headed to California. Simply because the music says, he roamed and rambled throughout the nation – strolling, hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, by bus when he might afford it. Nora Guthrie says in a approach, the land was Woody’s residence, and he didn’t wish to hold nonetheless, even when he recorded these classes with Alan Lomax.

N GUTHRIE: And Alan would say, oh, come sit down and have one thing to eat. And Woody would arise. He’d say, no, I do not need to get too comfy. Do not get too comfy ‘trigger you by no means know who’s going to take your private home away.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”)

W GUTHRIE: (Singing) As I went strolling that ribbon of freeway, and I noticed above me that infinite skyway, I noticed beneath me that golden valley. This land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: For those who take a look at the unique lyrics to “This Land is Your Land,” Guthrie added a line on the backside – all you possibly can write is what you see. “This Land Is Your Land” was additionally a rebuttal to one thing he heard.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “GOD BLESS AMERICA”)

KATE SMITH: (Singing) God bless America, land that I like.

BLAIR: Kate Smith’s model of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” was on jukeboxes and the radio all over the place throughout Guthrie’s journey throughout the nation. He apparently hated it. After all the things he’d seen, America was stunning, however it was in bother. He’d seen Mud Bowl refugees preventing for his or her lives and dealing folks dwelling like rats, as he put it. He initially known as his music “God Blessed America,” as in already did. One interpretation is that Guthrie felt Berlin’s anthem was jingoism. Guthrie wished to sing the reality. In a single verse that not often will get carried out, he takes a dig at rich landowners.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND”)

W GUTHRIE: (Singing) There was a giant excessive wall there that attempted to cease me. Signal was painted, mentioned personal property. However on the bottom, it did not say nothing. This land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: Now, the left-leaning politics of “This Land Is Your Land” are most probably misplaced on the hundreds of thousands of children who’ve been studying the music greater than 75 years after it was written.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: (Singing) This land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: And but politics is partly how the music unfold. Woody Guthrie wasn’t a communist, however he sympathized with the trigger. He was pro-union and anti-war. He additionally, as he put it, stubborn out excessive rents and punk politicians. The late Pete Seeger, who grew to become an icon of people music, usually appeared with Guthrie. He advised NPR they had been blacklisted as early because the Nineteen Forties.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

PETE SEEGER: We did one program on CBS radio, and a newspaper report out mentioned, purple minstrels attempt to get on the networks. And that was the final job we acquired.

BLAIR: Nora Guthrie says for a time, the one work Seeger might get was singing for younger folks.

N GUTHRIE: Mainly, each child that went to summer time camps or kindergarten or faculty realized “This Land Is Your Land.” And that is how the music actually grew to become popularized – not by my father, however by folks like Pete Seeger, who was blacklisted.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SEEGER: (Singing) This land is your land. This land is my land, from California to the New York island, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me.

BLAIR: “This Land Is Your Land” has been recorded a whole bunch of occasions, however most individuals do not be taught it from a recording. Seeger mentioned the music endures just because folks like to sing it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

SEEGER: That music was by no means performed on the radio. It was by no means performed on TV. It was a nothing of a music so far as the industrial world was involved, however virtually everyone in America knew this music.

N GUTHRIE: We have at all times gotten requests from so many hundreds of individuals through the years saying this ought to be the nationwide anthem as a result of it is crammed with magnificence and love of the nation.

BLAIR: However Nora Guthrie says the household disagrees. “This Land Is Your Land,” she says, belongs to the folks, not the federal government.

Elizabeth Blair, NPR Information.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SEEGER: (Singing) This land is your land. This land is my land. From California to the New York island, from the redwood forests…

Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional data.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This textual content is probably not in its closing type and could also be up to date or revised sooner or later. Accuracy and availability might range. The authoritative report of NPR’s programming is the audio report.