By Billy Altman
MUSIC + REVOLUTION
A Benefit for MusicCares and Village Preservation
Carnegie Hall
19 November 2023
I have to admit, when I first heard that musician Richard Barone (an indefatigable presence on the local music scene and a notable champion of the music that fueled the folk movement of the ‘60s , the longtime Greenwich Village resident has spent a lot of time over the last two decades collaborating with numerous artists from that era, including Pete Seeger and Donovan) was producing a star-studded concert at Carnegie Hall based on his 2022 book, Music + Revolution: Greenwich Village in the 1960s, the cynic in me thought the sub-title for the show should probably have been “Where Have All the Protest Songs Gone?” After all, while current events, both nationally and internationally, have fairly screamed out for artistic responses (rather than just Instagram/TikTok/tweet-sized “statements”) from prominent figures in the music community, it has fallen primarily to rap and hip-hop stars to, as they used to say, “tell it like it is” through creative expression. Those of us who lived through the ‘60s can readily attest to the power of music to effect social and political change, but as that’s been in such short supply these days, I went to the show (doubly billed as “A Benefit for MusiCares and Village Preservation”) at Carnegie Hall’s sold-out Zankel Hall on November 19th not quite sure just what to expect or how I’d react to hearing a batch of old songs–especially since nostalgia, as they also used to say, just “ain’t my bag.”
‘Light My Fire,’ Jose Feliciano performs at the Music + Revolution concert at Carnegie Hall, 19 November 2023. YouTube post by Bob Porco.
‘I’ll Fly Away’ plus priceless pre-song stories about meeting Buddy Holly and introducing Bob Dylan to John Hammond, at the Music + Revolution concert at Carnegie Hall, 19 November 2023. YouTube post by Bob Porco.
Imagine my surprise then, when, over the course of a nearly two-and-a-half hour affair featuring some two dozen songs performed by a roster of nearly that many individual singers and songwriters, what kept being reinforced was the power of music more than anything else as an agent less of change than of artistic inspiration. Like most other important musical movements, the folk “revival” that started in earnest in the 1950s let people in to express themselves however they saw fit, and the “what they were saying/how they were saying it” for the most part was far more important than who the messenger was. Outside, really, of Bob Dylan and, to some extent, Joan Baez, there was no cult of personality in the folk movement until Dylan’s conversion to rock in 1965 devoured it and pushed the next movements – folk rock and psychedelia – to the forefront. And that check-your-ego-at-the-door sensibility was especially noticeable at Zankel Hall, in the performances not only by the folk elders who appeared, whether they were traditionalists like Carolyn Hester (“I’ll Fly Away”), interpreters like Geoff Muldaur (Dylan’s “Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather”) and Jose Feliciano (the Doors’ “Light My Fire”) or tunesmiths like Tom Paxton (“The Last Thing On My Mind”) and Eric Andersen (“Thirsty Boots”), but also by many of the members of successive generations who performed – most notably, Willie Nile (“Like A Rolling Stone”), Terre Roche (Bonnie Dobson’s post-nuclear war classic, “Morning Dew”), Marshall Crenshaw (Woody Guthrie’s “Lindbergh”), Lenny Kaye (Andersen’s “Close the Door Lightly When You Go”) and David Johansen (Phil Ochs’s “There But For Fortune”).
‘The Last Thing on My Mind,’ Tom Paxton performs at the Music + Revolution concert at Carnegie Hall, 19 November 2023. YouTube post by Bob Porco.
‘Morning Dew,’ Terry Roche, at the Music + Revolution concert at Carnegie Hall, 19 November 2023. YouTube post by Bob Porco.
‘There But For Fortune,’ David Amram and David Johansen at the Music + Revolution concert at Carnegie Hall, 19 November 2023. YouTube post by Bob Porco.
Of course, leave it to pan-cultural musician David Amram, whose career dates back to his days as confidant/accompanist for Beat Generation writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, to put the night in just the right perspective, for this or any other era. Riffing on the entire post-World War II downtown scene that in one way or another influenced nearly everything heard at the concert, Amram cheerfully noted that, in effect, what happened then could always happen again. All you have to do is look around, look inside, and then just “Write a poem/paint a picture/sing a song.” At 93, he’s still the youngest person in the room.
