Folk-Pop-Rock & Roll art;
ls it art or a:mish mash?

Recently, the weil known young American poebend composer Bob Dy-
| “n has been criticized for departing from traditional folk idioms and writ-

ing in a Rock & Rol

vein. Dylan’s answer is that if you want to speak to
Young people you’ve got to do it where you jind them—listening to Rock &
oll records. Has he started a trend? If so, is it a progressive trend? Below,

NANCY SCOTT of the People’s World staff, outlines her opinions on these

other questions.

_ | HE FOLLOWING message

* is addressed to all those
Whom the younger generation is
| Won’t to categorize as ‘over
thirty,»

| Or all those who didn’t know
that the fastest way to feel better
dhout that same younger genera-
tion and the state of the world
| general is to turn on the near-
} St rock and roll station,

We don’t propose to get involv-
€d in a hassle over what's folk,
| What's rock and what’s commer-
Cial, what’s pure and what’s

derivative,

We do propose that rock and

Toll has evolved into an oat->

 SPoken and fast moving musical
‘“ditorial more reflective of

Change and non-conformity than
hything we can think of off
d since wandering balladeers
Kept the medieval townsfolk in-
formed of the latest news.

Not all of it, of course, There
is still a lot of traditional pop
baloney (even at this writing
we are suffering througha ghast-
ly item called ‘*Chapel in the
Moonlight’’ by ‘‘The Bachelors’’)

_Bob Dyian

But there is a snowballing
number of songs—with content,
There is the highschool girl's
lament about her boyfriend who
was not allowed to wear long
hair called ‘Home of the
Brave,’’ d

Funny? Probably, except the
opening of school brought
an influx of (funny) news stories
about kids sent home because
their hair (shoes, boots, san-
dals, skirt) did not conform,

Paramount among these songs
is the nasal twang produced by.
an admittedly bizarre couple
named Sonny and Cher who insist
on their right to dress and think
as they please.

Then there is ‘‘Help:’’? ‘*When
I was young, so much younger
than I am today ... I never
needed anybody’s help in any
way’’ with a touching and—who
knows—universal plea, ‘‘Help
me get my feet back on the
ground.’*

Or Paul McCartney’s lovely
song ‘‘Yesterday,’’ unsentimen-
tal, critical, poignant. In short,
even with love songs, there is
more poetry and more relevance,

Something Rotten

: L. A, Vancouver, writes: In
| ference to the presumed re-
West by the U.S, for Canadian
ops in Vietnam, the probabili-
Y Would appear to be that those
lberals who say that troops
Were asked for are right, if only
because it seems so improbable
hat the U.S, got New Zealand
| Md Australian troops, and had
| 20t also asked the same from
Canada,

Thus the denials of Paul Martin,.

} * Strong supporter of U,S, poli-
fies in Vietnam, if incorrect,
| *Pears to be more significant

an a frank and open admission
Would have been, since it indicates
ft Mr, Martin as the minister
“ Charge of foreign policy, is
’traid to let the Canadian people
al that a request for Canadian
_~%0ps has been made by the US.
* The U.S. request itself is not
maging to the Liberal party

' to Canada, But Mr. Martin
‘Dparently sees a frank admission
t such a request was made
damaging to the Liberals,
2

as
| Why

| , Probably because Mr, Martin
| % involved in more than a re-
| ape, and has made some com-
Mitments for Canada,

| i So the fact that he goes to
| “© extreme of denying that such
|, “equest was made, indicates that
| | knows very well indeed that
} the Canadian people would strong-
Oppose such a move, Hence
} .° begins to suspect a crude
| Ublecross,

thoes of 1919

5 Alf Bingham, Burnaby, writes:
} “ome pundit writing in the “Sun”
Bost friday, brought back some
prmories of the Winnipeg strike.
| , © writer of the article some-
} ..%) reminds me of another
| ..avid’’ of radio fame who has
| the answers to the world

*Toblems, as well as the local
14 She,

| jp the Oil Workers Strike: he
| "Plies that this strike will be
| “bour’s H, Bomb, But it is the

Winnipeg Strike that he writes
about that interested me, for ‘‘I
Was There’’, and took part in it.

The Winnipeg strike was
brought on by the refusal of em-
ployers to recognize trade
unions and an act of Parliament
was needed to force employers
to come to terms with organized
labour unions,

I have a copy of the book that
‘¢David’? got most of the material
that he used in the write-up. The
book was called ‘‘The Winnipeg

‘General Strike’’ by D. C. Masters.

There are many errors in the
book and much more could have
been added, The workers were
caught by inflation, Wages did not
rise in proportion to the cost of
living and many workers joined
unions in great numbers at that
time to force employers to in-
crease their very small wages,
only to be met with outright
refusal,

The late Jacob Penner, who
was elected as a Communist on
the Winnipeg City Council, and
returned for many years was in
the same Union as myself—The
Retail Clerks.

puring the strike our member-
ship increased from 500 to sev-
eral thousand and our Union had
problems that arose during the
strike; that of finding food for
hundreds of girl clerks who had
no money at all two days after
the strike started. Many hun-,
dreds of girls and women
worked 10 hours a day and six
days a week for $6,00, Men in
organized shops received 25¢
per hour,

The workers in Canada were
faced with hundreds of thousands
of returned soldiers who couldn't
get their former jobs back at
pre war wages, The employers
of labour in Canada had a period
of ‘‘affluance’’, and meant to
keep it that way.

Many millionaires had been
made through war profits from
1914 to 1918 but the workers

were being ‘‘skinned’’ from coast
to coast and the workers in the
West would stand it no longer.

And another thing Iremember,
was the march of several thou-
sands of immigrant men and
women in the winter of 1914, who
had been unemployed for a long
time and were given food on the
way by farmer’s wives,

On reaching the boundary of
U.S.A. they were scattered by
State Troopers all over the ter-
ritory.

Did the workers lose the
‘¢Winnipeg Strike’’, The employ-
ers said ‘yes’ but the workers
did win the strike,

The Collective Bargaining Act
was passed. Jacob Penner was a
political victor,
increased for everybody in Win-
nipeg. Many hundreds of workers
were blacklisted and had to leave
Winnipeg and find another job,
put that is the price of Victory,

After the Winnipeg strike, came
the first signs of automation,
The Horse disappeared from the
streets and the farms, Ice Cut-
ters left their jobs and electric
refrigerators took their place.
Gas buses came on the high-

ways as well as boxcar trucks, .

Then came the 1930s with great
lines of unemployed workers,
Most of them went to the 2nd
world war: and then came auto-
mation, the bulldozer, the gas
shovel, and many other tools,

Now whole factories are auto-
automated, and hundreds of thou-
sands of men and women face
unemployment, even office work-
ers, who have been so safe for
40 years, They too are no longer
wanted,

Much could be written of what
did happen in 1919, and what
might have happened, but there is
one thing sure — whatever the
present strike will lead too, the
worker will win, just as they did
in Winnipeg in 1919,

_plications and

Wages were .

Most.important and most extra-
ordinary are the songs that have
provoked a mass of articles,
comments, phone calls and picket
lines—the anti-war songs,

As of the end of September
“Eve of Destruction’? had been
in the ‘‘Top Ten’’ for five weeks,
Radio stations have been picket-
ed—by the, Right wing—for play-
ing it,

An ‘‘answer’’ popped up short-
ly after ‘‘Eve’’ made the charts:
*¢The Dawn of Correction,’’ Thus
far ‘*Dawn’’ remains unlisted in
Variety’s Top 50 singles, (There
is an entertaining but totally
unverified rumor that ‘*Dawn’’
was written to order by the State
Dept.)

‘tEve’’ was written by a young
man named P, F. Sloane; is sung
in a bearish growl by another
young man named Barry McGuire
and is not, candidly, a work of
art :

But it is stunning in its im-
its popularity:
‘¢You’re old enough to kill, but
not for voting, You don’t believe
in war, But what's that gun you’re
toting? . . . Can’t you feel the
fear that I’m feeling today?’’

The world, for Sloan, ‘‘is just
too frustratin’,’* too many prob-
lems—segregation, no legisla-
tion, hate (‘*Red China’’ and
‘¢Selma’’?) and ‘Ah, you don’t
believe we’re on the eve of de-
struction?’

overs of ballet will soon

have the opportunity of
seeing what is probably the
finest company in Canada when
the Royal Winnipeg Ballet
comes to Vancouver’s Queen
Elizabeth Theatre on Satur-
day, December 18, It will be on
display for the one evening
only, beginning at 8:30 p,m,

Tickets are available at
Hudson’s Bay Box Office,
MU 1-3351,

An example of the critical
regard in which this company
is held is provided by a quote
from the Boston Traveller:

s: ‘fA breath of fresh air! The
most excitement since the
Moiseyev was here and the
most: enthusiasm from an au-
dience—this was the debut of
the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. ..

at the Boston Arts Festival,”

A Company, bold, brash, and
full of-sass*. .. they brought

December 3, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9

Kids’ opinions on the song run
from it’s defeatist to ‘*don’t be
an ostrich , . . if you won’t do
anything about it at least recog-
nize that it’s true,’’

‘The Universal Soldier’’(Glen
Campbell) is less harsh but fully
as definite; Pete Seeger’s lovely.
ballad ‘‘Where Have All the Flow-
ers Gone’’ has returned, sung by
Johnny Rivers; Joan Baez has
been on the local charts for some
16 weeks with ‘‘There But for
Fortune,’’ a plea for tolerance
and love,

Released in late September:
‘“‘For My Home’ (Mike Post)
and ‘*The New Recruit’’ (Michael
Blessing), both Folk Rock anti-
war,

The king-pin in all this is Bob
Dylan whose songs, sung by him-
self and practically everybody
else, whose style, whose convic-
tions and poetry have been as
influential as any other contemp-
orary artist,

It seems a long time ago that
we first heard him in concert
and said wistfully that maybe
he’d be up there with the Beatles
before long. He did it,

In early September he packed
15,000 into the Hollywood Bowl
where he produced his own extra-
ordinary mixture of folk, rock
and roll, public protest and pri-
vate lyric—the mixture that is
transforming commercial pop
music,

a new kind of cool Canadian
air here,’’

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet
had its regal title granted to
it in 1953 — the first ballet
Company in the British Com-
monwealth to be so honored,
As Canada’s first ballet com-
pany and one of North Ameri-
ca’s oldest, it is now in its
26th season,

This year the Winnipeggers
will dance out of their prairie
home and out onto the stages
of more than 75 cities and
seven countries of the West-
ern world, Their travels in-
clude a two month coast to
coast tour of the United States
and participation as Canada’s
representatives at the Com-
monwealth Arts Festival in
Great Britain,

This company has become
one of Canada’s proudest cul-
tural achievements and one
of the leading performing art
groups in North America,