Week 10: Woody Guthrie

I really admire Woody Guthrie's take on his music, and I believe there should be more people like him especially in the current music industry. A lot of songs nowadays focus on being thin, being perfect, being up to society's standards in appearance and materialism. These qualities are often impossible for the regular person. Songs often ask for girls to be looser, to not be a prude -- but if they're too slutty, that's also bad. Songs often asks guys to be this one dimensional masculine figure, getting all the girls and being fit. These are not realistic. These are not the things that are important in creating a healthy outlook on life. This over saturation of what we're supposed to be overpowers what we are actually like, which is why I really appreciate how Woody Guthrie words his sentiments:

"I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are either too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down r songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling."

"I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world...I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."

"Woody, being an excellent journalist, described not a world as it might be but as it was." Woody was more of a realist than a dreamer, and I think that is part of his charm. His music and lyrics show people that it's totally fine for them to be struggling, to be living this truthful life. He does not put people down for what they're going through and he doesn't idealize a certain type of person. Everyone is equal and should have the opportunity to blossom in their own right.

For this week I chose Guthrie's This Land is Your Land. It was a song I grew up singing in elementary school, and I really liked the simple tune of the song. Since it was such an important song in my primary school days, I wanted to convey that simple, childlike sense into the artwork. I also wanted to show a sense of constancy/universality -- how although the buildings and areas of the world have their own quality, their own shape, they are all represented with the same thin black line. Through all the differences, we are all inherently of the same strokes, just in a different order.