Michael Morris’s Dust Bowl Ballads and Okie Culture, while originally intended as a partial fulfilment for a master’s requirement at California State University, Long Beach, speaks resounding truths in regards to the formulation of a culture so dear to songwriters such as Woodie Guthrie. By better understanding the cultural make-up of Southwestern “Okies”, or blue-collar laborers of the Southwest around the time of the Great Depression, we facilitate further insights into Guthrie, himself an “Okie”, and the culture/community that he speaks of.
Unfortunately, while I would normally utilize this space to touch on the life of Woodie Guthrie, scholarship on the famed folklorist is currently limited, contained to a few JSTOR articles and interviews for The Library of Congress with famous ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax. This lack of information was validated by Richard Reuss in a separate article I read, detailing the life of the impassioned American folk artist. This reason for his omission in scholarly works has yet to be answered, however I can certainly make a few inferences. Given Guthrie’s relative ease in floating between left wing communities and folk circles, traditionally occupied by poor, blue-collar members of society, historic waves of conservatism in American academia might have rendered the songwriter as a threat to Neoliberal ideals, thus omitting him from the realm of scholarship.
Regardless of the reasons for Guthrie’s lack of presence within our academic peripherals, we can still obtain crucial insights into the lyrical ambitions of the folk icon via Morris’s understanding of his native “Okie” culture. Morris points out that “Okie” culture was not a singular entity born out of hardship during the Dust Bowl, but rather the sum-total of present hardship, generic conservatism found in rural America, and the Anglo-Irish folk traditions that western settlers brought with them. However other settlers, generally from the Southeast, brought a mix of Anglo-Irish and Black folk traditions, slightly dispensing race into the conversation. With this in mind, “Okies” were not to innovative nor too embedded in traditional values. In fact, they were a highly adaptable culture, living in an age where American Values had not yet fully developed, and were simply fragmented cultural artifacts from various immigrant traditions.
While this particular insight does not directly touch upon Guthrie as an individual, it certainly seeks to illuminate the folk singer as a member of a culture that derived its traditions from a variety of sources. Furthermore, this insight has allowed me to reframe my upcoming essay from a narrative of white, blue-collar strife, to a more encompassing analysis, that seeks to connect both the past and present struggles of “Okies” through my artifact, Dust Bowl Ballads. I originally believed Guthrie to be writing simply for the present, however, with this insight, I now understand him to be writing both for the present and from the past, thus bridging together instances of hardships in American History via the medium of “Okie” culture.
Prior to reading the article, I haven’t heard of the term “Okie” before, this is probably due to me spending all 18 years of my life on the East Coast, never taking a step into the West. It was interesting that you were able to make connections as to why a musician such as Woody Guthrie wouldn’t have any information available for research. I particularly didn’t know what “Neoliberal ideals” were hence I googled it and got a tiny grasp and since I am still new can neither confirm nor deny that, but you definitely make a strong point to this denying him press.