Campus Spaces Celebrate Oberlin Folk Alumni

brary as a student employee and he goes on to work for the Library of Congress, where he’ll be the director and the archivist for the folk song archive.” harassed and attacked nationwide without the same amount of media coverage. And it was as if Jason Robert Brown read my mind — “Rumblinʼ and a Rollinʼ” is sung from the perspective of African-American townsfolk who are present in the play. In the song, the characters question if the reaction would have been as strong if the victim had been a little Black girl or if Frank had been Black in the first place. This song does not remove the threat of anti-Semitism that permeates these charactersʼ lives, only adding to the play’s message by forcing audiences, specifically white audiences, to consider another perspective.

Parade breathes life into a story that occurred more than 100 years ago. It tells the stories of the innocent and what happens when hate and prejudice have a place in the courts and our law system. Because of Frank’s case, the AntiDefamation League was created as a Jewish international nongovernment organization based on civil rights law and the defense against the defamation of Jewish people. This story is not only a musical, but a representation of something that still affects minority communities. Parade pays homage to this story with music that encapsulates the beauty and pain of our history. I hope to see it live in the coming weeks and implore you to take a look at the album.

Friendship blossomed between Hickerson and Seeger, a fact pointedly reflected by the famed song — and the exhibition’s title — Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Seeger, who was deeply influenced by Russian folk music, was working through an obscure Russian text on his plane ride to Oberlin. His reading inspired the writing of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, which he first wrote and performed at Oberlin. Later, Hickerson would contribute the song’s final two verses.

In the exhibition’s Mudd Center wing, a giant text displaying the lyrics to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” outlines Seeger’s and Hickerson’s respective verses. A station dedicated to Hickerson’s set of dangling phone-like mechanisms wherein viewers can listen to a brief recording of Seeger jamming out with the Folk Song Club.

“Underlying all of this, Heath is going to create a panel that shows all of the collections that were used in the archives, in the Con library, that pulls us all together,” Grossi said. “That’s kind of telling especially students to say, ‘Look at all of this great material we have in our libraries that you can learn more about folk music or any other subject’.

While combing through the archives’ rich corpus, Grossi and Patten found that a fourth figure unites the exhibition’s three respective musicians. Mississippi John Hurt, an American blues singer and guitarist, makes a distinctive appearance across three disparate mediums which came to define the three figures’ professional lives. While working of Hickerson’s jobs was to record folk music, and one of the first musicians he recorded was Hurt. In Seeger’s late television program Rainbow Quest, which ran for 39 episodes, Hurt comes on to play a handful of blues songs and is introduced by Seeger as a “generous-hearted soul.” Freeman, who was known for housing and photographing ‘seminal musicians of the 1960s folk music revival’, according to text in the exhibiton’s Archive wing, spent time with and photographed Hurt as well. Grossi and Patten added that a photo depicting the recording session between Hurt and Hickerson will soon be featured in the exhibition. To witness the visual magic of local and historical confluence and learn more about Oberlin’s folk music history, Oberlin students and community members can visit any one of the exhibition’s three branches before they close June 16.

ACROSS

1. Kate Bush debut studio album

10. Tractor trailer

11. Cicero or Seneca

12. Athletic wear brand __lemon

15. Grain container

16. Fruit juice often paired with vodka (abbr.)

17. Yeast or baking soda in bread

21. Cartwheel with no hands

22. A necessary service that may cost over $1,000 (abbr.)

24. Garden guardian

26. Prepare milk for a latte

29. They may be guided by a compass

31. Sound made by 37-across

32. __ and flow

34. Gold bar

35. Amandla Stenberg’s breakout role

36. Hoppy beer style

37. Amphibious ExCo subject

39. Victorian-inspired Japanese fashion

43. Clue weapon not made of metal

45. 2017 thriller __ Blonde

46. More cruel

48. Bob-tailed animal in “Jingle Bells”

49. The Aegean, for one

50. Part shared by insects and radios

DOWN

1. Throat tissue often removed

2. Oberlin English program for world language speakers

3. “Flamingo” alternative trio

4. Meek Mill’s “__ Boss”

5. SF-based publisher of Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems

6. A texter’s agreement

7. Cook in shallow oil

8. Appalachian instrument favored by Joni Mitchell

9. Yoruba god of war and metal

13. Containers for ashes

14. A gamerʼs scapegoat

18. The Sims developer (abbr.)

19. Category of aquatic photosynthesizers

20. “No one” in Latin

23. Thin as spiders’ silk

25. Professional mediator

26. The end of a French fish

27. Feminist often featured on socks and candles

28. Type of bird closely related to chickadees

30. The Copper State

31. __ Believe It or Not!

33. __-lette

38. At the exact right moment

40. Archaeologist Croft

41. Japanese fighting dog

42. Religious utterance

43. A Flock of Seagulls’ “I __ (So Far Away)”

44. They may be square in round holes

Answers to last weeks crossword: