The People’s Lullaby

Every Saturday from 4 to 6 pm, listeners can tune into WKCR’s Hobo’s Lullaby, a show centering on the folk revival of the 60s and 70s alongside its contemporary counterparts. Though I had been a habitual listener of the show since my first year at the station, I had never had the opportunity to program it myself. So, when I heard of a lastminute opening on February 1st, 2025, I seized the chance and got to curating my playlist.

After the titular “Hobo’s Lullaby,” as performed by Pete Seeger, I dove into the misty “Chimacum Rain” by Linda Perhacs and the intimate and complex writings of Buck Meek. I was around five songs deep into Nick Drake’s catalog when the phone lit up. I always found it a little nerve-racking to converse with listeners—maybe I was taking too many liberties with my program, or had hit the wrong button and everyone was listening to dead air. Nevertheless, I answered the call and was pleasantly greeted by Don (1), a longtime listener of the station and the show.

My conversation with Burt was filled to the brim with humanity as we began reflecting on the revolutionary roles taken up by folk artists and the staying power of protest music. He had originally called to put in a request for “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” written by Woody Guthrie in 1948. Guthrie wrote “Deportee” as a poem, following the 1948 crash at Los Gatos, CA of a DC-3 plane carrying 32 passengers, none of whom survived. Most of these passengers were Mexican farm laborers who were being flown to a deportation center in El Centro, CA. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the victims were largely unnamed, referred to only as “deportees” in headlines, until their names were finally honored at their place of rest in 2013, more than 60 years after the tragedy. (2) This poem was then put to music and melody by Martin Hoffman and popularized by an array of artists, including Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Odetta, and Pete Seeger.

I was struck by how utterly tangible the song felt almost ninety years after its composition, especially in the following weeks after I played it on the show. On February 18th, 2025, the official White House Instagram account posted a video with the caption “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” (3) This 30-second video was a montage of the sights and sounds that people would be subjected to while being forcibly taken from their homes. Apparently, the clinking of metal chains and handcuffs warranted a disturbing audiovisual attempt at turning deportation into a tasteless marketing scheme. Seeing that video took me back to my earnest conversation with Don, and to reflecting on the necessity of protest music like “Deportee.”

Folk music, and specifically protest music, is rooted in the people and the sounds of unrest. Today, it may reverberate through our new phones and streaming platforms, but its place in history persists among the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-War protests, and the pursuit of liberation. We continue to engage with these songs and, at times, they seem to take the words right out of our mouths.

While it boasts iterations unique to various cultures, such as the nueva canción movement in 70s Latin America, protest music is a genre that poses a united front on a global scale. Under the military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, songs on the revolutionary album Bangon! (Arise!): Songs of the Philippine National Democratic Struggle were cautiously circulated in the decade following the declaration of martial law in 1972. (4) The apartheid struggle in South Africa reintroduced traditional hymns such as “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (“God Bless Africa”), a song written in Xhosa by Enoch Sontonga in 1897 that acted as one of the musical pillars of the movement, becoming the country’s national anthem in 1997. (5) In 2019, citizens of Hong Kong congregated in Science Park to collectively sing the now-banned “Glory to Hong Kong” during anti-extradition protests. (6) And just last year on the lawns behind the WKCR station, students protested Columbia University’s complacency in the genocide of Palestinians as they sang the words, “Where you go I will go, my friend/ Where you go I will go.”(7)

Guthrie wrote his poem in ‘48, and the words ring just as clearly now as they did then. I feel a sense of gratitude for the fact that songs like “Deportee” have been preserved, but also a deep disappointment in the cyclicality of these struggles. But that is exactly why we need these sonic archives from various social movements, in the hopes that having them in our reach will bolster the voices both in our immediate communities and halfway around the world. The origins of folk and protest music do not exist in a vacuum or within a certain time frame—they have an inextricable tie to people, their beliefs, and a sense of humanity that stretches beyond the self.

Notes

1. Name changed to preserve anonymity.

2. Chris Mahin, “Jan. 28, 1948: Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,” Zinn Education Project, January 28, 2023, https://www. zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/plane-wreck-at-los-gatos/.

3. “The White House on Instagram: ‘#ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight,’” Instagram, accessed February 18, 2025, https://www.instagram.com/ reel/DGOclSlxOev/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_ link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA.

4. Folkways, “Catalog,” Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, accessed February 25, 2025, https:// folkways.si.edu/philippines-bangon-arise/historicalsong-struggle-protest-world/music/album/smithsonian. 5. Ibid.

6. Robyn Dixon and Marcus Yam, “‘Glory to Hong Kong’: A New Protest Anthem Moves Singers to Tears,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2019, https://www.latimes. com/world-nation/story/2019-09-13/glory-to-hong-konga-new-protest-anthem-moves-singers-to-tears.

7. WKCR-FM. "West Lawn Encampment Protest Concert" SoundCloud audio, April 28, 2024. https:// soundcloud.com/wkcr/west-lawn-encampment-protest-concert?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing.