About a month ago, my husband Rich and I decided to journey to Bangor to attend the musical Woody Guthrie’s American Song at the Penobscot Theatre Company. We wanted to see our friend John Burstein’s performance (it was brilliant) and we were both curious to revisit songs we had known since we were kids. Songs we sung by the campfire; songs we sung as politically involved teenagers; songs whose words and melodies still stick with us.

We were not disappointed. The evening was terrific, a musical celebration, a”dazzling, dizzying explosion of Guthrie’s genius” as one Boston reviewer said. Curious and wanting to know more I assigned my class a prompt based on Guthrie’s lyrics, inviting them to choose a lyric and write off it. Great fun.

Here’s the assignment. Check the lyrics to several of Guthrie’s songs.  Choose a line that grabs you and write off it. If you have a moment, listen to Guthrie to become aware of how he uses rhythm and tonality to communicate his feelings.

I asked Malcolm Brooks, the composer and lyricist who lives in Rockport, to reflect on Woody Guthrie. Here’s what he had to say: “I have always admired the melody of “This land is Your Land” I love how the words “this land is” climb up to a peak on “your land” Then the subsequent lines gradually shift downwards. The last line of the melody finally lands on the word “me” in “made for you and me.” I was surprised to find out that Woody Guthrie was not the melody’s composer. He had learned the melody from a song called “When the World’s on Fire” recorded by the Carter family in the 1930s, The Carters learned their version from Leslie Riddle, who learned it from Blind Willie Davis and no one seems to know where Blind Willie Davis found it, most likely in a Negro Spiritual. I ask myself why did Woody Guthrie lift a melody from another song? I think I found an answer in one of the verses to “This Land is Your Land.”

As I went walking I saw a sign there,

And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.” 

But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.

That side was made for you and me.

Maybe Guthrie felt that melodies, just like land, should not be posted as private property. Maybe he thought that melodies were for all to share…Musical ideas, just like land, belong to you and me.”

Nobody living can ever stop me, 

As I go walking that freedom highway; 

Nobody living can ever make me turn back 

This land was made for you and me.

What a wonderful way to think in these troubled times!