Here's a Woody Guthrie song. I've been quite disturbed and angry about the entire subprime, mortgage, credit card debt thing for a while now. Learning of each new way that corporations, lenders, mortgage companies, and banks all raked in fat profits through loans, issuing unwarranted credit, and miscellaneous "financial products" to individuals who are now losing their homes and lives, and seeing how big corporations get bailed out when they get into trouble gets me frustrated. Of course, I'm tied into the whole capitalist economy as well out of necessity (I've got a bank account and a credit card) and that makes me feel pretty helpless.
So, I've turned to a Woody Guthrie song that he wrote during the Great Depression: "I Ain't Got No Home". I know that the "consumer" (i.e. us) bears a lot of responsibility in all this. But consumer culture is also the result of an intricately choreographed capitalist system where corporations make lots of money too.
This first clip is (one verse of) the gospel song that Guthrie based his song on. I sing the version that I remember from the old red book that we used to use in youth group (I believe it was called "Like a Melody II").
Here's Woody's song. I've put in two verses of my own to offer a point of view on the contemporary situation.
I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,
A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;
Rich man took my home and drove me from my door
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor;
My crops I lay into the banker's store.
My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been working, mister, since the day I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world anymore
[Here are my 'new' verses]
Each day I read the news, it's always on my mind,
"Foreclosure", it makes for really great headlines,
People losing lives because of mortgage fraud
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
They say there's a credit crunch coming round the bend,
They say "Blame the consumer, he was spending with no end."
But who was profiting from interest rates galore?
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore
[Back to Woody ...]
Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
2 comments:
Very relevant new verses, and they fit quite neatly into the original song.
Property market collapse, sky high energy, food and gas prices, its no wonder that people are sinking into huge debts with no easy way out. People are turning to their credit cards to make ends meet which escalates their problems further. Many people are going to suffer great hardship before this financial storm has blown over. It frustrates me the most that we all are paying more to fuel our cars and yet the Oil companies are making record profits.
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