This land is your land (on the centenary of a legend)

Voice of the wretched of the Earth

Better later than never but this post should have been published around the time of Woody Guthrie's centenary on 14 July. He may not be an instantly recognisable figure for most young readers yet his influence amongst those songwriters who went to achieve worldwide success and fame from the sixties onwards (Dylan, anyone?) remains huge.
Born in Oklahoma at the beginning of the century, he witnessed first-hand the harshness that migrant workers from the Dust Bowl had to endure on their way to a better life.Very appropriately, he was known as the 'Dust Bowl Troubadour'; he could have been a character of one of Steinbeck's novels, albeit one with a determination to fight his and other fellow migrants' destiny.His best known  song- 'This Land is Your Land' -belongs to the North American's cultural heritage, and it's still sung in most American schools nowadays.Likewise, it could be the soundtrack to 'The Grapes of Wrath'; I can almost picture the desolated and helpless faces of Tom Joad & Co. whenever I listen to this song.
 Woody Guthrie,with  his guitar famously displaying the slogan 'This machine kills fascists' is undoubtedly a   key figure in the US folk movement, and particularly within the so-called protest song tradition and went to inspire many other musicians.Together with Peter Seeger and Johnny Cash, he is an icon, a legend and a major figure in the finest songwriters tradition.
For those wishing to dig further, I highly recommend the recordings of his songs covered by British artist Billy Bragg and the American band Wilco back in 1998 in the delightful album 'Mermaid Avenue'.Pure fire! Better still, you can find the great man's music available on the internet and judge for yourself.