ABSTRACT
The American left’s involvement with folk music dates back at least to the ıgıos and the organizing efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW. Such IWW songwriters as Joe Hill and T-Bone Slim put new, socially conscious lyrics to familiar tunes, and the union’s legendary Little Red Song-book set a pattern that remained long after the IWW itself had ceased to be a major factor in American labor politics. In the 1930s, folk music came to the fore again with the Popular Front. The Depression had united working-class Americans as never before, and the Communist Party had formed common cause with socialist groups and with the left wing of the Democratic Party in an attempt to create one solid American left.
