|
...with such a uniquely American, and liberal, sensibility. I especially liked the last part about sitting around together singing songs that that they all knew.
When I lived in the Bay Area -- East Bay, Berkeley and Albany -- for many years, I always tuned in to KPFA on Sundays if I was driving somewhere or there was a radio nearby. Every Sunday from 11am to 5pm they would play the most wonderful collection of American music -- Western swing, blues, bluegrass, and others -- each hour would feature a different variant of "American roots music". And I would always marvel that this stalwart, pacifist, very ultra radical leftist radio station would be playing the best collection you could ever hear of American roots music, and if you just played that program around the ultra right areas of the country you would be likely to find that music would be as beloved there as in the good old People's Republic of Berkeley.
Too bad we find so many ways to divide ourselves up, when there are such unifying forces like music. Personally, I love banjo music and bluegrass, even though my politics are far, far away from most people who listen to it. But there are human connections that transcend political issues, that is for sure.
Don't get me wrong. I'm as rabid as the next political junkie... :-) I try not to let it make me hate people, except in a theoretical way; I try to use the oft-quoted Christian slant of "hating the mistaken thought (sin), not the mistaken thinker (sinner)".
|