Saturday, February 25, 2023 | 3 - 4:30pm
398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free!
San Francisco Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus and Freedom Songs Revival converge for a joint concert that shares the tradition of song in working class culture and surveys their local living canon of labor songs plus a program of civil rights music.
Coming together in song is a primal act of solidarity. For those who work and organize workers, songs are powerful units of cultural transmission and tools for building labor movements. Whether from the folkways or on the picket lines, labor songs not only are integral parts of the working class culture that sustained robust union activity in the 19th & 20th centuries but also tell the history of that culture and usher it into the present.
Tenderloin Museum welcomes the Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus and Freedom Songs Revival for a joint concert in celebration of Education for Action: California Labor School 1942-1957, TLM’s collaborative special exhibit with the Labor Archives at SFSU. Both of these labor choruses have deep roots in the Bay Area’s contemporary community of labor activists (as well as abundant overlap between their members & activities), and are uniquely suited to perform in an homage, continuation, and extension of the choral and labor song traditions practiced by CLS. The Tenderloin’s radical union-founded worker’s school sported a “People’s Songs” branch, a Jewish chorus, and many other groups and performances through which music intersected with labor culture.
The San Francisco Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus is made up of workers from many unions, as well as students and independent folks who love to sing. For this event, they will share a musical celebration of heroic men and women with stories and songs honoring legends of human rights, freedom and justice struggles. The Chorus is dedicated to building more democracy and representation within our unions and we come together to celebrate our love of music and workers’ culture. Under the direction of musician and labor organizer Pat Wynne, the group borrows from many musical traditions such as South African and Gospel; traditional and newly composed labor songs; songs in Yiddish, Latin, Spanish and Xshosha; and parodies of popular songs created in the Joe Hill tradition. Pat Wynne’s musical mission is to create a new canon of labor music that better reflects the diversity of our working population.
Freedom Songs Revival will present a program of civil rights music as a tribute for Black History Month, featuring members of Freedom Song Network, a group that affirms through songs and music the right of all peoples, at home and abroad, to establish more free, just, and equal societies and live in peace. For over 30 years, Freedom Songs Network have sung on picket lines for workers’ rights, in SROs, BART stations, prisons, and in places where their voices can support and amplify the struggle for justice and freedom. This particular activation of the network is organized by singer, songwriter, activist, and longtime organizer of the Western Workers Labor Heritage Festival Jimmy Kelly.
Join us for a Saturday afternoon concert in celebration of the legacy of the California Labor School and in tribute to Black History Month. Free. 3pm - 4:30pm. The special exhibit Education for Action and this related programming is made possible thanks to grants from California Humanities and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.