The Cultural Cold War: Folk Music and Communism w/ Carsie Blanton

In this episode, we're joined by Carsie Blanton for a conversation on communist folk music and the role of politics in art. Carsie Blanton is a songwriter, touring musician, and organizer with Artists Against Apartheid and People's Songs—an organization of musicians dedicated to adapting, distributing, and performing songs for liberation.

The conversation begins with Carsie giving us a sense of her experience as a Jewish, anti-Zionist musician after Oct 7th and how the repressive atmosphere and her experience on the Global Sumud Flotilla shaped the way she thinks about art and political discourse. She tells us how this experience led her to (re)launch an organization from the 1940s named People's Songs dedicated to adapting, distributing, and performing songs for liberation.

We discuss the ways that communist musicians organized historically and what the response from the FBI and repressive apparatus was to this organizing. We talk about the Congress for Cultural Freedom, for example, and other soft power approaches by the CIA to promote a noncommunist, compatible left in the sphere of art, music, and culture more broadly.

We discuss the repression that musicians faced, from Paul Robeson to Malvina Reynolds, and how the explicitly left, communist politics presentin folk music shifted and dissipated during neolberalism. We end by discussing the challenges facing musicians today in the context of the new Red Scare, how Carsie has navigated this, and how musicians and artists can get involved in organizing.

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Further resources:

• Carsie Blanton's webiste
• Support Carsie on Patreon!
• People's Songs
• Artists Against Apartheid
• Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)
• Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, by Francis Stonor Saunders
• The Folk Singers and the Bureau The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956, by Aaron Leonard
• Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, Gabriel Rockhill (Monthly Review Press)
• All Power Books
• Radical artists to explore: Bambu, Robeson Singers, the Neighborhood Kids, Billy Bragg, The Burning Hell, Devon Sproule, Linqua Franqa, Tuneyards, Nathan Evans Fox
• Della's Playlist

Related episodes:

• Palestine Ep. 15: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla w/ Chris Smalls & Huwaida Arraf
• Cuba Ep. 9: Conjuring up the Red Menace w/ Charisse Burden-Stelly
• The Intellectural World War w/ Gabriel Rockhill
• The Western Left w/ Gabriel Rockhill
• US Labor & Imperialism Pt. 1: the War Against Communism w/ Jeff Schuhrke
• Black Scare / Red Scare with Charisse Burden-Stelly
• Marxism for the Masses w/ Savannah from All Power Books
• Voting for Socialism w/ Claudia De La Cruz & Karina Garcia

Intermission music: "FBI" performed live by Carsie Blanton

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