For decades, Barbara Dane lent her stellar singing voice to social-justice movements in the Bay Area and beyond, garneri | dG1fWXA3cDRNWWlIU0U
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [music]
00:03 Now please welcome, Barbara Dan.
00:05 [applause]
00:15 One, two, three, four.
00:18 It's so nice, it could be illegal
00:21 Meeting you once more
00:24 Feeling so good, could be against the law
00:28 I was carrying a guitar around and singing
00:32 everything I could get my hands on.
00:34 I always had a very open-minded approach to music.
00:38 She's as much of a blues and a folk artist
00:41 as she is a jazz artist.
00:42 She could sing anything, and she sings it
00:44 with passion and authenticity and originality.
00:47 She was hot and cool at the same time.
00:50 On the dry land, chasing heat
00:52 It'll never make any change in me
00:55 I've got that old-fashioned love in my heart
01:00 This is something that's unique to Barbara.
01:02 I can't think of anybody else who's recording
01:04 for Folkways and Capitol, you know,
01:07 the label of Woody Guthrie and of Frank Sinatra.
01:10 I'm gonna walk, talk, go to the Prince of Peace
01:15 Down by the river, Siphonia
01:20 They told me I couldn't make a record with Jimmy Witherspoon
01:23 because it was impossible to put a black man
01:25 and a white woman on an album.
01:27 Isn't that ridiculous?
01:28 So I just went ahead and put my face up.
01:30 There were four guys.
01:32 And to hell with all that.
01:34 We broke all the rules.
01:35 Broke all the rules, broke all the rules.
01:37 That's why.
01:38 They make rules for us to break them.
01:41 I'm a troublemaker.
01:43 I made them a lot of trouble.
01:44 These people went to a lot of trouble.
01:47 I mean...
01:49 (speaking Spanish)
01:58 She was the first important American artist
02:02 who came to Cuba, I think, after the Revolution.
02:05 Everybody knew her name.
02:07 We won't go and we just ain't gonna go
02:11 You know, I raised three kids while I was doing all this
02:17 singing and running around the world.
02:20 If you have ethics and you don't want to sell your music,
02:28 but still you have to make a living,
02:30 it's kind of a tightrope walk.
02:33 Oh, freedom
02:36 Oh, freedom
02:40 Oh, freedom
02:43 Cover me, cover me
02:47 She was an artist, and she had a commitment
02:51 to justice and freedom and the movement,
02:54 and she turned all her art to that end.
02:57 Ain't gonna let no lying politician
03:00 Turn me around, turn me around
03:03 Oh, turn me around
03:05 Ain't gonna let no lying politician
03:08 Turn me around
03:10 Keep on walking, marching out the freedom
03:14 (laughing)