Opinion: Change, Austin and why Guthrie's words still resonate

If you have lived in Austin long enough, you may wonder whether the old weird Austin ever existed and, if it did, where it went and what we were doing as it was going. You, like me, suffer from nostalgia, a word commonly used now to refer dismissively to a senseless longing for good old days that are remembered as being much better than they were.

This is unfortunate. In ancient Greek, the two components of the word are soul-raking and gut-punching. The word ‘nostos’ meant a return home, something the ancient Greeks understood viscerally given that resource-scarce Greek families generation after generation sent their sons off to settle in distant lands. Like my own grandparents, they understood the pain of being separated from loved ones most likely forever.

Longing for ‘nostos’ brought ‘algos’ or deep pain. Nostalgia can be real. Some bygone days were better. Some had a spirit inspired by special human beings who dedicated their own lives to making lives better for the many who did not share in the American dream of the few.

Austin is now a big city with extreme wealth, luxury high-rises and specialty services generating lots and lots of money for the few with little thought for the quality of life of those who hold down regular jobs. We may wonder who the common man, to use a gender-marked old-timey phrase, is any more, or where the common men and women and children of Austin are, and who, if anybody, speaks for them.

In days gone by, change meant something positive for ordinary people. Workers formed unions and social activists organized courageous resistance to Jim Crow laws. Both groups were met with extreme violence. Depression-era federal government programs provided work for the unemployed and improved our country’s infrastructure. Intellectuals and creative artists persisted despite persecution for their un-American activities. And women collectively refused to be kept in their place as did members of the now vibrant LGBT community.

Throughout these perilous times one inspirational voice sang out and encouraged others. The voice of Woody Guthrie told common men and women that this land is your land, too. Woody didn't learn about Americans who were poor, downtrodden, uprooted and desperately needy in photos or newspapers or books. He lived among them. He saw them. He listened to them. He went through what they went through. Then he sang from his soul for them, to them and of them.

As passionate young folksinger Phil Ochs wrote in 1962: “One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies.” And as Guthrie himself wrote in 1945: “The Big Boys don’t want to hear our history of blood, sweat, work, and tears, of slums, bad houses, diseases, big blisters or big callouses, nor about our fight to have unions and free speech and a family of nations.”

On Thursday you will have a chance to celebrate with Austin musicians at the Cactus Cafe on the University of Texas campus the thoughts, images and spirit of Guthrie. All money from the event (http://www.guitarsforswaziland.org) goes directly to Guitars for Swaziland (Eswatini) and will put instruments of freedom in the hands of needy, talented young people in southern Africa.

It is no wonder that Steve Earle wrote and sang sincerely two decades ago: “So come back Woody Guthrie / Come back to us now / Tear your eyes from paradise / And rise again somehow /If you run into Jesus / Maybe he can help you out / Come back Woody Guthrie to us now.”

Woody Guthrie will not be coming back. But his words live on, as does “his deep and unshakable conviction that [we] can change things—drastically—for the better once [we] decide to do so.”

Palaima is the Armstrong Centennial Professor of Classics at the University of Texas.