The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-06-26
Workers Audience
APblauds Gold
Poem Set to Music
STRANGE FUNERAL IN
BRADDOCK"
Reviewed by
CARL SANDS

- OF Michael Colds well-known
poem was performed for the first
time at the Summer Music Festival
Of the Workers Music League on
June II, at Irving Plaza. It is the
first large composition by an Amer
lean musician, utilizing a goth CEN
tury musical idiom of the bour-
geois concert stage as the vehicle
for proletarian text, to be given
adequate rendition before a large
and critical audience.
The special task of the Workers
Music League is the development
of music as a weapon in the class
struggle. This means, primarily, the
encouragement of music among the
great masses of workers themselves.
But 1t means also the drawing of
more and more professional must
clans Of high standing into the
service Of the workers music move
ment. Technically, this is just as
big q Job as the revolutionary
movements in literature, painting,
ana Jtlb ln6dJT6,
What may be called the politicali-
cation of music has only just begun
in America. 1t has proved pos
sible to rouse to vigorous class con-
scious activity small number Of
musicians. But in comparatively
few of them has the revolutionary
viewpoint, method, purpose and ar
dour that has transformed their
lives in general, made the slightest
impression upon their musical taste.
thought or action. In few matters
has the hold of bourgeois educa-
ton proven stronger. And as in
the musical profession, so among the
people at large. So far as the music
lesson, the concert habit, the phono-
graph-disc and the radio has taken
hold, to that extent prevails the
musical taste Of the conservative
academic professor the musical
styles Of IS years ago.
RUT fortunately, the great mass
u of the workers have been COM
paratively shut off from such in
f1uences. That they are thoroughly
goth century in musical taste in
spite Of their lack of musical train
ing under capitalism is becoming
more and more apparent. Few more
dramatic instances Of the fact have
been exhibited in this city than in
the reception of the Siegmeister-
Gold Strange Funeral in Brad
dock"
The discussion, led by Gold him
self, showed clearly some Of the I'm
tellectuals" present still insisting
upon the horse-drawn plough of
10Th century romsnticism while the
"untutored" workers almost unani-
mously acclaim the tractor of goth
century modern music. More than
few of the latter volunteered the
information that the effect of the
words plus the music was infinitely
more powerful than that of the
words alone
One, metal worker, prophesied
that II a hall full of Pennsylvania
steel strikers could have heard it,
no misleader in the whole staff of
the A. p, Of L. would be able to
control them. Yet on the other
side of the question, man with
cultivated, even learned, voice COM
pared the music to the creations of
Gertrude Stein, saying that it was
not fit for revolutionary ears and
quoting Lenin in denunciation of
cubisrn and futurisn.
Siegmeister's music, however, is in
no sense cubist, futurist or even
experimental or extreme in any
way. 1t is in well accepted idiom,
as typical of Paris, London or New
York as 1t is of the Soviet Union,
today. We have our musical Stems
and experimenters, but Strange
Funeral" has practically nothing in
common with them. Certainly, it is
not mass song nor does it pretend
to be one. No amateur could make
much out of it. But it is easy to
listen to when sung as we'll as Nor
decai Baumann can sing it:
1t is craftsmanlike in the rebel
lious, destructive manner that has
been la mode for 20 years in
Europe and America mode re-
f1ecting in musical technique many
Of the contradictions of goth cen
tury capitalism but none the less
many Of the forward looking ten
denotes in the revolutionary move
ment,
THEORISTS and critics of music
must realize that we shall use
on the music front every means
we can lay our hands on. The mass
song must be in the simple current
idiom Of hundred years ago that
is familiar to the masses. But we
are not going to encourage this mu-
steal laissez-faire any longer than
is absolutely necessary. Already the
best mass songs begin to sound less
like melancholy folk-songs, dreary
hymn tunes, silly patriotic propa-
ganda and sentimental anaesthetics
from Broadway.