Photograph by Robin Carson.
Courtesy of Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc.
The Woody & Marjorie Guthrie family has partnered with The Morgan Library & Museum to celebrate the enduring legacy of Woody Guthrie in a new exhibit “Woody Guthrie: People Are The Song” open Feb. 18 through May 22, in NYC. This upcoming exhibition tells the story of this great American troubadour and writer through an extraordinary selection of instruments, manuscripts, objects, photographs, books, art, and audiovisual media, assembled from the preeminent Guthrie holdings of the Woody Guthrie Archive.
Woody Guthrie was born on July 14th, 1912 in Okemah, Oklahoma. Over the decades, his songs have run around the world like a fast train on a well-oiled track. They’ve become the folk song standards of the nation, known and performed in many languages throughout the world. He wrote over 3,000 songs in his lifetime and his most well-known song, “This Land Is Your Land” is just one in the hundreds of songs by Woody that have become staples in the canon of American music. Woody Guthrie is recognized for his monumental contributions and achievements in American culture. For more information on his life and legacy, visit here.
Guthrie was married to Marjorie Mazia, a dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company for 15 years. Marjorie performed in the 1944 premier of “Appalachian Spring” featuring a score composed by Aaron Copeland inspired by the Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts”. This first introduction of roots music to modern dance inspired a follow-up collaboration by another Graham dancer Sophie Maslow, who used Guthrie’s live performance of his Dust Bowl Ballads in a dance piece titled “Folksay”. Another connective thread in the evening is Martha Graham Dance Company member, May O’Donnell who danced in the Graham company with Marjorie and Sophie. O’Donnell is known for creating and pioneering the May O’Donnell Technique, a codified dance technique that SNSD has adopted for its Master Class program for decades.
