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Richard Gehr | June 20, 2007

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Young Peter Seeger answers the question, "What's that funny-looking guitar you're playing?" and provides the voice of American roots music in To Hear Your Banjo Play. This 1947 documentary was written by folklorist-musicologist Alan Lomax, directed by Irving Lerner and Willard Van Dyke, and can be viewed on the Internet Archives. It's a fine and gritty document of Southern folk music's then-living traditions, and it doesn't flinch from acknowledging the impoverished conditions from which they sprang. Woodie Guthrie and Brownie McGee also pop up during its concise sixteen minutes. [via Rummage Through the Crevices]

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