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I Hate The Capitalist System: Barbara Dane, working class woman
07.08.2013
10:36 am
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Founded by folk-blues singer and political activist Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber, Paredon Records intended to use protest music and records to promote left-wing political activism, Feminist empowerment, labor unions, Third World issues, the plight of Vietnam, communism and cause social change.

For fifteen years, between 1970 and 1985, Dane—a popular San Francisco-based performer who sang with both Louis Armstrong on TV and Bob Dylan in his coffeehouse days—and Silber released 50 albums produced with great care that often included lengthy booklets with essays by noted experts. Some of their records contained speeches by the likes of Fidel Castro, Black Panther Huey Newton and Puerto Rican independence movement leader Albizu Campos.

In 1991, Dane and Silber donated the Paredon Records archive to the Smithsonian Institution. Some of the fiercest political music Barbara Dane herself recorded can be heard on her 1973 album I Hate the Capitalist System. Here’s the title track:
 

 

 
The lady don’t mince words and she refused to sell out. If Dane wanted a career at the top of the hit parade, with a voice like hers, she could have had it, but instead she chose to sing at union rallies and raised her voice for causes that were meaningful to her. Barbara Dane’s still going strong at 86. Here she is below with Louis Armstrong on CBS’s Timex All-Star Jazz Show hosted by Jackie Gleason on January 7, 1959
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.08.2013
10:36 am
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