Union & Labour Songs
One of the reasons it’s taken me so long to get through the first two books of Dos Passos’ U.S.A. Trilogy is because each is highly allusive. It braids a variety of forms into the text such as headlines, fragmented news articles, autobiographical stream-of-consciousness sketches, and several narratives ‘proper’. Still, one more textualized medium is the song, and verses and choruses often intersperse the aforementioned sections. I googled the lyrics of one (“Hold the fort for we are coming / Union men be strong . . .”) and came across these:
http://www.laborarts.org/exhibits/laborsings/song.cfm?id=4
http://unionsong.com/u511.html
What is the status on this area of research? These are two databases that seem like great resources for this project. The former also has a lot of digitized print and photo material. Since we’re not getting anyone new from this area to the team, I am curious as to how this music genre will be approached. Nineteen Nineteen also brought Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom) to my attention–he was an artist, Wobbly activist, and songwriter who was executed, implicitly for his political ideas–and this whole area seems ripe for the researching.
Just looking for thoughts on this.
proleartsblog 
I’ve not run across these databases before – thanks for the resource!
Joe Hill is one of the big names (he’s on our list, I think), but I do have a few more people/songs/styles to add, from the list suggested by our prospective music candidate.
Although we don’t have a specific music person (other than Brianna’s contributions on opera and performance), any one of us can take a stab at it. This might also be a place for community contributions, now or later. Pointing to the resources (and including them in our own Online Resource Centre) is a start – any other ideas on where we can take it?