TOM

By FRED WILSON

Well I’ve driven a cat

And a front end load

I’ve worked in a warehouse

And built a road

I’ve climbed up high

And I’ve dug down low

You’ll find me working

Wherever you go

Wheeling round, wheeling round
Wheeling round,till the sun goes
down.

Wheelbarrowing around that is,
and Tom Hawken has done his
share of that in his 30 years to
cushion the hard knocks of a
struggling musical career that has
earned him little money, but the
undisputed recognition of being the
minstrel of B.C.’s labor movement.

Tom wrote those lines after a
stint as an apprentice carpenter,
but it was destined to be shortlived
as have all his departures from
music. For as a_ professional
musician, music is a way of life for
Tom Hawken in the real sense. It
has been his livelihood, and as
important for him, it is his con-
tribution to the labor movement.

The magnitude of that con-
tribution can not be —under-
estimated. Since the day that Kay
Rankin took her children’s choir —
among the members, 12-year-old
Tom —to a Pete Seeger concert, he
has been singing and writing for
the labor movement. His voice has
become almost synonymous with
May Day rallies, election rallies,
demonstrations and social events.

Perhaps the most remarkable
aspect of the man is the basic
loyalty he has to his music and his
class that has allowed him to
persevere through the ups and
downs of a period which has seen
many an artist come and go.

When asked how it is possible for
a working class musician to earn a
living, his answer is blunt — ‘Most
don’t.” But he has,- mostly by
playing pizza parlors and dinner
spots providing entertainment for
what are often unresponsive ears.

“Tt’s virtually impossible to earn
a living and maintain a class
identity,’’ he says. ‘‘The problem is
to keep a balance between making
money and your own expression.
For the most part you end up
censoring yourself for the sake of a
job.”

Songs like ‘‘Beautiful Havana,”
“Wheeling Round,” “Everything
For Sale,’ “The Fraser River
Song,’’ ‘“‘The Troubador” and
others that become standards for
labor song sessions are proof
enough of Tom’s ability to express
himself.

The problem has not been ability
but rather a cultural dark ages
over the past decade which began
in the twilight of the folk
renaissance in the early sixties. By
that time Tom was already making
his mark performing for coffee
house and university audiences. In
1961, together with Jim Thomas
and Steve Rankin he became part
of the Couriers, a folk trio that took
him to the Helsinki World Youth
Festival in 1962. Performing there,
after the Peking Opera, and being
“taken under the wing of the
cultural bureau in Cuba” while on
the trip back home, Tom notes as
two of the high points in his career.

Another high point, he recalls,
was back home, during the folk
boom of about 12 years ago. “I
played one night in_ the
Agrodome,” he recounted, “The
place was full, jampacked. It was
like amodern day rock concert, the
place to be. And I remember
singing ‘“‘We Shall Overcome” and

HAWKEN

having everybody sing with me. I
realized then just how powerful a
medium art is. I was bowled over
by the responsibilities of an artist,
how he can sway people when
public attention is on him.”

But those days, when folk music
was “‘in’’ have passed. So have.
most of the artists of that period.
Tom knows of some who are selling
insurance and others who picked
up an electric guitar and followed
the new trend. ‘‘Most were in it for
the fad,” he says, ‘‘They didn’t
realize the class character of folk
music.’’ Tom is one of the very few
who stuck with it because as he
puts it candidly, ‘‘chasing trends in
the arts is a trip.”

In his View, chasing trends has
been the history of pop culture over
the last 10 years, and has changed
little. “There is a mad scrape for a
new trend today, to exploit a new
market. Most of the type of rock
music that has been preying
mostly on young people has lost its
appeal. I think this explains the
move to the nostalgia of the 50’s. It
is an attempt to recreate the
graffiti of the rock era before the
psychedelic binge.”

Rock, he says, went off the rails
“when it started to say something
in the most didactic way, telling
everyone where it was at. They had
the most powerful equipment in the
world to talk to multitudes, but
they had nothing to say.”

Neither do today’s ‘‘folk
musicians,’’ those of the Bruce
Cockburn and Gordon Lightfoot
variety, hold much sway over
Tom. ‘‘I always find their attitude
to life analagous to that of a young
lord. They have their domain, and
their thing all together, they dress
well and ride around the country on
a silver steed. They fancy them-
selves gentlemen of leisure that
indulge in the arts.”

He zeroed in on Lightfoot’s song
“Don Quixote.”’ “It is romantic,
totally unrealizable. I hate it when

lk

—Richard Morgan photo

... his songs

people start identifying with that
kind of thing. There is an un-
derlying feeling that it could
happen to me. They don’t realize

the material base for that attitude.

It just sounds like fun.”

As for the other extreme, the
hard rock, sensuous, violent sound
of Alice Cooper, Tom snaps out
quickly, “It’s a case for censor-
ship. They should just be told to sit
down and shut up. It’s only in a
country and a society where
culture has been so perverted by

dollars that these people will even
get an audience.”

It’s not as if there is nothing
contemporary worth listening to,
Tom adds. He enjoys Stompin’
Tom Connors since “‘what he lacks

in style he makes up for in content”

and he says, “‘Iliked Jim Croce. He
was Canadian and I thought his
music was pretty human.”

There is also a certain reaction
to trends over the last decade. Jazz
and string quartets are making a

... and his views

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1974—Page 12

—Sean Griffin photo

comeback and Tom notes that he
himself is drawing a larger
audience these days.

But the development of 4
working class culture is a different
matter. That involves a political
development. ‘‘The working class
will have to take for itself songs
that are partisan to itself,” he
stressed. ‘‘Art and politics must be
married.”’

“You can. get utterly
propagandistic about that,” he
warned, “‘but sometimes you se §
just how much rests on a political
platform that you get to the point
where you would rather just spit it
out, say it right out loud. I suppose
that is my impatience.

“But it is just as valid for musi¢
and song to be involved wi
politics as it is accepted today for
music to be completely involv:
with love or someone’s love life:
There is nothing wrong with af
overt political song. It can be
tempered with love, or nonsense. It &

is the art. of doing it that counts. . :

“May There Always Be Sul
shine” is a very political song. The
fellow didn’t quote what chapter of
Marx it came from, but certainly
Marx and Lenin had something @
say about happy children.”

What does the future hold fot
progressive music? Tom insists,
“Pm not an oracle,” but he doe
see a few things in the cards.

“It can’t stay static,” he
remarked, ‘folk music will not
revive in its old way, inasmuch 4
there will be a new Pete Seeger
a new Weavers. There has beel
some water under the bridge.”

Tom thinks that African culture)
embodied in rock music, will hav@}
its effect on folk music develo?
ment. He says that rhythm is they”
basis of African music as oppos
to melody in the tradition®
European ballad. “‘Folk music
become more rhythmic,”
projects.

Most important though, is thé
number of people involved
shaping the new cultural
development. ‘There has to
more people,” he emphasize
“Sometimes you feel alone in
business. Like the voice of ¢
working people. I don’t want to be
the voice of the working peopl®
The voice of the working people T
should be like working people®
political action — orchestrated of
a mass scale.”

He has a clear perspective {0
the future of what needs to be don
but his own future is not quite §
clear. “I have no big plans,” ;
says, ‘‘other than to contribu!
what I can, the best I can.”

Time remembers

And time flows by

Time remembers a starving ©
Twenty-six days

In the middle of the year
Cuba standing

Without any fear.

ry

g

This verse from ‘Beautifl]
Havana” harkens back more tha”
10 years for Tom, to his inspiraly a
from seeing socialism at work. Lo) ny
all of his songs, before and sinc®
the poetic meaning in his words Ie
a timeless contribution to {
peoples. The social vision of ‘a
music is all the more powerf a r
the song of the future for his 0"

Canada.

But he rejects ambitions of pei
‘‘a great shooting star,” prefer? in
only to think “that I havé ist
reasonable glow of creative © 74
inside me. I’d like to write a “41
good songs before I shuffle off, a
perhaps do something of val}
Some days I actually think I
going to do it.”’

A
That is a modest assessmey

coming from a modest man.“ f
of hopes go with Tom Hawken i
conditions will ripen to allow “4
full expression of his talent.
be the richer for it.