Woody Guthrie vs Alan Lomax: should a folk song be sung or saved?

WOODY GUTHRIE vs ALAN LOMAX go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.

WOODY GUTHRIE

A song lives on a picket line and a boxcar, Alan - the moment you pin it to a shelf, it stops breathing.

ALAN LOMAX

And the moment you don't record it, Woody, it dies with the last man who knew it - I saved a thousand voices you'd have let vanish.

WOODY GUTHRIE

You saved the corpse; I kept the fever - my guitar killed fascists, your machine just filed them.

ALAN LOMAX

Without my machine, Woody, nobody hears your fever tonight - I'm the reason your ghost still sings in a stadium.

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