Biography
Guy Carawan harnessed music as an instrument for reshaping society. Serving as music director and song leader at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, he consistently fused his performing skills with advocacy for freedom and working-class progress. Throughout the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s, he and his wife Candie—who first arrived at the Highlander Center via an exchange program from Fisk University—joined sit-ins and demonstrations opposing racial bias.
At the 1960 founding convention of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Raleigh, North Carolina, Carawan presented the song “We Shall Overcome,” which Pete Seeger had taught him in 1952. Within weeks the number emerged as the unofficial anthem of the entire civil rights movement. Together with Candie, he wrote and edited three volumes documenting that struggle: Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, We Shall Overcome! Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement, and Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs.
Carawan’s ethnomusicological research into the traditions of the Sea Islands off South Carolina’s coast yielded both the book Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina—Their Faces, Their Words and Their Songs and the field-recording album Been in the Storm So Long: A Collection of Spirituals, Folk Tales and Children’s Games from John’s Island, South Carolina. The couple’s parallel work gathering songs in the coal-mining districts of Appalachia appeared in the volume Voices from the Mountains.
Drawn initially by genealogical curiosity, Carawan made his first visit to the Highlander Center in 1953. Although born in Los Angeles, he traced paternal roots to rural North Carolina and maternal ancestry to Charleston. In 1959 he requested permission from founder and director Miles Horton to base his study of Southern folk culture there; Horton agreed only if Carawan would also work at the center, so he accepted the role of music director and began deploying his extensive stock of topical songs to animate workshops.
Beyond his solo recordings and folklore collections, Carawan collaborated with his son Evan, a hammer dulcimer player, on the 1988 duo album Hammer Dulcimer Music and, with Candie added, on the family album Home Brew in 1991. In later years he developed dementia and died at his New Market home on May 2, 2015, at the age of 87.
At the 1960 founding convention of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in Raleigh, North Carolina, Carawan presented the song “We Shall Overcome,” which Pete Seeger had taught him in 1952. Within weeks the number emerged as the unofficial anthem of the entire civil rights movement. Together with Candie, he wrote and edited three volumes documenting that struggle: Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, We Shall Overcome! Songs of the Southern Freedom Movement, and Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs.
Carawan’s ethnomusicological research into the traditions of the Sea Islands off South Carolina’s coast yielded both the book Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina—Their Faces, Their Words and Their Songs and the field-recording album Been in the Storm So Long: A Collection of Spirituals, Folk Tales and Children’s Games from John’s Island, South Carolina. The couple’s parallel work gathering songs in the coal-mining districts of Appalachia appeared in the volume Voices from the Mountains.
Drawn initially by genealogical curiosity, Carawan made his first visit to the Highlander Center in 1953. Although born in Los Angeles, he traced paternal roots to rural North Carolina and maternal ancestry to Charleston. In 1959 he requested permission from founder and director Miles Horton to base his study of Southern folk culture there; Horton agreed only if Carawan would also work at the center, so he accepted the role of music director and began deploying his extensive stock of topical songs to animate workshops.
Beyond his solo recordings and folklore collections, Carawan collaborated with his son Evan, a hammer dulcimer player, on the 1988 duo album Hammer Dulcimer Music and, with Candie added, on the family album Home Brew in 1991. In later years he developed dementia and died at his New Market home on May 2, 2015, at the age of 87.
Albums
