Like his artistic forefathers Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie before him, Long’s sense of place and time is eloquently captured in his music and in the powerful community building he’s done with elders and children all over the country and abroad. When Pete Seeger was told that Larry is often referred to as the Pete Seeger of Minnesota, Pete replied, “I would be honored to be called the Larry Long of New York.”
Larry Long, called “a true American Troubadour” by author Studs Terkel, has made his life work the celebration of American stories. In a curriculum called Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song, he has brought these heroes and sheroes into the classroom to share their oral history with our younger generation. The children then go on to create songs and lyrical work that celebrate the history and triumphs of their own communities and learn in the process to honor the struggles of different cultures.
Larry Long’s hundreds of ballads readily capture the American history of our time, while embracing our common humanity with stories about those history makers who are known and those who are unknown. He has worked in urban communities combining Latin, Somalian, African-American, and Scandinavian students. He has worked in southern rural communities combining black, white, Native American and Latin stories. In the mid-1980’s he assembled the first hometown tribute to Woody Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma, which today has evolved into a large, free festival with an array of established and upcoming artists. Throughout the nation, his work has sought to celebrate our diversity and joint community.
Larry has sung at major concerts and festivals throughout the United States and world, including Awesome Africa Festival (South Africa), Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall (Washington DC), Winnipeg Folk Festival (Canada), Hollywood Bowl with Kris Kristofferson, and at Madison Square Garden with Joan Baez and many others for Pete Seeger’s 90th Birthday Celebration. The demand for Long’s work sparked the creation of a non-profit organization, Community Celebration of Place. Community Celebration of Place works with communities to use music, performance, art and oral history to bring together children and elders, and people of different backgrounds — economic, faith, racial, and cultural — to honor and celebrate our commonalties and differences.
