Larry Long recording a song collectively written with residents from the 9th Ward of New Orleans through his Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song program in partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Author Studs Terkel called Long “a true American Troubadour.” 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.”
“Out of muteness, silence, and pain there comes a song. It rises from the earth, the exploitation, work, and sorrow of the people. It rises from struggle kept alive in our wonderful multiplicity and sounds the tenderness of our solidarity. Bird song, people’s songs, from struggle and death, from the lost and gone and mute, out of the corpse of our death we sing.
Then our joyous singer like Larry Long begins to come where we are working, where we are living, and listens, repeats like a mockingbird, or notes of nightingales or meadowlarks, makes songs out of the first and last breath. He sings where we are, about what is happening. He takes the real sound, the real words and gives us back our songs and we hear what singers we all are and how beautiful, and how strong.” —Meridel Le Sueur, American Author & Poet
