Thanksgiving Folksong

A Thanksgiving folk song?

Thanksgiving is a National Holiday in the US. Therefore not a sectarian or religious one by definition, since separation of religion and state is enshrined in our Constitution. So it belongs to people of all religions and none. I learned at school that the first Thanksgiving of 1621 celebrated the survival of the Plymouth, Massachusetts colony founded in 1620 by English settlers seeking to escape religious persecution. The story goes that without the Native Americans- we used to call them Indians- who got them through the previous hard winter, taught them how to plant corn, grow pumpkins and shoot wild turkeys, they would not have survived. The first celebration was a meeting of these two cultures.

But that story is a myth.. Historians and Indian stories tell of the first Thanksgiving celebrating a massacre of 700 Pequot Indians by a settler raiding party. The myth that survives, born out of traditional harvest festivals, would be better if it were real.

I have searched for a folk song about Thanksgiving that expressed the spirit of different cultures looking after each other but found plenty of slushy religious sentiment and silliness. So I wrote one and recorded it yesterday, just in time for Thanksgiving. It reminds us that we do not live in a bubble or our own making. Enjoy, and if you like it pass it on.

Видео Thanksgiving Folksong канала Jack Warshaw