[ti:Bess Lomax Hawes, 88, Brought Folk Music to a Wider Public] [ar:Steve Ember] [al:Education Report] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English [00:02.91]Education Report. [00:04.90]Bess Lomax Hawes [00:07.06]was an American folk musician, [00:09.50]singer and teacher [00:11.12]who died last month [00:13.01]at the age of eighty-eight. [00:14.92]She came from a family [00:16.90]of music historians. [00:19.04]She helped her father and brother, [00:21.81]John and Alan Lomax, [00:24.22]collect folk music. [00:26.04]John Lomax developed [00:28.30]an Archive of American Folk Song [00:31.22]at the Library of Congress. [00:33.52]In the nineteen forties, [00:35.97]after college, Bess Lomax [00:38.30]joined the Almanac Singers, [00:40.56]a group that sang social protest songs. [00:44.02]Other members included Woody Guthrie, [00:47.69]Pete Seeger and "Butch" Hawes, [00:50.70]who became her husband. [00:52.08]The family later moved to California, [00:55.61]where Bess taught music, [00:57.69]including guitar and banjo. [01:00.29]She also became an anthropology professor [01:04.11]at what is now California [01:06.20]State University, Northridge. [01:08.95]In the nineteen seventies, [01:11.20]she worked at the Smithsonian [01:13.49] Institution in Washington. [01:16.01]Later, she directed [01:17.85]the folk arts program [01:19.77]at the National Endowment for the Arts. [01:23.14]She received the National Medal of Arts [01:26.92]from President Bill Clinton [01:29.05]in nineteen ninety-three. [01:31.05]Daniel Sheehy is acting [01:34.31]head of the Center for Folklife [01:36.80]and Cultural Heritage [01:38.71]at the Smithsonian. [01:40.54]He worked with her and remembers [01:43.00]how she worked to keep [01:44.73]folk traditions from being lost. [01:47.80]DANIEL SHEEHY: "Finding ways [01:48.71]to help those voices, those songs, [01:51.64]those stories, those craft traditions [01:54.45]make it into the lives [01:57.12]of a much broader public." [01:59.37]Bess Lomax Hawes may be [02:01.15]best remembered for a song [02:02.90]from nineteen forty-nine. [02:05.06]She and Jacqueline Steiner [02:08.07]took old music and wrote new words [02:11.35]in support of a Progressive Party [02:13.99]candidate for mayor of Boston, Massachusetts. [02:17.74]One of Walter O'Brien's promises was [02:21.64]to fight a fare increase [02:23.68]on the transit system [02:25.49]then known as the M.T.A. [02:28.55]The song is about Charlie, [02:31.03]a man who does not have enough money [02:33.65]to leave the train, [02:35.57]so he has to ride forever. [02:38.08]Here are Bess Lomax, [02:40.17]Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger: [02:42.62](MUSIC) [03:11.06]The candidate lost. [03:12.19]But the "M.T.A." song later [03:14.30]became a huge hit [03:15.99]with a version by the Kingston Trio. [03:18.70](MUSIC) [03:32.40]And that's the VOA Special English [03:34.90]Education Report, [03:36.53]written by Nancy Steinbach. [03:38.38]I'm Steve Ember.