VOA慢速英语2009年-Education Report - Bess Lomax Hawes, 8

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Bess Lomax Hawes was an American folk musician, singer and teacher who died last month at the age of eighty-eight.

She came from a family of music historians. She helped her father and brother, John and Alan Lomax, collect folk music. John Lomax developed an Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress.

Bess Lomax Hawes

In the nineteen forties, after college, Bess Lomax joined the Almanac Singers, a group that sang social protest songs. Other members included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and "Butch" Hawes, who became her husband.

The family later moved to California, where Bess taught music, including guitar and banjo. She also became an anthropology¹ professor at what is now California State University, Northridge.

In the nineteen seventies, she worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Later, she directed the folk arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts. She received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in nineteen ninety-three.

Daniel Sheehy is acting² head of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian. He worked with her and remembers how she worked to keep folk traditions from being lost.

DANIEL SHEEHY: "Finding ways to help those voices, those songs, those stories, those craft traditions make it into the lives of a much broader public."

Bess Lomax Hawes may be best remembered for a song from nineteen forty-nine. She and Jacqueline Steiner took old music and wrote new words in support of a Progressive Party candidate for mayor of Boston, Massachusetts. One of Walter O'Brien's promises was to fight a fare increase on the transit³ system then known as the M.T.A.

The song is about Charlie, a man who does not have enough money to leave the train, so he has to ride forever. Here are Bess Lomax, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger:

(MUSIC)

The candidate lost. But the "M.T.A." song later became a huge hit with a version by the Kingston Trio.

(MUSIC)

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.

 

1 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。

2 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

3 transit   

n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过

参考例句：

• His luggage was lost in transit.他的行李在运送中丢失。
• The canal can transit a total of 50 ships daily.这条运河每天能通过50条船。