Performed by Standing Wave

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout 
2019 | 12'

Commissioned by Standing Wave
for alto flute, bass clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, violoncello, and electronics

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" is based on the songs of Swedish-American labour activist Joe Hill (1879-1915). Hill was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, an international labour union founded on principles of “revolutionary industrial unionism”, and he contributed numerous protest songs to their “Little Red Songbook”. In 1915, Hill was executed for murder in Salt Lake City after a lengthy and widely-publicized trial. The IWW—and many subsequent historians—have maintained that Hill was framed, and he has since been held up as a martyr for the labour movement. After his execution by firing squad, his ashes were divided into 600 packets and sent to various branches of the IWW and their allies. The ashes were marked with the epitaph: “Joe Hill murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915”. 

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" incorporates many of Joe Hill’s songs, or, more specifically, many performances of his songs. The piece is peppered with transcriptions of tiny fragments from performances by Joe Glazer, Cisco Houston, Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock, Pete Seeger, Earl Robinson, Barbara Dane and, particularly, Swedish folk singer Finn Zetterholm (drawn from his 1969 album "Joe Hill på svenska"). 

Joe Hill travelled across America lending his voice and his songs to IWW strikes and protests. In 1912 he travelled to British Columbia where he joined the Fraser River railway strikes and composed several new songs specifically for the striking workers. These included “Where the Fraser River Flows” based on the then-popular tune “Where The River Shannon Flows” by James I. Russell. They Sing and They Clap and They Shout incorporates a recording of “Where the Fraser River Flows” by the great American folk singer and activist Utah Phillips, used here with the generous permission of his estate.

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" takes its title from Joe Hill’s most famous song “The Preacher and the Slave” in which he coined the phrase “pie in the sky”:

Long-haired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right
But when asked how 'bout something to eat 
They will answer in voices so sweet

You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray, live on hay 
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

"They Sing and They Clap and They Shout" was commissioned by Standing Wave.

They Sing and They Clap and They Shout

Christopher Mayo