Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in the US folk music scene, died on 23 May 2008. I was a late convert to Utah Phillips and only got on the Phillips bandwagon when he recorded The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, the first of two albums with Ani Di Franco where she took his words and stories and mixed in her own background music. This album, along their second collaboration, Fellow Workers, were fantastic pieces of work in which Utah told stories about the various influential folk musicians and political activists he'd met while travelling the length and breath of the US.
These America-wide journeys of discovery mined a rich historical seam of neglected and sometimes repressed history featuring union organisers and workers battling for decent conditions and wages against much more powerful and often brutally armed opposition.
He was in part a folk historian whose key concern was that the rich history of union activism and working-class struggle should be kept alive in the present. His favourite idea was that of the 'long memory', an idea that insisted modern working people were part of a long, proud and still active history where rights and privileges had been fought for and should still be fought for.
Struggle for better working conditions and human rights, as Phillips often reminded anyone at his gigs, is not just historical memory but a living heritage we should all be involved in, whether it's signing petitions or taking a more active role.
As Phillips said: 'The path of least resistance is what makes the river run crooked.'
A wonderful man. Rest in peace.
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