Deportee
Choosing material to perform that is not your own has a spectrum - like Mingus to Jimmy Buffet. Go for the crowd-pleaser that everyone in your audience is going to sing along to, or take the moment to blow minds with something they’ve never heard before (and may not want to!). Somewhere in the middle lies material that you as a player resonate with, which allows you to be creative while presenting the works of others.
I stumbled across “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” in the summer of 2017 while searching for songs focused on current immigration issues in America. “Deportee” is a protest song about a plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon 20 miles west of Coalinga in California. Guthrie was inspired to write this song by what he considered racial mistreatment of the passengers before and after the accident. The crash resulted in 32 human souls lost: 4 Americans and 28 migrant farm workers who were being deported from Cali’ back to Mexico.
Thinking about this, it was becoming a real contentious issue - ICE raids, “building the wall,” using the media as a mouthpiece to vilify all people trying to emigrate into the states. Let me rephrase that - all poor and brown people wanting to emigrate.
The lyrics to this Woody Guthrie song struck a chord with me before I had even heard it played. Along with that, I found the poetry used in the final verse that was written during his stint living at Fred Trump’s notorious “Beach Haven” apartment complex in Brooklyn in the ’50s. Discriminatory practices utilized in the management of the complex eventually led to a full-scale investigation and trial exposing the practices, and eventually to the Trump organization settling. It was forced to publish ads welcoming people of color as tenants in the complex. The dream of emigration to America - finding work, safety, a place to live. The laws that make it possible when the will does not.
The fact that these lyrics had only been discovered in 2016 and never were recorded by Guthrie sparked an inspiration. An all-American songwriter I was somewhat familiar with, resonating lyrics of a song which I had never heard, unfinished lyrics to a song never set to wax. The two came together as one quite quickly. We recorded it in the summer of 2017, shortly before Hurricane’s Irma and Maria hit a region in the Caribbean where we had been making the lions’ share of our performing income. Those two storms effectively derailed the whole recording project for 3 years.
Whether or not people are seeking asylum or simply looking for a better life, there must be a pretty serious driver to make someone wish to leave their country of origin with nothing but the clothes on their backs. My ancestors from the Ilse of Man went through a similar choice - setting sail for the promised land. As a nation built on the backs of immigrants, there is a feeling of discomfort when we further normalize the dehumanization of those wishing to emigrate who are of a certain hue and economic class. It is painful to know that given our heritage as a nation we have officially taken a stance that those trying to cross our border may have their families broken up, be held in cages for undetermined lengths of time with little or no representation, denied medical care. There are those that die in our care due to simple neglect - men, women, and children left to rot on the topsoil as if to be discarded pieces of fruit.
This is not the place my ancestors left their homes for. It is not the place that I call home. In this age of polarization, it is time that moderate, dare I say “normal,” individuals take back our position of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There are many in power that wish for us to be divided, distracted. No, no, no - never again in my home.
Please, let your voice be heard. Vote.
“This land was made for you and me.”
Plane Wreck At Los Gatos / Old Man Trump
Written by Woodie Guthrie
arranged by Stell & Snuggs
The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em on back to the Mexican border
To wade back through that river and work for old Trump
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride that big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportee"
My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and my sisters come work in them fruit trees,
They rode in that truck till they lay down and died
Some of us are illegal, some of us are not wanted,
Our work contract’s out, and we’ve got to move on;
600 miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like rustlers and thieves and outlaws
We died up in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and we died in your plains;
We died ‘neath your trees, and we died in the bushes,
both sides of that river we died just the same
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride that big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportee"
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards,
is this the best way to get fruit from the tree?
to fall like the dry leaves, to rot there on the topsoil,
and be called by no name except "deportee"
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride that big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportee"
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
He stirred up
In the blood-pot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
there in the sand
Trump Towers ain’t my home, I ain’t payin’ your rent,
my money’s gettin’ real thin, and my soul’s badly bent;
You wishin’ for a place where no brown one’s come to roam ,
Oh no, no, old man Trump, never again in my home
Jarad Astin - Stell & Snuggs