Favorite Things: Laura Drotar and the ‘Rise Up Singing’ songbook

Laura Drotar, who uses they/them pronouns, enjoys folk music and its ability to bring people together. Their favorite piece of folk music history is the songbook “Rise Up Singing.”

My favorite thing is the “Rise Up Singing” songbook, by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson. I’ve been fascinated with folk music in my adult life. I didn’t grow up with; my parents didn’t introduce much music to me. I was really interested in folk music after hearing the “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack. The song “Big Rock Candy Mountain” blew me away.

One summer, in 2016, I decided to do this weeklong visit to a place called Dancing Rabbit Eco Village in Missouri. My sister heard about it and thought I would be interested in it. It’s a sustainable living community and a small village that’s totally off the grid. I stayed for about 10 days. It was really awesome; they would build homes out of natural materials and all sorts of things. My favorite thing about the camp was the singing circle. Everybody would be in the community room and sit around and sing songs. There were a few copies of this book, “Rise Up Singing.” A lot of the songs we sang were in this book.

I spoke with somebody who was born in Dancing Rabbit, and he told me he loved the book. He said the book was kind of like a bible to him. I was blown away by it too. The book has all sorts of categories of songs. Some of them are “Farm and Prairie,” “Hard Times and Blues,” “Unity” and “Women Work.” When I returned home from the trip, I ordered a copy of the book from eBay and made Spotify playlists out of all the songs. I play guitar and I like to sing, so I tried to learn a lot of them. I’m always impressed by how many are in there. I always try to have at least two copies, so if I am with people we can sing together.

In the “Peace” section there’s a song called, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to be a Soldier.” It was written in 1914. It was one of the most popular songs in America at the time, and the American government later banned it. Later, another huge song was a propaganda tune called “Johnny Get Your Gun.” It’s really fascinating that this song — a pacifist message from the perspective of a mother — was banned and then the very next year a song comes out encouraging people to fight in the war. My favorite way to learn history is through folk songs. I didn’t understand history in public schools; I tend to do a lot better with natural science. History seemed like memorizing dates. Through folk music, and especially this book, I’ve really gotten a sense of working class and people’s history. It’s given me a sense of the conditions of people through different times. It’s given me more direction and tools to understand the issues we face today.

Interview edited and condensed by Skyler Ashley. If you have a suggestion for Favorite Things, please email Skyler@lansingcitypulse.com