A Blogger's Manifesto

"A man got to have a code."

I find people often start blogs and have no idea what they're going to actually talk about. Blogs often become a sort of public diary, something of which mine has also been guilty, and often do very little. It is my intent that this blog do something, even if only to add to the public discourse on music.

"This Machine Kills Fascists" will feature commentary on current events, politics, and history with a decided bias towards how these three relate to music.....any kind of music. The title of the blog and the website address come from Woody Guthrie, who famously wrote the phrase "this machine kills fascists" across the body of his guitar. Pete Seeger did something similar, writing on the face of his banjo, "this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."

You might notice that while I will probably write about any and all musics, I have a particular interest in "folk" music. This is the music I grew up with, the music that speaks most to me, and the music I have the privilege of playing and performing.

Who am I?

I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon in Musicology with a secondary area in Ethnomusicology. I'm an American music specialist, with particular interests in music and politics, music and community/identity, and musicological historiography/methodolgy. I'm also an Irish traditional musician, singer/songwriter, and classically trained flute player who spent most of her life as a bright blue dot in very red states (Texas and Alabama). I have a book buying problem (read obsessive bibliophile), and I'm fairly certain that I will eventually run out of room. I'm a Buddhist, an ACLU volunteer, a queer progressive--but most of all I am a 20-something seeking to find a way to reconcile my activist self with my musical, scholarly, and pedagogical selves. Hopefully this blog will document that search, be a daily writing exercise, and will contribute in some way to the world and music at large.

Easier said than done, but here we go.