The well known – even well outside of Sweden and the USA – musician, songwriter, poet, trade union and political activist Joe Hill has featured several times in NMC, most recently I believe in this article from September 2024 which concerned the opening of a new visitor centre dedicated to him.
Joe Hill (born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle in central Sweden) was not only a writer and musician but one of the leading activist trade unionists in America, to where he had emigrated, only to be executed for a murder he claimed not to have been involved with, in 1915.
He is revered throughout the trade union movement globally and his protest songs can be considered precursors to those of the likes of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez (who sang about him at Woodstock in 1969), Patti Smith, Billy Bragg and many others.
Now a new album has been compiled, ‘New Joe Hill Songs’, which is a unique collection of 16 original songs based on lyrics by the legendary artist—lyrics that had never been set to music before.
Musically, the songs on the album span genres from folk and rock to blues. They are composed by Swedish singer, musician, and producer Daniel Östersjö, who himself has appeared several times in NMC, either alone or within the duo Le Lac Long 814, which specialises in French songs ‘converted’ into Swedish.
He is joined on the record by guests including Swedish blues legend Rolf Wikström—a musician who has previously performed with artists such as Albert Collins, Charles Brown, and Roy Brown. Also featured are members of Swedish trio ro.t, the folk singer Elin Lyth (another visitor to NMC), and musicians from bands including the prog-rock group Somewhere.
Furthermore, around a hundred residents of Gävle were recorded on the city’s streets, lending their voices to the powerful, concluding chorus of the song ‘Everybody’s Joining It’.
This year marks 111 years since Joe Hill was executed by firing squad in Salt Lake City. Opinions vary about his culpability in the homicide of a grocer/ex-police officer and his teenage son. “But the world still needs to become a place defined by greater justice and solidarity,” observes Daniel Östersjö.
He adds, ‘New Joe Hill Songs‘is a somewhat different kind of project for me; I took his lyrics and composed entirely new music for them. It’s a bit hard to categorise the musical style—with a full band on the record, it leans more toward folk-rock, while my solo performances with a guitar feel more in the vein of a classic protest singer—or, quite simply, a troubadour.”
Daniel Östersjö continues, “When Joe Hill emerged in the 1910s as the songwriter for the burgeoning American labour movement, he commanded a language that remains just as vibrant today. He took the well-known melodies of the day and created a double irony for those familiar with the originals—which, of course, everyone was. He seized upon the most popular tunes of the era—hit songs, Salvation Army hymns—and penned new, sharp-witted lyrics.
These often centered on an individual, exploring how injustice takes its toll and how solidarity offers a way out of misery.
It’s far too vibrant to be mere agitprop. It is political, in the same sense that everything in life is political.
In Joe’s lyrics—with their stories, dreams, and biting jabs at those who hold power and wealth—I see parallels to today’s society. And the English he acquired so laboriously, syllable by syllable, seems to vibrate with life. It was to highlight that very quality that I set out to compose new melodies for his lyrics. I imagined it as if Dylan, Lennon, and Bowie were sitting in Joe’s shack by the docks in San Pedro California, where he officially began his career as a union organiser in 1910, singing one song after another.”
Besides his Joe Hill project, Daniel Östersjö has in recent years engaged in a series of musical collaborations with numerous Swedish artists and lyricists, as well as with the Chinese poet Yu Xiu Hua. He has also set to music memories and stories gathered through interviews and conversations with neighbours and residents of his hometown, Tierp, north of Stockholm.
“Everyone carries a story within them, and it is these stories that I want to uncover and bring to light” he says.
This album is an early Christmas present to trade unionists across the world. It’s as if a panoply of protest artists had gathered in Tierp to pay homage to Joe Hill.
His grizzly, downbeat, down at heel, almost subjugated voice contrasts with the hope and anticipation of those that followed Joe Hill and who are represented in the more upbeat songs.
And some of the song titles alone are so apt today, over 100 years since they were written, such as ‘The White Slave’ and ‘It’s a long way to the soupline’.
But the upbeat songs are as notable as the downbeat and ‘Everybody’s joining in’ is a rocker that should have folk dancing in the aisles.
The 16-track album is a potential live concert in its own right and I hope he gets the opportunity to tour it, both in Sweden and abroad.
My only disappointment is that some of Hill’s work such as ‘The Rebel Girl’ and ‘The Preacher and the Slave’ (in which he first coined the expression ‘pie in the sky’), aren’t on the album. But that’s just a reason for a second album…
(Continues after the Spotify link).
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