Gilbert, Ronnie — A View Over The Years Of Freedom Songs
In this edition of Radio Curious our guest is Ronnie Gilbert, a folk singer and former member of “The Weavers”, an extraordinarily popular singing group in the 195o’s and 60′s. This interview was recorded on September 18th 1996 when Ronnie Gilbert had just celebrated her 70th birthday and had begun a tour singing with Holly Near. During the course of her career with “The Weavers”, the group was blacklisted due to their political beliefs and the cold war hysteria in the United States at that time. Ronnie Gilbert and I discuss what it was like to be blacklisted in the early 1950′s. We also talk about how she feels older people are treated in today’s society.
The books Ronnie Gilbert recommends are “The Moors Last Sigh” by Salman Rushdie, “Making Movies” by Sidney Lumet and “Eyewitness: A Personal Account of the Unraveling of the Soviet Union” by Vladimir Pozner.
Recorded September 18th 1996