Human Sperit

Music is a very important aspect of our world. It doesn’t matter where you came from or what language you speak, because music is a universal language that can unite people together. People can express their emotions and their experiences through the music and songs.

During the Great Depression, many poor migrants from places such as Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and other southwest regions that were effected by the Dust Bowl had moved to the West Coast, especially California, to earn a living, search for work, opportunities, and their hopes. However, these “Okies” were not welcome in their new place. As the migrant population grew, the native Californians and the coastal people were thinking that the Okie migrants were stealing their jobs and opportunities, thus the migrants had to face prejudice around them.

According to James Noble Gregory’s American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California, “for some migrants, music did provide a bright future.” The country songs that were written by the migrants during the Great Depression were mostly sad and often expressed how their life had changed and also how they had to experience the unfriendliness of the people around them. A good example would be Mary Sullivan’s “Sunny California.” Sullivan expressed her loneliness and homesick from when she had moved to California.

The success of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath required lots of research of the life of the migrants during the Depression. “Steinbeck himself had researched the living conditions of the Okies for a series of newspaper articles…” (Windschuttle).

In the movie Songcatcher, some characters who live in the mountains were able to preserve the music from their ancestry. These original songs are passed down by the Irish and Scottish immigrants. The songs expressed the feeling and emotions of the harsh life during their settlements and the loneliness they had to overcome. This movie includes lots of strong emotional tunes that could touch your soul.

Music helped migrant workers to express their experiences and they passed it from generation to generation to let them understand the hardship their ancestors had to endure, and most importantly music had preserved their own cultures and reminded them of who they were.