Renaissance Presentation - Judy Small

A major premise of the Renaissance Society at Sac State is that students teach each other.  A class coordinator makes sure that each week of the semester, one or two class members present a portion of the semester's material.  However, there are many classes where the class coordinator prefers to conduct many, if not all, of the sessions.  For all the years that I've been attending the Renaissance classes, I have managed to take mostly such classes and therefore have not given a presentation.  Until now.

This semester I decided to take the class "Protest Songs and the Singers Who Sang Them".  Having come of age during the folk song era of the 60's and contemporary with, if not involved in, the Vietnam war protests, the title of the class intrigued me.  It was difficult to get into the class as the original 50 slots were filled shortly after registration began and there were a dozen or so on the waiting list.

During the first session, I realized that I could make a significant contribution to the class by talking about the global protest singers, making the point that protest songs are not uniquely American.  Specifically, I volunteered to present an hour of the Australian folk singer Judy Small.  I began that day by inventorying my Judy Small collection.  It amounted to 4 albums.  A fifth was a poor cassette recording of another album.  I logged onto iTunes to download a good copy of that album.

With Microsoft Powerpoint, Wikipedia, and the collection of Judy Small songs I had available, it was no trouble putting together an hour's presentation. The presentation outline looked like this:




Introduction
Judy Small biography
The IPD - Singalong
No Tears for the Widow
Montreal - December '89
Much Too Much Trouble
Golden Arches - Singalong
Silo
Home Front
You Don't Speak for Me
Life Begins at Forty - Singalong

I originally intended to pass out a sheet of lyrics for the three songs I wanted the class to singalong with Judy but my wife Carolyn convinced me to distribute the lyrics to all the songs to help people better understand the songs.  We couldn't find the lyrics anywhere on the Internet.  That was a bit of a task since neither of us speaks Australian.  We finally got something that we hope is 95% correct.

In spite of some technical difficulties we finally got the computer and projector and software all working together.  At the beginning of the class only one other person had heard of Judy.  By the end of the class most people were visibly moved and several wanted to know how to get her music.  The class coordinator said it was too bad we couldn't play each song and then discuss it for a half hour, the messages are so potent.

I felt that Judy and I put on a successful performance that not only set a standard for subsequent classes but also got a lot of people thinking again.  Thank  you, Judy.