Friday, April 8th @ 7:30pm at San Bernardino County Museum - in the Fisk Auditorium
(This is Event is Free to the Public)
Joel Rafael celebrates Woody Guthrie’s experiences in Southern California in song, ballads, poetry & prose.
If American Acoustic Folk Music is at the center of the music of our national heartland, Woody Guthrie is its soul. Like his famous song, “This Land is Your Land”, Woody Guthrie was a troubadour who traveled by foot and freight train from California to the New York island. He wrote thousands of songs, a successful autobiography “Bound for Glory”, and left the footprint of his music and earthy, humorous wisdom across America. He traveled Route 66, visiting the Inland Empire along the way. He came to the migrant camps in the Inland Empire in the 1930’s, sharing his songs and stories, and collaborating with author John Steinbeck to put the essence of his novel, “Grapes of Wrath”, to music in the classic folk song, “Tom Joad”.
Performer Joel Rafael has been a featured performer at the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in the legendary artist's hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma since its inception in 1998. Considered a natural and pre-eminent interpreter of Woody Guthrie's music, Rafael is also a member of the national touring cast of the celebrated Guthrie revue Ribbon Of Highway. Joel has toured extensively, performed as a duo with Rosie Flores, and opened shows for artists including Crosby, Stills & Nash, John Lee Hooker, Sheryl Crow, Laura Nyro, Taj Mahal and Emmylou Harris.
Whether telling his own tales or wrapping his artistry around the songs of Woody Guthrie and others, Joel Rafael mixes traditional folk idioms with contemporary ideas and sensibilities in a way that both transcends the moment and is fully present in it.
