This Land is Your Land is Woody Guthrie's best known musical composition, a song combining imagery of the beauty of America with concerns about its barriers and its inequitable distribution of wealth. Its inspiration came from repeated airings of Irving Berlin's God Bless America - a huge radio hit in the 1930s - prompting Guthrie to pen an antidote to Berlin's blind optimism and patriotic largesse. Using the melody from an existing hymn, he wrote the song in 1940, however it didn't achieve public attention until prominent folk singers began playing it in the 1960s. Amongst those to have performed This Land is Your Land include Peter Paul and Mary, Arlo Guthrie, folk legend Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen (the latter of whom appear in this clip, taken from the We Are One concert prior to the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama).
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.
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