Jack Chernos (born 1961) is a
San Francisco-based activist singer/songwriter. In the tradition of
Woody Guthrie,
Pete Seeger and
Bob Dylan, Chernos plays his rousing, inspirational songs for social justice at rallies, pickets, and protests across the country and around the world. He performs on five-string
banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
in the "old-timey"
clawhammer style, as opposed to the three-finger Scruggs style developed by Earl Scruggs.
Chernos has written several political songs of historical significance, including:
* "Sold Down the River", the song played in continuous-loop from the billboard truck of the United Steel Workers of America during the
World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in late 1999;
* "My People Are Rising", which was also written for the WTO protests;
[Egelko, Bob (October 16, 2009). "Obama brings left, right together in Union Square", '' San Francisco Chronicle'', p. A16.]
* "The Union Grand", which was the theme song of the
Million Worker March on Washington, D.C. in October 2004, where it was performed as a sing-along at the Lincoln Memorial; and
* "The Silence of Good People", which was inducted into the
National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chernos, Jack
1961 births
Living people
Singers from San Francisco
American male singer-songwriters
Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area
Songwriters from San Francisco
Singer-songwriters from California