Guy Carawan

Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan, ca. 1990; photograph by Heather Carawan
Background information
Birth name	Guy Hughes Carawan, Jr.
Born	July 27, 1927 Los Angeles
Died	May 2, 2015 (aged 87) New Market, Tennessee
Genres	Folk music
Occupation(s)	Folk musician, musicologist
Instruments	Guitar, hammer dulcimer
Years active	1950–2015

Guy Hughes Carawan, Jr. (July 27, 1927 – May 2, 2015) was an American folk musician and musicologist. He served as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.

Carawan is famous for introducing the protest song "We Shall Overcome" to the American Civil Rights Movement, by teaching it to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. A union organizing song based on a black spiritual, it had been a favorite of Zilphia Horton (d. 1956) wife of the founder of the Highlander Folk School. Carawan reintroduced it at the school when he became its new music director in 1959. The song is copyrighted in the name of Horton, Frank Hamilton, Carawan and Pete Seeger.

Carawan sang and played banjo, guitar, and hammered dulcimer. He frequently performed and recorded with his wife, singer Candie Carawan Occasionally he was accompanied by their son Evan Carawan, who plays mandolin and hammered dulcimer. Carawan and his wife lived in New Market, near the Highlander Center.

Carawan was born in California in 1927, to Southern parents. His mother, from Charleston, South Carolina, was the resident poet at Winthrop College (now Winthrop University) in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and his father, a veteran of World War I from North Carolina, worked as an asbestos contractor. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Occidental College in 1949 and a master's degree in sociology from UCLA. Through his friend Frank Hamilton, Carawan was introduced to musicians in the People's Songs network, including Pete Seeger and The Weavers. Moving to New York City, he became involved with the American folk music revival in Greenwich Village in the 1950s. He also traveled abroad, visiting England, attending a World Festival of Youth and Students in the Soviet Union in 1957, and continuing on to the People's Republic of China.