Talk:We Shall Overcome

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Contents 1 Guy Carawan attributed as author by Pete Seeger 2 This song is popular elsewhere too! 3 Variants 4 Date 5 Hindi version 6 Joan Baez 7 Copyright section - how much is actually sourced?

[edit] Guy Carawan attributed as author by Pete Seeger

I edited the page to give a bit more attribution to Guy Carowan. I base this on words I heard myself from Pete Seeger at a People's Music Network event in the 1980s, when he introduced Guy saying something like "...and he wrote a little song that became rather well known..." or something like that. I heard this from Pete's own mouth, though it was twenty years ago and my memory may be a bit distorted. If this is controversial, I can ask some of those still involved with PMN to cross-check what Pete's said.

Russell 15:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This song is popular elsewhere too!

It should probably be noted that this song has spread around so as to have significance outside of any civil rights movements, and even translated to other languages. There seems to be no other way how in India both this song (or probably some variant) and the Hindi version "Hum honge kaamyaab" could be taught to me in the Kindergarten (oh! old memories...) in 1985-86.

Proof: Google:"hum honge kaamyaab", Google:"we shall overcome one day" (the first match [1] as of now is about a Kerala finance minister singing the song)

BTW after all that (I was actually searching google for lyrics before I tried wikipedia) it is surprising to know that the song is not public domain. Is the Hindi variant, etc. illegal (I couldn't find the author of the Hindi variant, though)? Is singing the song (or variants) also illegal? Then should the verses be removed from the article? -- Paddu 25 Dec 2004

The article explains the copyright situation: Seeger took a "defensive" copyright, to prevent inappropriate commercialization of the song. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:55, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

The song has also become famous in Czechoslovakia as a protest song against the communist regime (even before the Velvet Revolution), with the name "Jednou budem dál" and Czech text by Spirituál kvintet. - Mike Rosoft 21:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Variants

There seem to be many variants of this song, e.g. [2], [3]. How is it verified that the version currently in the article is the original? -- Paddu 25 Dec 2004

[edit] Date

Someone has added this to Category:1903 songs. If you read the article, you will see that associating any particular year with the song is rather arbitrary. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:55, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hindi version

This was recently pasted into the article; I've moved it here. Why is this translation of encyclopedic notability in the English-language Wikipedia? -- Jmabel | Talk 18:00, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

hum honge kamiyaab
hum honge kamiyaab
hum honge kamiyaab ek din
o ho man me hai vishwaas
poora hai vishwaas
hum honge kamiyaab ek din

[edit] Joan Baez

"…the song was associated with Joan Baez…". Really? Particularly? I suspect this was only true of people who either particularly liked Joan Baez's singing style, or (conversely) particularly disliked both her and her politics. I don't think many people actively involved in the civil rights movement ever associated the song with Joan Baez. Is there some citable basis for this statement? -- Jmabel | Talk July 3, 2005 23:53 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright section - how much is actually sourced?

Few (not me) have this book by Seegar handy, but what does he actually claim? Outside of the copyright section the article seems to express the idea that the lyrics and music both date back for a much longer time. I think that aside from a one-sentence claim that Seegar's particular arrangement is copyrighted by him and goes to support the listed fund, the rest is probably just speculation, especially the stuff about the possible court case based on some other precedent (there's no policy that Wikipedia is NOT a circuit court of appeals but maybe we need one ;) ) Being unsure of the situation though, I'll leave it to a second opinion to actually delete it down. Wnt (talk) 19:25, 3 June 2008 (UTC)