For the People

Several projects from the late 1930s saw Weill writing in American folk idioms in ways that he carried over into the 1940s. One Man from Tennessee (1937, unfinished), written for the Federal Theatre Project, uses Leftist language to address contemporary political issues, although problems with the libretto doomed the endeavor. The World’s Fair pageant Railroads on Parade (1939, rev. 1940) represents Weill’s willingness to work within the political center, which coincided with mounting tensions with Germany. After the war (and his naturalization), Weill returned to folk idioms with Down in the Valley (1948), which draws on some of the same musical, theatrical, and political ideas as One Man from Tennessee, but in a drastically different cultural context.