Before bongo players became part of the Washington Square story, the park already had a long musical memory.
By the late 1950s, Washington Square had become one of New York's great outdoor gathering places for folk musicians. On Sundays especially, singers, guitar players, banjo players, old-time musicians, troubadours, students, poets, and curious passersby gathered around the park. Some came to perform. Some came to listen. Some came to join in. The point was not a concert stage. The point was public participation.
This tradition already had a strong anti-authoritarian streak.
The folk revival was never just about pretty songs. It carried labor songs, union songs, anti-war songs, civil-rights songs, and anti-fascist songs. Woody Guthrie's guitar famously declared:
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.
Woody Guthrie with “This Machine Kills Fascists” guitar
Guthrie's anti-fascism was the literal kind. He served in the Merchant Marine, and the slogan went on the guitar while the war against actual fascist states was still being fought
Pete Seeger’s banjo carried a gentler but equally defiant message:
THIS MACHINE SURROUNDS HATE AND FORCES IT TO SURRENDER.
Pete Seeger banjo slogan — “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”
These were not decorative slogans. They were statements about what music was supposed to do. For Guthrie and Seeger, a song could be a tool: something ordinary people could carry into hard times, strikes, organizing meetings, picket lines, churches, union halls, and parks.
During the anti-communist McCarthy era, Seeger, An icon of traditional American music ,was prosecuted for refusing to cooperate With the congressional committee accusing him of being un-American, And silenced from reaching his audience for almost a decade …until his conviction too was overturned .
So Washington Square was not just a picturesque place where young people happened to sing. It was already a place where public music had political weight.
Ginsberg was not just a Beat poet passing through the folk scene—he was a regular, documented presence at the Folklore Center and a good friend of its owner, Izzy Young. And as we’ve mentioned, Ginsberg too was prosecuted—his voice silenced by the authoritarian forces of the time—but he defended his constitutional rights and emerged victorious. Izzy Young’s Folklore Center was a focal point for the American folk music scene. It was as much a clubhouse as a store: a place where folk revivalists, beatniks, and musicians like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Allen Ginsberg all overlapped.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If3WGtI5v9s&t=2575s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If3WGtI5v9s