immigrant labor and folk music, their songs and the movement.

We made our first mini-documentary! This is episode 1, on the folk musician and farm labor union leader Baldemar Velasquez. With all the recent strikes going on, like 10,000 John Deere workers walking off the job the other day, we felt this was the perfect time to release our documentary on Baldemar.

I remember sitting in my room reading Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States", discovering all these incredible events my highschool had left out the history books. Workers fighting, literally dying, to take a small piece of the pie from bosses. Then the music from those struggles, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and...

Baldemar Velasquez. When @joe.troop.music told me about this low-key living legend, a man who had played on stage with Pete Seeger,
met Dr. King, whose music was recorded by the Smithsonian for it's historical importance, whose life has been spent fighting for the rights of migrant farm workers.. I knew we had to record the story.

We've combed through hours of archival footage from decades of strikes, concerts and news reels. Finally, we present this, an oral history, straight from the man who lived it. His experience, his early life as a migrant worker, and some great folk songs. We worked hard on it, with a great team, and I hope you'll enjoy it.

GemsOnVHS team credits: Anthony Simpkins, co-director. Tim Duggan, 1st AC/audio. Caleb McLaughlin, DP. Pablo Zuniga, 2nd AC/assistant.
Produced by us, GemsOnVHS, and our partners Joe Troop (https://www.joetroop.com/) (instagram:  / joe.troop.music  ,
Rode and Emily of Iximche Media (https://www.iximchemedia.com/) (instagram:  / iximchemedia  ,

Partially funded by a Humanities for the Public Good Grant grant from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (  / uncchapelhill  .

The subject of the documentary is Baldemar Velasquez the president of FLOC. If you'd like to make a donation to FLOC,
and contribute to bettering the lives of migrant farm workers, you can visit (http://www.floc.com/wordpress/donate-....

Thanks to Chris Westhoff and The Holland Theatre @thehollandtheatre. (owner of the theater / bass).
Rolando Revilla Jr. (accordion)
Taylor Napier @taylornapier (graphics)

Our undying love and gratitude go to our executive producers for making this project possible: Amy Ennis, Andie Nye, Brady Jones, Christopher Watley, Eric Valente, Irvin Maddox, Johnny Callahan, Josh Collins, Julie Nestoroff, Julio Guerra, Keith McQuillan, Kenny Schmidt, Lisa Galvan, Richard Harmon, VJ Arizpe, and The-One-Who-Cannot-Be-Named

Consider becoming a Patreon contributor to help sustain this project. For the price of a cup of coffee every month, you let us continue finding and filming amazing artists.
  / gemsonvhs  

GemsOnVHS is a long running series of intimate, off-stage performances by songwriters we love.
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