Green Music by Tom

Green Music by Tom
by Barbara Rodgers-Hendricks, Green Party of Florida

Tom Neilson is a singer-songwriter who was trained as a classical vocalist but is now stockpiling awards as a folk artist. During the past year he was a winner at the Kerrville Folk Festival and won an award for Music with Social Significance. This January 2010, Neilson received awards for Folk Singer of the Year for two different songs from two different music organizations.

Neilson has performed at the Martin Luther King Center in Havana, Cuba, the Washington Cathedral, New York Cityís Town Hall, Bostonís Symphony Hall, and the New England Conservatory of Music. Of keen interest to Greens is the information that he has appeared at hundreds of Green events for Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Pat LaMarche, and David Cobb.

After attending one of his concerts, Cathy Gilbert, a Florida Green described it as ìPolitically cutting-edge, incisive, warm, and very funny. Raucous political satire and quick wit. Had everyone laughing and engaged.î

Ray Korona of New York City viewed Neilsonís concert as ìCreative and compelling; skewers the outrageous behavior of the greedy and powerful in corporations, the media, and government.î

Neilson was born on a dairy farm in upstate New York, where he grew up milking cows, shoveling manure, and throwing hay. He is now a dancer, organic farmer, and basketball coach, living in Massachusetts.

Neilson has spent a dozen years working around the world, mostly in Africa and South America. These experiences made him profoundly aware of the common struggles of people to protect their environment, especially pure food, clean air, and clean water. He has used his music to help peoples organize against corporate take-over of local water supplies, mountain top removal, nuclear energy, and coal companiesí dumping of toxic waste on farmland. Neilson has seven songs used in documentaries about coal, nuclear use, water privatization, and Mumia Abu Jamal.

As a Green Party activist, Neilson is currently working to stop a proposed incinerator in Greenfield, MA. Neilson is also involved with fellow Greens in gathering signatures for an IRV ballot petition and another petition on biomass incinerators in Massachusetts. To learn more about the Greenfield crusade and hear his song on the subject, check out http://greenfieldbiomass.info/

Neilson may be reached at tomneilsonmusic@yahoo.com

ìCreative and compelling; skewers the outrageous behavior of the greedy and powerful in corporations, the media, and government.î Ray Korona, New York City, in describing a concert by Tom Neilson.