Nashville resident Crys Matthew is a troubadour of truth – and is one of the most strident voices for social justice in a time when some of her fellow citizens are not so bothered with a little degradation of rights, or a blatant reinterpretation of the law (think this is harsh? Explain then why nominees to be judges seem to not understand how to count to three and that three is more than two.) Fortunately Crys Matthews is willing to call out this behaviour, as on this reinterpretation of Woody Guthrie’s Deportee.
Crys Matthew’s offers this explanation of Citizen, and what inspired it: “As this administration’s intentions toward our immigrant population became abundantly clear in the summer of 2025, I remembered thinking of Woody Guthrie’s important song Deportee. I turned it on and immediately thought, there is an entirely different conversation that would be had were he trying to write that song now because so much of the indignities being hurled at our immigrant siblings are being hurled at people who are in fact citizens of this country. As a proud Black southerner, the motion of again seeing this country ask to see somebody’s papers is beyond egregious. What is happening to them is an affront to their humanity. If they did absolutely nothing for this country, it would still be absolutely egregious because they are human beings and their humanity matters, point blank, period. But the fact is, our immigrant community does so very much for this country. And so, I sat down to just sort of rewrite Woody’s song in a way that felt like it honoured his original impetus for writing Deportee (the plane wreck at Los Gatos and the tragic loss of over 30 migrant works that resulted from the crash), but that still held space for the reality in which we are living. Citizen is the result of that endeavour. It was important to me to keep as many of Woody’s words as possible because again, that song is so very important. I hope that people who love Woody’s music and especially that song will hold space for Citizen as well. I hope that the song helps them have important conversations about what is happening to our immigrant neighbours.”
