50s decade

Richard Fariña of Brooklyn, New York, pictured in 1951 | Source

In Brooklyn, the boy was a star pupil in the Catholic and public schools he attended. In January of 1955 he graduated from the elite Brooklyn Technical High School, where he was President of the General Organization which directed all extra-curricular activities at the school, Chief Justice of the Student Court, and had his own column in the school newspaper.


“Somewhere along the line he developed an interest in folk,” says Hajdu. “This seemed to dovetail with the fact that folk music was trendy at the time: he had a highly attuned sense of what was cool.” Among protest singers, the fact that he knew both Ireland and Cuba also gave him a patina of radical authenticity.

In his junior year Fariña made national headlines when he was charged with riot in a student protest against restrictions on female students led by his friend Kilpatrick Sale. Despite what Sale considered peripheral involvement, he became the face of a minor cause célèbre when 22 students were placed on trial by the school. Eventually he and Sale were “paroled” and allowed to remain in school.


Although Fariña returned to Cornell for his senior year, he dropped out in 1959 before graduation. His college life, however, became the fodder for the novel Been Down So Long it Looks like Up to Me.


After leaving school, he took another trip to his ancestral Cuba, then on the cusp of revolution. He soaked up the atmosphere and aura of intrigue in Havana and may have even made contact with and done some minor collaboration with revolutionary cells in the city.


By the late 1950s he was working in advertising in New York, he took a job offer as a copywriter at the top advertising agency in the city, J. Walter Thompson. Was he “selling out” or just following the familiar career path of some of his literary heroes like F. Scott Fitzgerald? No matter. As an aspiring writer he was soon bored, restless, and alienated. He started to submit his stories and poems to literary magazines. He frequented the city’s literary hangouts, before his attention turned to a nascent musical scene emerging in Greenwich Village

Previously a jazz aficionado, Farina began to haunt bohemian Greenwich Village and particularly the rich, socially conscious folk music scene that seemed to be staking out a new cutting edge in American culture. The legendary White Horse Tavern was a special haunt. There he fell in with the Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers. He was particularly close to the Northern Irishman Makem, with who he would drink and sing all of the old rebel songs.


Within a very short period of time he was drawn into the world, if only on its periphery. He gave up the lucrative advertising agency job and was soon scrounging with the rest of the Village Beats.

Richard with George Crozier. Courtesy of the Crozier family.| Source

 

Richard Fariña and his Irish relatives in Moortown, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Moortown is the townland where Richard’s mother was born. Richard was probably about 16 in this photo.

From left to right: Richard Fariña, Richard's Aunt Liz, Richard's grandmother Catherine Crozier, Theresa (Richard’s mother) and Richard’s uncle, Otto Crozier. Courtesy of the Crozier family. Source

From the yearbook: "The very heartbeat of Techtown is the General Organization. Formed as a student council, the G.O. is made up of delegates chosen from the class presidents of the respective grades. The council governs and controls the extracurricular life of the Techtowner. President Dick Farina, and Vice-President Bob Greco direct the operation of the G.O. with the help of the Honorary President, Mr. Longo. Secretary Sylvester Vassalo and Social Coordinator Larry Tetenbaum implement the work of the Council."

From the school newspaper, The Survey: Candidates are "chosen on a basis of weighted average, record, appearance, English mark, and the specific ability exhibited in the time allotted them."

The Brooklyn Tech Social Committee: Richard Fariña, 2nd from right.