Oscar Brand (February 7, 1920 – September 30, 2016) was a Canadian-born American folk singer-songwriter, radio host, and author.

[2] In his long career he played alongside such legends of folk music as Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Jean Ritchie, the Weavers and Pete Seeger.

[8] He hosted the radio show Oscar Brand's Folksong Festival on Saturdays at 10:00 p.m. on WNYC-AM 820 in New York City, which ran into its 70th year.

Although Brand was anti-Stalinist and was never a member of any Communist party, the House Committee on Un-American Activities referred to his show as a "pipeline of communism", because of his belief in the rights under the First Amendment of blacklisted artists to have a platform to reach the public.

[12] Accordingly, in June 1950, Brand was named in the premier issue of Red Channels as a Communist sympathizer, along with Paul Robeson, Josh White and Pete Seeger.

He then met privately with a representative from HUAC" [13] He told stories of buying food for Lead Belly when the two traveled together in segregated areas, and participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches.

In the early 1960s, Brand brought his substantial connections in the worldwide folk music community home to his native Canada with his CTV and then CBC television program Let's Sing Out.

The program was staged at and broadcast from university campuses across Canada and both revived the careers of long-forgotten pioneers of the folk music movement such as Malvina Reynolds, the Womenfolk, The Weavers and others and introduced then-unknown Canadian singers such as Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot.

[17][18] Brand composed the original theme and provided musical direction for the 1976 Smithsonian Institution half-hour documentary, Celebrating a Century: The 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.