Remembering Pete Seeger
Posted by Kevin Webb
on Feb 07, 2014
Many of us "baby boomers" probably remember the 1960s, a decade dominated by Vietnam, desegragation, hippies, the cold war, the space race, race riots, free love, etc...
However, it was also a period when Contemporary Folk Music became the music of the youth often expressing their anger towards authority, yet in my humble opinion, it was some of the most beautiful music ever written. When Pete Seeger died on January 27th of this year at the age of 94 the name sounded familiar. It wasn't until I read a story about him and saw the names of some his songs that I realized I knew his music. I listened to "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" and for the first time I understood its poignancy. Before I just loved the song but now I knew it had a much deeper meaning.
Pete Seeger's obituary appeared in the Independent January 28th and online at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/pete-seeger-obituary-musician-and-activist-dies-aged-94-9091329.html. For those of you who also loved his music or want to learn a little more about him, excerpts from this obituary are included in this story below.
(Paul Wadey, the Independent)
The poet Carl Sandburg once paid tribute to Pete Seeger by describing him as “America’s tuning fork”. As a musician, songwriter, teacher, environmentalist and political activist, Seeger served as his country’s moral conscience, often doing so in the face of hostility and blacklisting. He remained, nevertheless, a principled, dignified and, above all, humane figure.
“My basic philosophy in life,” he once said, “is that I’m a teacher trying to teach people to participate, whether it’s banjos or guitars or politics.” And teach he did, showing generations of Americans how to sing and make their own music.
He was a formative influence on succeeding generations of folk-oriented performers – “Most of us,” Joan Baez once said, “owe our careers to Pete” – and many of his songs have become standards, among them “If I Had a Hammer”, “Turn, Turn, Turn”, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, and he popularised the anthemic “We Shall Overcome”. He was, in the words of former President Clinton, “An inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them.”
Born in 1919 Seeger was exposed to both music and political activism from an early age. His musicologist father Charles had been Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley until his pacifism during the Great War saw him hounded from his job, while his mother, Constance Edson Seeger, had been a successful concert violinist. While in his teens he discovered the musical sound world that was to occupy him for the rest of his life.
In 1955 Seeger was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. When asked about his political associations he replied: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my associations, my philosophical or religious beliefs, or my political beliefs ... or any of these private matters. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.” His disinclination to respond saw him sentenced to a year in prison for contempt of court and, although he served only four days, the blacklisting that followed saw him absent from television and radio for some 17 years.
In the 1960s he played a major role in the folk revival, recording prolifically for Folkways and Columbia and watching as both Peter, Paul and Mary’s cover of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (inspired, in part, by a passage from Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don) and the Byrds’ version of “Turn, Turn, Turn”, with its lyric taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes, entered the upper echelons of the pop charts. In time, “Flowers” became popularly associated with Marlene Dietrich who recorded it in English, French and German; it remains one of the great political songs of the 20th century.
He further antagonised his political enemies by supporting the civil rights movement and actively opposed his country’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict, writing the memorable “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” (1965) in response to a picture of American troops wading across the Mekong River. He also became interested in environmental causes, fronting a campaign to clean up the Hudson River and, in 1969, forming an advocacy group, the Clearwater Organisation, to protect it in the future.
He remained philosophical about his success to the end, commenting: “Life has been easier on me than any lazy person like myself has the right to expect.”
Peter Seeger, singer, songwriter, banjo player and activist: born Patterson, New York 3 May 1919; married 1943 Toshi Ohta (died 2013; one son, two daughters and one son deceased); died New York 27 January 2014.