Memorial Day parade and service – Village of Fishkill. 10:30 a.m. Monday. Parade from Church Street to Monument Square, Broad and Main streets, where memorial service takes place. Guest speaker is Pete Seeger. Hosted by the village and VFW Post No. 1286. 845-897-4430.
The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger
Alec Wilkinson
Knopf
By Kel Munger
Pete Seeger never meant to be a well-known and controversial folk singer. That much is clear from Alec Wilkinson’s short but sweet biography. But singing came naturally to Seeger, and his fascination with folk music led to his gathering variants of songs and recording what usually became the canonical version.
Seeger also didn’t intend to be a symbol of leftist politics and stubborn American honor, as he became with his 1955 appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. But The Protest Singer includes the transcript from Seeger’s appearance as an appendix, which tells far more about his no-nonsense American attitudes than anything—except perhaps Seeger’s songs.
Wilkinson, who published a shorter version of The Protest Singer in The New Yorker, spent time with Seeger on his farm. He leads readers to see that, at his core, the great folk musician is about as conservative as it gets. Seeger believes the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights mean exactly what they say; his insistence on individual rights being considered something other than conservative says more about the times in which Seeger lived than it does about the songwriter himself.
The Protest Singer is less a full biography than it is a thoughtful essay about Seeger’s life, published as he turned 90. It bears the stamp of Seeger’s personality as he is today, looking back on a life that included most of the great struggles of the 20th century.
We learn that Seeger left off his Communist membership because he “never liked the idea anyway of belonging to a secret organization.” That didn’t—and doesn’t—stop the right from characterizing Seeger as a left-wing threat, even when singing something as innocuous as “Old Dan Tucker.”
But it’s songs like “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” an anti-war allegory from the Vietnam era, that get people in an uproar. The song was censored on his 1967 Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour TV appearance.
And the big controversy around Seeger threatening to pull the plug on Bob Dylan? You know, when Dylan infamously “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965? Seeger’s complaint wasn’t about Dylan’s amplifier—Howlin’ Wolf already used one—but that the distortion made it impossible to understand the lyrics; he thought “Maggie’s Farm” was a great song.
Wilkinson details things like how Seeger built his family’s home with his own hands, with the help of friends, and how he made a living singing even though he was blacklisted and banned from TV and radio. Now, thanks to Bruce Springsteen’s popular cover album of Seeger’s songs, the songwriter’s a little better known among the younger set—but not too much.
The folk singer’s portrait emerges as one of a man more concerned with songs that people actually sing than with what they ought to sing, more concerned with what people actually do than with what they ought to do. And this is rare: Seeger is more a musical journalist with a deep curiosity for the lives of others than anything resembling an ideologue.
As Wilkinson describes in detail, some students at college concerts think Seeger is the father of rocker Bob Seger. Others are too young to even make that misconnection. But by the time Seeger leaves the stage, they’ve all sung along to “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” and understand that American folk music is about life, complete with heartbreak, trouble and hard work.
Source: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=979759
| At 90, Folk Musician Pete Seeger Has No Intention of Slowing Down | |
New York 12 May 2009 |
“If I didn’t think music could help save the human race, I wouldn’t be making music,” Seeger said.
Path to fame
Pete Seeger first came to fame in the 1940s, as a member of the Almanac Singers, then of the Weavers, and then went on his own. He was a founder of the Newport Folk Festival, where his performances in the early 1960s were captured by filmmaker Murray Lerner.
Yet Seeger says he never planned to become a musician. The son of classical musicians, he could play several instruments by age five. But as a teenager, he says, he wanted to spend his life in the woods.
“I said I’m going to be a hermit,” he said. “That’s the only way you can be honest in this world of hypocrisy. And I really meant it.”
Music was means to an end
When Seeger took up music, it was to advance his political views, especially for civil rights and social justice, peace and the environment. He believes he made his greatest contribution before 1960, setting an example for younger singers like Bob Dylan.
“I showed a generation of young people, you don’t have to be a hypocrite yourself. You can find people who would like to sing with you and to listen to your songs. And now there are tens of thousands of us,” Seeger said.
These days, Seeger often sings with his grandson, musician Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, as in a video by the Hudson Valley Music Channel at last summer’s “Corn Festival” in Beacon, New York, where he lives.
It was one of many events to benefit Clearwater sloops – tall ships that are environmental classrooms sailing the Hudson River. Seeger launched Clearwater in 1969 to publicize the need to clean up polluted rivers. Today, the Hudson around Beacon is safe for swimming.
“If there is a world here in a hundred years, it will be because hundreds, millions of people used the brains God gave us,” Seeger said. “And they may do a simple little thing every day, like putting the trash in the right place, or finding a way not to use a car.”
A simple life
Seeger still lives on the mountain where he and his wife Toshi built a log cabin in 1949. And he still chops wood almost every day.
They were living there in 1955 when, as a radical and former Communist, Seeger was called to testify about his political beliefs and associates before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused, saying the demand violated his First Amendment right of free speech.
Six years later, he was found guilty of contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in prison – although the case was later dismissed.
As an old man, Seeger is at home in his country.
Some of his songs have become akin to national anthems – like his version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” which he performed at the Lincoln Memorial concert to celebrate President Obama’s inauguration.
Seeger led the huge crowd in a sing-along, as he does wherever he goes.
Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/Entertainment/2009-05-12-voa14.cfm
| Star-Studded Celebration Marks Pete Seeger’s 90th Birthday | |
Washington 12 May 2009 |
When most Americans approach the age of 65, their thoughts turn to retirement, and slowing down to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Then, there’s legendary folksinger-songwriter Pete Seeger, who celebrated his 90th birthday May 3, by performing at a star-studded fundraising concert in New York City. Seeger is not only a longtime activist, bu also a music legend.
Although the goals of world peace and environmental purity Pete Seeger has championed through song for more than 60 years still haven’t materialized, he isn’t giving up. The 90-year-old troubadour joined Bruce Springsteen, Bela Fleck and others, performing at a concert to raise money for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc., the environmental group that Seeger launched to help clean up New York’s Hudson River. And you shouldn’t be amazed that the singer decided to celebrate with a benefit, as Pete Seeger has long fought for causes he believes are worthwhile. On his most recent album, album, Pete Seeger at 89, he talks about the need to be active and involved in the world around us.
“Now you and I, no matter where you live, has a job that everyone has to get involved in,” Seeger said. “Not just cleaning up a river, but an entire word, before it gets blown up.”
Power of music
For many, Pete Seeger will always be America’s most-famous, and infamous, folk singer. Born in New York City, he grew up believing that song has the power to change the world. Seeger dropped out of Harvard College in 1938, and began working with music archivist Alan Lomax, assisting him on song-collecting trips through the American south. In the early-1940s, Seeger formed The Almanac Singers, a highly-politicized singing group known for recording union songs and anti-war anthems.
While the start of World War II meant the end of The Almanac Singers, a stint in the Army didn’t mean the end of Pete Seeger’s singing career. In 1948, he formed The Weavers, who soon became one of America’s favorite singing groups. Poet Carl Sandberg wrote, “The Weavers are out of the grassroots of America. When I hear America singing, The Weavers are there.”
One of the most-famous songs by The Weavers, “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena”, makes an appearance on Pete Seeger at 89, albeit in a slightly different version. The 21st Century version includes not only an English translation of Israeli song, but also a translation in Arabic. And as Pete Seeger describes it, all the parts harmonize with each other.
Communist witch hunt
As popular as it was, “Tzena Tzena Tzena” and his other hit songs couldn’t rescue Pete Seeger from the Communist witch hunts of the early-1950s. Three members of The Weavers were named as members of the Communist Party. The group was soon ostracized. Despite selling millions of records, The Weavers couldn’t get hired for concerts, and were dropped by their record label. In 1955, Pete Seeger was called to Washington to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee, where he was questioned about his political associations. While he was willing to talk about his own political beliefs, Seeger refused to name other members of the various political groups he joined. “I am not going to answer any questions as to my associations, my philosophical or my religious beliefs, or how I voted in any election or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked,” he told the committee.
Because of that, on July 26, 1956, the House of Representatives voted 373 – 9 to cite Pete Seeger, playwright Arthur Miller, and six others for contempt. Five years later, Seeger’s case finally came to trial. He was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison, resulting in worldwide protests. Although the verdict was overturned, that dismissal didn’t mean a return to business as usual for Pete. He was still blacklisted (ostracized) by many organizations, making it difficult to book concerts. Pete Seeger didn’t return to U.S. radio and television until the late-1960’s.
Presidential honors
All the more remarkable is, that in 1994, Pete Seeger returned to Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of the Arts, the nation’s highest artistic honor. Two years later he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And this past January, he performed at the Lincoln Memorial in a concert to celebrate the presidency of Barack Obama. At 90, Pete Seeger has a list of honors longer than the neck on his famed banjo; not bad for a man who says he never planned to make music his career.
“I did not want to be a professional musician. I liked to sing, but I thought the music business was full of hypocrisy. I did, though, go sing in the schools and in summer camps,”Seeger noted. “And then some of the kids grew up and went to college. And I, during the ‘frightened ’50s’ when the blacklist was in the popular music business, I just went from college to college to college to college to college to college to college. The most important job I ever did. I could have kicked the bucket [died] in 1960. My job was done! After me, a whole bunch of young people came along: Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and a whole lot of others. And now, it’s out of control.”
Optimism endures
It was Pete Seeger who changed the words of an old spiritual from “We Will Overcome” to “We Shall Overcome”, and then sang it to American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who went on to make it an anthem of the civil right movement in the 1960s. Seeger’s optimism endures. The new political sing-along, “If It Can’t Be Reduced”, and the other songs on Pete Seeger at 89, are infused with the feeling that anything can happen, and everything is possible if we all work together.
Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/Entertainment/2009-05-12-voa10.cfm
Sunday night at Madison Square Garden, 51 artists played a 4-1/2 hour concert for 18,000 people in salute to the 90th birthday of folk great Pete Seeger.
Participating were some of the people that followed in Seeger’s footsteps, like Tom Paxton, all the way up to modern artists not normally associated with the folk genre, such as Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello.
Thank you to Jessica R. and an anonymous reader for song information and a huge thanks to Matthew V. at CasaCoisalinda who helped in filling in the holes and setting us straight on the running order.
Source: http://winkscollectibles.blogspot.com/2009/05/set-list-pete-seegers-90th-birthday.html
| Admired and beloved Maestro Pete Seeger:In these moments the tribute concert that dozens of singers are justly offering you is being celebrated. Passing through my mind are some of the times that I have had the privilege of enjoying your talent, which has seduced multitudes.I remember you in Havana, singing in solidarity along with the Sound Experimentation Group; I remember you in that tour that was dedicated to Victor Jara, through several cities in Italy; and I am also reliving that frosty night in February 1980 in which, responding to your call, we traveled from New York to Poughkeepsie and we listened to your “Snow, Snow,” the masterwork of someone asking questions of a winter landscape.
I tried to come back to be with you today, but, as you well know, I was not allowed to get there by those who do not want the US and Cuba to get together, to sing to each other, to talk to each other, to understand each other. They are the ones who think that the world is divided into the powerful and the weak; the ones who only appreciate those who are rich and strong. They are the ones who do not forgive us for the fact that, even though we are small, we have decided to live standing up on our feet. Reality cries out that these brutes must be getting fewer and fewer in number, but somehow that minority still rules and gives the orders. Some of them saw danger in the idea that we would meet and that a simple act of brotherhood would symbolize two neighbor peoples who can agree in song and in affection. But not just me, dear Pete: all my worthy and no doubt improvable people admire you, respect you, and celebrate your honorable nine decades defending social justice, peace, and culture. Here no one sees you as a danger, but as an extraordinary friend whom we are not allowed to embrace as freely as we would like. That is why not just I, but all of this Cuba that loves you, blockaded still by the abusers, is at your side now singing your prophetic ‘We Shall Overcome’ and the ‘Guantanamera’ of our Martí. A kiss for Toshi and a big hug for you from Silvio Rodriguez Dominguez |
Cuba’s Rodríguez Claims Seeger Birthday Ban
May 06, 2009 – Billboard
By Howell Llewellyn, Madrid
Leading Cuban singer songwriter Silvio Rodríguez has criticised the U.S. government for not granting him a visa to perform at the Madison Square Garden concert in New York to mark Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday. Dozens of stars and musician friends played alongside Seeger at the May 3 concert, including Bruce Springsteen and Joan Baez.
“I think the Department of State’s attitude is very contradictory with the wish expressed by President Obama for a rapprochement with Cuba,” Rodríguez told the Cuban Communist party daily Granma.
He added that he felt “as embargoed and discriminated” by the Obama administration “as by other [previous] U.S. governments.”
Rodríguez, who has known Seeger for decades, was invited to perform at the tribute. He was in Paris 48 hours ahead of the concert, but decided to fly to Havana 24 hours before the event when he had not been granted the visa. Rodríguez criticised “the lack of respect shown to the invitation by the Department of State.”
Seeger is widely admired in Cuba, which he has visited five times, for his opposition to the U.S. economic blockade against the island. His version of “Guantanamera” made the Cuban song internationally famous.
In a letter to Seeger published on the Cuban web site www.cubadebate.cu, Rodríguez says “I tried to be with you again, but as you know, those that do not want the United States and Cuba to join, sing, speak and understand together, would not let me arrive… Some of them saw a danger in us meeting up to share a simple act of fraternity that would symbolize two neighboring peoples coinciding in songs and affection.”
Rodríguez, a former elected member of the Cuban parliament, was nominated for a 2007 Latin Grammy award for best album by a singer songwriter. “Erase Que Se Era” (Unicornio) is a compilation of songs Rodríguez wrote between 1968-70.
Together with Pablo Milanés, Rodríguez helped found the politicized nueva trova genre a decade after the 1959 revolution.
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| Find this article at: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i30b29365238b3652ac24fa177a4c3761 |
It was some garden party. Eighteen thousand people packed into Madison Square Garden Sunday night to celebrate the first 90 years of Pete Seeger’s life.
The legendary folk singer is a living history of the 20th century’s grass-roots struggles for worker rights, civil rights, the environment and peace. Powerful, passionate performances and tributes rang out from the stage, highlighting Seeger’s enduring imprint on our society.
Bruce Springsteen opened his set with a tribute to Pete, saying, “As Pete and I traveled to Washington for President Obama’s inaugural celebration, he told me the entire story of ‘We Shall Overcome,’ how it moved from a labor-movement song and, with Pete’s inspiration, had been adopted by the civil-rights movement. And that day, as we sang ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ I looked at Pete. The first black president of the United States was seated to his right. I thought of the incredible journey that Pete had taken. … He was so happy that day. It was like, Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man.”
Springsteen recalled Pete’s only request for the inaugural: “‘Well, I know I want to sing all the verses [of ‘This Land Is Your Land’]. You know, I want to sing all the ones that Woody [Guthrie] wrote, especially the two that get left out … about private property and the relief office.’ … That’s what Pete’s done his whole life: He sings all the verses all the time, especially the ones that we’d like to leave out of our history as a people.”
The oft-censored verses, for the record:
“In the squares of the city, under shadow of the steeple / At the relief office, I saw my people / As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling / This land was made for you and me.
“A great high wall there tried to stop me / A great big sign there said private property / But on the other side it didn’t say nothing / That side was made for you and me.”
Seeger’s unflinching commitment to social justice landed him before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. He told HUAC, “I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, that I am any less of an American than anyone else.” Seeger was blacklisted and didn’t appear on television for close to 15 years until he sang on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.”
Seeger told me: “The Smothers Brothers were a big, big success on the CBS television. And … in the spring of ‘67, CBS says, ‘What can we do to make you happier?’ And they said, ‘Let us have Seeger on.’ And CBS said, ‘Well, we’ll think about it.’ Finally, in October they said, ‘OK, you can have him on.’ And I sang this song ‘Waist deep in the Big Muddy, the big fool says to push on.’… In New York, they scissored the song out. The Smothers Brothers took to the print media and said, ‘CBS … censored Seeger’s best song.’ … Finally, in late January of ‘68, CBS said, ‘OK, OK, he can sing the song.’” The song tells of an Army captain who drowned while ordering his troops deeper and deeper into a river—an obvious metaphor for U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
In 1949, Pete Seeger and the great “whitelisted” black opera singer and actor Paul Robeson held a concert in Peekskill, N.Y., an upstate village with an active Ku Klux Klan. A vigilante mob stoned the crowd. Hundreds were injured. Pete took rocks from that assault and incorporated them into his fireplace—so that the stones meant to maim now just protect the flame.
Dear to Pete for his life has been the Hudson River, said to be one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world. In 1966, Pete co-founded the environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which uses a beautiful wooden boat and an annual celebration to engage and educate people on the need to clean the Hudson and protect the environment. There is a movement to nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize (see nobelprize4pete.org).
At Madison Square Garden, Pete was center stage, playing his banjo. His singing voice is faint now, after 70 years of singing truth to power. He mouthed the words to the songs, but what came out were the voices of the 18,000 people in the audience, singing out. That’s Pete’s legacy. That’s what will carry on.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.
© 2009 Amy Goodman
Springsteen to Seeger: “You Outlasted the Bastards”
Posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 05/04/2009 @ 10:14pm
“You outlasted the bastards, man,” Bruce Springsteen told the roaring crowd.
I think that was my favorite line at the rollicking birthday concert celebrating Pete Seeger’s 90th!
There were other uplifting, astonishing moments Sunday night at Madison Square Garden, at a five-hour concert which Seeger only OK’d because it raised much-needed funds for his Clearwater project–a non profit organization which the oft-maligned bard started in 1969 to clean up his beloved, polluted Hudson River.
Fifteen thousand people, of all ages, (okay, median age was probably 55) danced, clapped and sang along as Seeger did a soaring version of “Amazing Grace” and the saintly looking Joan Baez sang ” Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”
Arlo Guthrie reminded us that Pete, like his father Woody, “believed in the power of the people singing songs to change the world.” Richie Havens reminded us why “Freedom” is a great anthem for all times. Tim Robbins and his son, strumming the guitar, to “Michael, Row The Boat Ashore.” Ruby Dee entranced with her enchanting reading of a poem (for peace) written by Pete’s uncle before he joined the Foreign Legion. In between, a startlingly youthful Emmylou Harris recounted correspondence she had with Pete as a young folk singer; Tom Morello and Taj Mahal teamed up on “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”), and John Mellencamp offered up “If I Had a Hammer.” Congressman John Hall, once the lead singer for one of my favorite groups, “Orleans,” joined in several rounds.
Toward the end of the five-hour Seeger-apoza, Springsteen announced to the crowd, “Pete’s gonna come out,” and “He’s gonna look like your granddad–if your granddad could kick your ass.” If character and integrity keeps you youthful, and I believe it does. Seeger looked all of 25–of strong backbone and spirit and moxie and with keen eyes which are the stronger for having seen the best, and the worst, of our country’s history.
In so many ways, Pete is a repository of American history in himself. As Springsteen said, he has a “stubborn, nasty, defiant optimism,” and he serves as “the stealth dagger through the heart of our country’s illusions about itself.”
Springsteen also told the crowd about his own youth, growing up in a town that endured race riots, and how times have changed: “Pete, you outlasted the bastards, man.”
He spoke about “This Land is Your Land,” which he said Seeger moved from an anthem of the labor movement to one of the civil rights movement, and he described preparing for their duet on the song at Obama’s inauguration, in freezing weather,( Pete had packed his long underwear), when Seeger said: “I know I want to sing all the verses–all the ones that Woody wrote, even the two that usually get left out.”
“There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me; Sign was painted, it said private property; But on the back side it didn’t say nothing; That side was made for you and me.”
As Springsteen and Tom Morello sang a rousing, yet sober, version of ” The Ghost of Tom Joad,” it seemed that there was enough humanity in that one concert hall to fill all of nation with amazing grace in these hard times. As New Jersey’s and the nation’s bard summed it up: “Pete sings all the verses, all the time–especially the ones we’d like to leave out of our history as a people.”
by Dan Shapley, Editor of the Daily Green
Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday party and my Kumbaya moment.
One windy Sunday several years ago in Beacon, on the east shore of the Hudson River, I left friends momentarily to chase a paper napkin that had fluttered off the picnic table where we’d spread out lunch. There, just behind a squat building with a full strong tree growing out of the interior and straight through the roof, was Pete Seeger, the legendary folk singer and activist, pulling away driftwood left to block a dock by the receding tide.
The building was the Beacon Sloop Club, the home of the folks who maintain the Woody Guthrie, the red-sailed cousin of Seeger’s other replica, the Sloop Clearwater. I was a reporter at the time, covering the Hudson Valley environment for the Poughkeepsie Journal. It wasn’t anything noteworthy to run into Pete Seeger on my beat — anywhere there was a cause or a group of children, odds are there would be Pete Seeger and his banjo, trying to get a crowd to sing along with him. But this was a rare intimate moment, and I took the chance the wind had offered to help a legend with some simple labor and to ask him some questions, about the state of the Hudson River and about his plans to build a floating pool in the river so kids could develop a first-hand love for the Hudson, but mostly about newspapering (his first goal was to be a journalist, after all, and there’s a reportorial style to his songwriting that acts as a ballast to the poetry and the activism).
It’s a wonder of small town living, maybe, or of Pete Seeger (or both) that I had the chance to casually chat with a legend — a man who fomented with Woody Guthrie and sang with Leadbelly, who fought alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King for civil rights, who was indicted during the McCarthy era (and who is still reviled for his communist sympathies — just wait for the comments below), who had the crazy idea that building a beautiful boat would turn back the tide of pollution on one of the nation’s most notoriously fouled rivers, who won’t sing “This Land Is Your Land” without the “subversive verses” about trespassing and hungry out-of-work laborers, who was an outspoken peace activist, whether the war was in Vietnam or — at that moment when I met him in Beacon — imminently coming to Iraq. There aren’t many inductees in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame who would list that particular accolade as a footnote.
Here I was, having just visited the Dia:Beacon, a contemporary sculpture museum filling a defunct Nabisco box factory, at a riverfront park built on a reclaimed landfill, where crowds lazed through a farmers market and some threw fishing lines out into the glittering water. None of these things was thinkable 40 years ago when Pete Seeger launched the Clearwater in the sewage-clogged river. And yet, Seeger had not only lived to see his dream of an improbable river recovery– mostly — realized, but even to regret some of what that success had wrought: Little boxes on every hillside.
As we spoke, he had a real and present grace, and a faraway sense of the weight that some stranger would attribute to his words. “He’s going to look an awful lot like your granddad,” Bruce Springsteen warned a packed Madison Square Garden at Seeger’s 90th birthday party Sunday, “if your granddad could kick your ass.” Springsteen, the penultimate act before the ensemble choruses and encores of the evening, talked about the influence that Seeger’s “stubborn, defiant and nasty optimism” had had on him, and his own songwriting. Springsteen, standing beneath an elegant string of lights in the shape of the Clearwater’s sails, called Seeger the “stealth dagger in the heart of this country’s illusions about ourselves,” to raucous applause. Then he and Tom Morello launched into an impassioned performance of Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” the last lines of which, lifted from The Grapes of Wrath, seem to describe Seeger’s purpose:
“Now Tom said ‘Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy,
“Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries,
“Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air,
“Look for me Mom, I’ll be there.
“Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand,
“Or decent job or a helpin’ hand,
“Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free,
“Look in their eyes Mom, you’ll see me.”
It was Tommy Sands, the Irish folk singer who earlier in the night applied the phrase I associate with journalism to folk singing: “Long live Pete Seeger,” he said, “and long live the songs that comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” For myself, I’ve been a reporter and editor long enough that observation and questioning comes naturally. I’ve felt proud about the impact some of the stories I’ve written have had, and felt satisfied that I had meaningful work and a meaningful place in a community. But though you could fit almost three of my lives in the space of Pete Seeger’s years, I know the meaning of my life couldn’t fill this man’s pinkie toe.
The Daily Green was conceived, in part, to help people live the type of environmentally conscious lifestyle inspired by Pete Seeger without having to engage with the likes of Pete Seeger. It’s a place for those of us who feel uncomfortable singing folk songs in crowds, and that’s in large part why it’s valuable. Not everyone would scream out “Arlo!” or “Joanie!” gleefully, as if to old friends, as the younger Guthrie or Joan Baez took to the stage. Not everyone would attend that show. And yet, we all have to embrace the values of environmental stewardship if we’re going to maintain life as we know it on Earth in the face of global warming, the onslaught of toxic chemicals and engineered foods and other threats. There will always be people, too, like the girl in front of me Sunday, who checked her cell phone before swaying dutifully to the civil rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome,” and people like the guy a few seats over in the Pearl Jam sweatshirt who looked heartbroken that Eddie Vedder was a no-show but — who knows? — maybe took something unexpected away from the night’s performances. Nothing wrong with any of that. I’ve spent my life sitting on my hands sweating out the singalongs as a Hudson Valley boy who can’t help but end up at these kinds of concerts. (Truth is, I was blown away by Sunday’s concert first because of the music: it was unexpectedly awesome, beyond my expectations by far.)
Even if the idea of singing “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore,” makes us cringe, we can each still do our part. I’ve always done my part, I felt, sitting on the outside of Pete Seeger’s movement looking in, translating it — if you will — for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t attend the rally. I’ve stood by while Pete Seeger tried to inspire crowds to sing. I’ve felt at times moved, and I’ve felt at times saddened: It’s been decades, I’ve thought, since crowds were really inspired to sing folk songs in groups, decades since that singing would have meant something. The denizens of the digital age don’t sing Kumbaya. For the record, neither did anyone on Sunday — but the movement was there: Aging hippies, yes, but others too, and all ages. Pete Seeger’s been trying in every way he can think of — and certainly in ways that no one has ever thought before him — to inspire more people to be a part of his movement. Whatever it takes, and whatever might just work: Songs, sloops, river pools, or standing alone holding a “Peace” sign at an intersection outside a mall in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “Pete has been standing at that intersection all his life,” the actor and activist Tim Robbins said, “teaching us that change doesn’t happen with a movement, but with a person.”
Pete Seeger can hardly sing these days. When he talks, his voice is strong; when he walks, he carries his tall frame lightly; and when he plucks his banjo, the tunes are crafty and artful. His grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, gave him a playful shove at one point Sunday night, and Pete Seeger just danced away. But his singing voice is a shadow of that clear bell it was even a few years ago; its the one part of him that seems 90 years old, that seems like its been weathered by its history singing through the Dust Bowl and the March on Washington. Just listen, though, as he mouths the words to “Amazing Grace” — that song of redemption penned by a repentant slave ship captain, when he was, like me, in his early 30s. Listen as a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden fills in the verses and the chorus, “slower than you’ve ever heard it sung before,” as Seeger asked for it — “How… sweet…. the sound… That…. saved… a wretch… like me…” That chorus of thousands is Pete Seeger’s voice. You can’t not be inspired. You can’t not sing. You can’t help leaving the performance feeling that you are a part of something — and that you have a responsibility to live more thoughtfully, more compassionately, more honestly, more humanely, more courageously. I did. And I know every time a silent breeze kicks up off the Hudson, whether Pete is in Beacon or not, I’ll hear his big voice on it.
You can hear Pete Seeger and many of the performers from Sunday night, and help the Sloop Clearwater, its educational programs and its Legacy Project to inspire the next generation of environmental leaders, in June at the annual Great Hudson River Revival, a two-day music festival on the Hudson River in Croton.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/pete-seeger-90th-birthday-47050502
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