Harry Targ
Pete Seeger is a
world-renowned folksinger and political activist who was born in Patterson, New
York on May 3, 1919 to musicologist Charles Seeger and classical musician
Constance Seeger. He was exposed to the music of the rural south on tours with
his parents. Seeger began to play the banjo as a teenager. After two-years of
study at Harvard, Seeger began a lifetime career studying and singing the folk
music of people from all over the world.
During his early
years of exposure to and adaptation of what he regarded as people's music, Seeger was
influenced by musicians who created an enduring genre of musical culture that would flower and
grow in post-war America. These included Woody Guthrie, Hudie Leadbetter
(Leadbelly), Lee Hayes, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Aunt Molly Jackson, and the folk
archivist Alan Lomax. Before embracing a career as a solo performer, Seeger organized and played
with the Almanac Singers, before and during World War II and the Weavers from 1948
until the 1960s. In
later years, Seeger would perform with many folk artists and activists,
including the Freedom Singers, civil rights activists, and Woody's son, Arlo Guthrie. Over the
years Seeger has written hundreds of songs and performed them at over a
thousand concerts.
After recording
popular songs such as "On Top of Old Smoky" and "Good Night
Irene", he and the Weavers
were blacklisted in the 1950s for their leftwing connections. Seeger was called to testify
before the red-baiting House Committee on On-American Activities (HUAC) in 1955 and sited for
contempt of Congress when he refused to answer their questions, on first amendment grounds,
about his political beliefs. Seven years later, a Federal Court of Appeals reversed the
conviction and one-year sentence on a technicality. For much of the 1960s
Seeger
was prohibited from
performing on network television. In January,1968, after much conflict between the CBS
network and comedians Tommy and Dick Smothers, Seeger was allowed to sing his anti-Vietnam
war song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" before a nationwide audience. With passion, Seeger
chanted: "We are waist deep in the big muddy and the big fool says to push on."
While Seeger's music
and politics has reflected virtually every progressive cause from the late 1930s until
the present, his work was influenced by the variety of social movements current during
different historical periods. In the late 1930s, as Seeger was learning his craft
and experiencing rural
life, he and Woody Guthrie performed songs about the working class and trade union
organizing. Many performances were in solidarity with efforts to organize
factory workers into the
Congress of lndustrial Organizations (CIO).
Seeger and his
friends sang songs about anti-imperialism as well: for the democratic forces
fighting fascism in Spain, and opposing war in Europe. After Nazi Germany
attacked the Soviet Union and World War II ensued, he and the rest of the folk
left began singing songs in support of a popular front against fascism.After
the war, and for another 25 years, Seeger composed and sang songs opposing the cold
war, nuclear war and later the Vietnam war.
After visiting the
South in the early sixties, he put his talent behind the southern freedom
movement. He helped transform an old spiritual into the anthem of the civil
rights movement, "We Shall Overcome" and brought the Freedom Singers,
young civil rights activists from the south, to folk concert audiences in the
north in 1963. He exhorted his audiences to join the struggle tor civil
rights and he particularly applauded young people who, he said, had taken the
lead in fighting for civil rights.
As sixties movements
diversified, Seeger's music did as well. He began to sing songs about women's rights,
1'I'm Gonna Be An Engineer," and the environment, "Sailing Down This Golden River."
Seeger has written
extensively over the years, for example in the folk magazine Sing Out, and in books about
folk music and has been interviewed from time to time in magazines.
However, his
political philosophy is best reflected in his music. Shaped by the Marxist lens
and popular front
politics characteristic of the era when he began performing, four key concepts inform his music.
First, his songs
reflect historical context, the material conditions of peoples' lives, and the contradictory
character of the lives of his subjects.
Second, much of his
work revolves around class, race, and, more recently, gender. The folk genre,
as it evolved, celebrated the lives of workers and down-and-out men and women
who struggle in the face of economic and political adversity. Seeger took the
admonition of his comrade Woody Guthrie seriously when Woody wrote that he
hates songs that put people down and make them feel that they are no good.
Third, Seeger's music
since the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s has been informed by
opposition to war and U.S. imperialism (although his lyrics might not use the
word). "Where Have All
the Flowers Gone?'' is one of many songs performed by Seeger that articulates the belief that war
is futile and destructive of the human community. During the most recent phase of his career,
his songs have conceptualized how a materialistic economy has made war on the environment.
Finally, much of
Seeger's work offers an alternative vision of society that emphasizes simplicity, harmony
between people and between people and nature, equality, and freedom from class exploitation,
racism, and sexism. While his work sometimes emphasizes how economic and political systems and
dogmatic ideologies threaten the human condition, he also sings about a better tomorrow;
"It's Darkest Before the Dawn," and of course, Woody Guthrie's
anthem, "This Land is Your
Land."
Looking at the corpus of folk music in
the twentieth century, particularly a folk music that links culture and politics, Pete
Seeger perhaps is the most seminal artist/activist. He popularized rural southern music,
working class music, the artistry of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and was the link in the chain
between these figures and Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Bob Dylan of the 1960s.
