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Remembering Pete

Two more recollections of Pete.

Seegers In East Berlin
Turn, Turn, Turn - Pete Seeger Is Gone

Seegers In East Berlin
By Victor Grossman, Special to Portside
February 2, 2014
Portside

For someone lucky enough to get to know Pete a little, in East Berlin of all places, and who admired him all my life, the words of Ralph Nader, Bruce Springsteen and many others, also the courageous words of Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara, moved me to many recollections - and also to some hard thinking.

Pete wrote that after the 1950's he was no longer a Communist with a large C, but still one with a small c. As for me, a "red diaper baby" in left-leaning New York, I was already in the "small c" category by the 7th grade. About 1940, during my short stay at the exclusive Dalton School, Pete, hardly known, came to sing to us, invited by his aunt, our history teacher. In a flash he had the mostly wealthy kids joyously singing left-wing CIO songs, like audiences everywhere, with me maybe the loudest.

In 1945, every Saturday night, we sang his songs, with those of Woody, Leadbelly, Paul Robeson and Ernst Busch, at the Folksay square dance and song sessions in the Furriers' Hall - led by Irwin Silber and others from Wochica (Workers Childrens Camp).

Before long I changed that small letter to a capital C and became the kind of Communist Sunkara describes with such understanding, getting petitions signed, selling "Daily Workers", joining picket lines and demonstrating against fascism in Spain. As a student I helped organize a concert for Pete at Harvard, where a happy audience may have doubted his (and my) politics but loved to sing with him. And of course I sang his songs of the Henry Wallace campaign.

After college, as one of those who "went into industry", I took a weekend off my factory job and heard Pete and then Paul Robeson sing at Peekskill - before all the windows on our bus got smashed by police-organized rock-throwers.

It was then the McCarthy crowd took over. The result for me, after getting drafted and unsuccessfully concealing my so repugnant past, was to land, as a fully panic-stricken deserter, in (again, of all places) East Germany, the GDR.

But who can forget such a past? After vain efforts to encourage square dancing I did have a bi-weekly radio series called "Pete Seeger sings", introducing a growing, enthusiastic East German audience (and not a few West Germans) to his songs and those of the other singers, old and then new - Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, P,P and M.

When Pete, Toshi and Tinya finally visited in 1967 (typically both West and East Berlin) I landed the job of East Berlin interpreter. Pete and Toshi, as was their wont, kept ears and eyes open, looking for what was negative and - just possibly - what might even be positive. He rejected a reception in the VIP lounge, was not happy about a failed TV session, and waited anxiously for his solo concert in the biggest theater in town. How would these East Germans react?

It was sold out - to the last seat! One of his first songs was "Schtille di Nacht" - written by a Jewish victim of the Nazis in Poland. There was complete, deeply moved silence. Then "Moorsoldaten",  "Peat Bog Soldiers", the rebellious song of leftwing prisoners of the Nazis at the beginning of Hitler's rule. The entire auditorium joined in, to the last seat in the balcony! Everyone knew that song!  He sang " Lisa Kalvelage", the words of the German woman who learned a lesson from the inaction of her parents against the Nazis and therefore took a stand against napalm shipments to Vietnam.

The song was new, but not the sentiment; this crowd was totally opposed to Nazi fascism and fully sympathetic, sometimes very actively, to the fight of people in Vietnam, or earlier in Algeria (and later in Chile, Nicaragua, South Africa and Namibia). I know that Pete was moved - and from his words and later correspondence I know he was aware that a country like the GDR, with all its blunders (and worse) was not one monolithic, brutal state but rather a complex mixture. Though strongly anti-fascist and pushing solidarity with many freedom struggles, it could never reach everybody with such not always simple messages. But it tried.

Many of its dark sides were a result of fear in the face of immense hostile pressure from without, aimed from the start at extinguishing such an experiment. In the end, due to forces from within and without and very varied in their motives, this was successful. Stasi and the Wall are gone but now we again have Krupp, Siemens, BASF and the Deutsche Bank, all busy expanding worldwide. And now the NSA to boot! But I'm afraid I was never able to chew this over with Pete.

Of course, in East Berlin in 1967 (and again in 1986) Pete also sang jollier songs, and got a somewhat broader picture, singing to a small, young bunch from the recently-formed Hootenanny Club, whose members knew all those still new, wonderful songs like "Guantanamera", "Wimoweh" and of course "We Shall Overcome". They formed the base of a long, interesting if complicated renaissance of guitar-playing, singing young people.

Then too, I accompanied the Seegers to the Berliner Ensemble, the "Bertolt Brecht theater", to see a play by Sean O'Casey (unfortunately in German), one of a variety of theater and opera highlights then in East Berlin. And he met the legendary singer-actor Ernst Busch.

I should mention one little, very typical incident: At supper, before his big concert, Pete found a finely-folded napkin on his plate, decorating a little note, which I translated: "Dear Mr. Seeger, I love your music. Can I get a ticket to your concert this evening?" - signed by "an apprentice waiter". The concert manager, also at the table, said, "Impossible! We have no more tickets, not even for big shots!" But Pete looked at Toshi, she nodded, and he said, "He's coming to the concert - even if he has to carry my banjo in at the stage entrance!" Which is exactly what happened.

[Victor Grossman, American journalist and author, is a resident of East Berlin for many years. He is the author of Crossing the River: A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003).]

Turn, Turn, Turn - Pete Seeger Is Gone
Eli Smith
Down Home Radio Show
January 31, 2014

Today we honor Pete Seeger, the first and greatest of modern folk musicians. Pete did it all. What great talent and vision. We won’t see his like again.  Included here are a few film clips of him over the years that I think are really good.  Click Here to hear an interview I did with Pete in 2007 for Down Home Radio.

Pete Seeger invented being an urban folk singer in its modern incarnation.  All the strands that we see around us today he in a lot of ways did first, the traditional, the popular and progressive sounds, the political.  Pete was among the very first (maybe 1st?) people from outside the tradition to learn thoroughly very traditional banjo playing and ballads from records, field recordings and firsthand sources in the South. He also played popular and classical music on the banjo and was very well versed in African-American music and 12-string guitar playing learned directly from Leadbelly among other sources.   He built on his experience of Woody Guthrie’s songs and style to make his own protest songs in an early modern singer-songwriter style which he invented and which also paved the way for later “Folk-Rock” stylings.  And as he broke through into the mass media with his band The Weavers and as a solo performer, Pete really invented the genre of “Folk Music” as a category within the field of Popular Music as a whole.  In fact, Pete’s father Charles Seeger, a founder of the field of Ethnomusicology, wrote on the subject, saying that in the modern era, folk and popular music would meld as isolated, local and traditional communities were brought under the influence of mass communication and rapid transit.

In the many pieces now being written in the press about Pete I often see it said that he “was a champion of justice, civil rights and the environment.”  That is very true, in addition to and in conjunction with music he was a committed and extraordinary social activist.  He was also a life long socialist, and someone who had a deep sense of compassion, fairness and respect for all people and communities.

His activities in the Civil Rights Movement, Peace Movement and Environmental Movement I have seen widely discussed.  But a major part of Pete Seeger’s legacy and the foundation of his identity as a musician, is his crucial involvement in and commitment to folk music.  Somehow this aspect of his life, which was of a piece with his other convictions, seems to be poorly understood in the mass media and is somehow always mentioned only in passing.  Pete Seeger CARED about folk music – music with a long history, made and perpetuated by regular rural people, played in a rough style and dealing with topics and gritty realities that pop music would never touch.

["To Hear Your Banjo Play" - 1947 - narrated by Alan Lomax and featuring a young Pete Seeger and the only footage of Woody Guthrie in his prime.]

Pete Seeger personally did the fundamental work that popularized the repertoire and created the social context for folk music to persist in our modern mass culture society. For instance, in 1939 Pete operated the recording machine for Alan Lomax as he recorded the great banjo players Pete Steele (whose instrumental Coal Creek March he often performed) and Wade Ward, absolute bedrock recordings for anyone interested in playing real traditional old time banjo music.  But its much more than that…

First off, Pete Seeger invented the concept of “pop-folk,” with his band the Weavers, teaming up on their early records with producer Gordon Jenkins (who also worked with Frank Sinatra, etc… for Decca Records) to create a hybrid music of songs from the folk repertoire in a pop style that was usable by the mass culture industry of the time and became extremely popular. And secondly he pioneered the idea of mass group singing at concert events.  Pete literally sang together with millions of people over the course of his career.

Pete did the hard touring, taking him away from his wife Toshi and family, starting in the 1940's and continuing for decades, that created from scratch the audience for Folk Music in modern post WWII America. Much of his work over the many years has been with children, at schools and summer camps, a field which few popular entertainers particularly in the early days, would touch.  These children grew up and became the folk music audience and folk musicians of the 1950's, 60's and on…

Urbanized or suburbanized people were and are used to experiencing music passively as commercial consumers of CDs, radio, etc.  Pete’s mass group singing at his concerts gave people who had lost a personal connection to making and experiencing music, a way to connect, feel good about their musical selves and be a part of a community.  He gave back to so many people, at least on a basic level, the chance to sing and make music together, a vital part of being human, even as “progress” has worked to alienate and isolate us.  Most were content to sing with Pete at the concerts but many many people also went home and picked up instruments and pursued making music themselves more proactively at different levels.

[Pete sings out against the Vietnam War on the Johnny Cash show with his song "Bring 'Em Home."]

What a talent.  That was what allowed him to breakthrough and operate in the visionary way that he did.  Pete Seeger had so much talent it was stunning.  He was completely unlike any other figure or “entertainer” in the field of American popular music.  He was and is the only person in the popular consciousness who cared about folk music, really knew what he was talking about in a very serious way and took that understanding to the stage in his performances.  He played at colleges, summer camps, big venues, benefit concerts, radio and television, everywhere.  Pete Seeger was also a founder of the Newport Folk Festival that presented so many great traditional artists and is also inextricably linked to the first and greatest independent record company devoted to American Folk Music, Moe Asch’s Folkways Records.  Without Pete, who knows if Folkways could have survived all these years.  He recorded dozens and dozens of albums for them, which remain among their biggest sellers, and have given them so much needed revenue over the years when most of their amazing recordings did not.

Pete was an intellectual and a theorist, as was his father, and was very widely read.  He also made films, field recordings and started the magazines People’s Songs and then its successor Sing Out! where he wrote columns, published songs and engaged in dialogue and journalism for years.  He has also written several books, song books and banjo and guitar instructional manuals.

Pete Seeger is much more than a protest singer, although he was certainly that and in great form.  He was incredibly proactive and prolific.  When did he sleep?  In the few times that I got to meet and spend some time with him I found him totally unassuming, uninterested in stardom in anyway, without ego and yet extremely charming and compelling.  He was indeed very tall and slim, he had small eyes, a ready crooked smile and he drank butter milk.  You realized immediately upon talking with him that he was extremely smart, focused but also a serious dreamer, whose ideas many felt were impractical!  But a lot of them caught on in big ways…  If folk music means something to you, then Pete Seeger lives on.

Here is a very good article that is worth reading from the New York Times:
 

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Here is a photo of Pete Seeger with Geoff and Lynette Wiley, owners of the Jalopy Theatre, New York’s best folk music venue, and myself at a Woody Guthrie tribute event at Brooklyn College in 2012.
 

Here is an excellent interview with Pete Seeger on the news program Democracy Now!

Here’s  a very nice piece about Pete Seeger written by Jeff Place, the archivist at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

And here is a good piece on the origins of the song, “We Shall Overcome,” which was another one of Pete Seeger’s great gifts to us all.

[additional links by moderator]