Every summer in the 1960s, I traveled to Rhode Island - sometimes by car, motorbike, or hitchhiking – for the annual Newport Folk Festival, one of the most legendary musical events in the United States. The festival debuted many of our most celebrated performers, including Joan Baez (1959), Bob Dylan (1963), Jose Feliciano (1964), Johnny Cash, Arlo Guthrie, Linda Ronstadt, Judy Collins, and others too numerous to mention. The festival also raised from obscurity such legendary blues artists as Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Brownie McGee, and Sonny Terry. However, no performer was more loved and revered than Pete Seeger - folksinger, songwriter, activist, a founder of the Newport Folk Festival, and the conscience of my generation. Here is a fitting farewell:
When my daughter was 3 years old and learning to sleep in her "big bed,"( because her brother would be born in 2 months), I bought a set of flowered sheets for it. The first night she got into her big bed, ready for her storytime, she saw the new sheets, looked up at me with the cutest smile and said, "Mummy, where have all the flowers gone?" That was her favorite song, which her mother, who has no talent for singing, nevertheless sang to her all the time. That and just about all of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
ReplyDeleteI'm sadden to hear of Pete Seeger's passing. He was a champion of the working class, and his voice and songs are forever connected to and were an inspiration for workers' rights and the Civil Rights era.
"We Shall Overcome"
"The title and structure of the song are derived from an early gospel song, "I'll Overcome Someday", by African-American composer Charles Albert Tindley. The song was published as "We Will Overcome" in the Sept. 1948 issue of People's Songs Bulletin (a publication of People's Songs, an organization of which Pete Seeger was the director and guiding spirit). "
You beat me by a few minutes. Indeed Seeger was more of a hero to me for his conscience and his courage than his musicianship. He had the guts to stand up to the people who still need standing up to, the commie hunters, the Union bashers, the war mongers. . .
ReplyDeleteWe need such people, now more than ever. This land may be your land, but for how long, I don't know.
I think most of us from our generation loved and respected Pete Seeger. He was our flag bearer using music and words instead of a banner to lead us into the battle for civil and human rights. I am happy Pete lived such a long, productive life and that his illness was short. His legacy will live on forever.
ReplyDeleteI wonder who there might be to replace him. America seems tired of reform, tired of reflecting upon injustice and distracted from what's important. The enemy's power grows while we gorge on beer and football and popular entertainment. Is there really a movement anymore or is there only twerking and jerking and smirking?
Delete“I wonder who there might be to replace him.”
DeleteThe replacement might be us - the legendary critters of this realm. “The enemy’s power grows” but so does the backlash; and no ecosystem tolerates a vacuum or a concentration of power for very long.
For the past seven years, we have shared our reflections on inequality and injustice, and maybe the time has come for us to anthologize and turn ourselves into our own action heroes.
Action hero? Can't I just watch it on You Tube?
DeleteNope, we're the folk zingers now.
DeleteUm, you know I make Dylan sound like Caruso. And I stopped playing the guitar 30 years ago.
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