For Pete's Sake
The huge party held just now at Madison Square Garden for Pete Seeger's ninetieth birthday, and to raise money for his eco-project, the Hudson River sloop Clearwater, was fun enough. Slapped together, consisting of one- or two-song appearances by Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Dave Matthews, Roger McGuinn, Taj Mahal, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Bragg, and so on, and then recombinant recombinations of these and other performers, the event had an up-and-down impact on the allegedly sellout crowd . (It didn't look quite sold out.) But you didn't really go to see it it for the music. You went to it for the sentiment, and to honor a man whose important role in the life of this nation and in the world of music for the last seventy years won't be fully understood until he's gone.
The high points of this marathon -- it was four hours -- were Richie Havens singing "Motherless Child" and then there was Richie Havens singing "Motherless Child." I would have him sit in on no show that I wasn't ready to allow him to steal and carry away. Dressed in a purple robe, bald of head and long of beard, he was as ferocious and mesmerizing as I've ever seen him. Arlo Guthrie was great, as well, his geniality and ease as impressive as ever, his guitar computer-monitor blue, and his Seeger pedigree stronger than anyone else's except for Seeger's wife and the rest of their family. He led the audience in singing "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep" and "It Takes a Worried Man," with someone whose name I didn't catch performing perhaps the first and last Jew's-harp solo to be heard in the Garden.
The audience was gray but not all gray -- plenty of young people, too. Nostalgia, genuine and wishful, seemed almost as perceptible as the mist from the wood-preserving humidifiers that sent wispy clouds onto the stage. But for all the performers' claims of music's continuing importance to the struggles of the day, and for all the genuine admiration and gratitude that washed over Mr. Seeger during the evening, there was something anachronistic in the air. As someone said from the stage, a union now OWNS a car company. The Internet builds different kinds of movements from those built by audiences gathering on college campuses and with the Weavers in Town Hall singing union songs and "Freiheit" or coal miners singing "Which Side Are You On?" Do you even know what "Freiheit" is? It would make you want to pick up a gun, join the Lincoln Brigade, and fight the Spanish Civil War all over again.
Anyway, it seems to me, somewhat sadly, that group singing, while it certainly helped to galvanize various important political changes in America, the Civil Rights movement prominent among them, will probably not do so again for a long time, if ever. The event did raise a lot of money to help keep the the Hudson River clean, and that is far from nothing. But the pleasures of tonight's concert, while considerable, had an undeniable quaintness about them, like (no doubt) yours truly.
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I've been honored to see Pete Seegar twice in my life. The first was at the Athens (OU) Convocation Center in 70 or so, the second time was at the Northwest Folklife in Seattle 12 yrs ago -- with my then wife to be -- where we stood at the front of the stage, close enough to touch him.
I can't recall which songs in particular he sang either time. What I recall is how he opened so many hearts with song, and that when I turned around I saw that my eyes weren't the only ones filled with tears. I have never seen someone that can tap into his audience the way he does, and make them believe that they too can be a little better and do good in the world.
He is beyond being a living national treasure. The world is a much better place for him having traveled with us.
Happy Birthday Pete! May there be many, many more...
And we don't have any better understanding of his importance after this article either. Instead of reports of crowd size or beard length, perhaps there could have been a few facts to back up the premise of the article. Not everyone on HuffPost is old enough to have marched and sung along.
Oddly enough, I had lunch today with a friend who told me his parents were married in 1949 in NY and Seeger was the wedding singer. He's in the wedding album. True story.
Still, I wish I could have been there.
Would that more musicians and performers had a "we" perspective rather than a strictly "me" perspective.
Many decades ago Pete Seeger evolved away from the idealistic belief in communism that many, many Americans shared until more of Stalin's crimes became known, and toward something more akin to socialism. Extremes like communism and capitalism are flip sides of the same coin and can't survive because of the built-in despotism and lack of accountability of the overlords who operate in class privilege and secrecy.
Pete Seeger's a good role model for evolving away from harmful systems when new information is learned, and for understanding and honoring that people are intrinsically equal and there is power in organizing together to fight oppression.
I was among the 20,000 at MSG last night--what an event and what a tribute. Two incredible highlights, in addition to some of those already mentioned. One was the community singing of "We Shall Overcome", with the entire crowd standing, linking arms or hands, and swaying in time to the music, which took many of us old enough to remember back to the '60's. The other was Pete himself teaching the entire crowd three part harmony for an exquisitely slow version of "Amazing Grace", holding all of the beautiful notes to give all of us time to find our melody or harmony pitch. As Pete said, "There are no wrong notes so long as you're singing along."
Pete Seeger deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom and we now have a President who can give it to him. BTW, did President Obama send a congratulatory message for Pete's 90th birthday?
See Daniel Menaker's Profile
Yes, the President did send a letter, and it was displayed on the big screens in the Garden. I think he should have called and spoken, but we take what we can get.
I loved Pete as a child, and my child listened to him as well. He deserves much credit for cleaning up the Hudson River as well. My earliest memories are looking out over the Hudson from Nyack, NY. I was convinced that the Hudson was "Moon River", which was very popular at the time. I think Pete plays well to children and their innocence, but children grow up, and learn that communism is a failed idea, and no country has ever advanced itself under that system, nor offered it's peoples the opportunity to advance themselves to their highest ability. As another reviewer of this show pointed out, environmentalism has since eclipsed communism, but with a Marxist in the White House, it's still a fine day for communists. Yeah, a union owns a car company. Let's watch and see how that works out for everyone. Should work out about as well as Bob Dylan's "TALKING BEAR MOUNTAIN PICNIC MASSACRE BLUES"...
of course there was an anachronistic feel in the air! you don't go to a pete seeger tribute concert to impress the young folk with your hipness.
you go--or i went--because the music was meaningful to you, long time ago, and still is. in our section, there was a couple who must have been 90 or older themselves, who repeatedly had to keep getting up to go--i assume--to the bathroom. it was laborious: they had to use walkers and have someone, maybe their daughter, help them. in one way it was annoyingly distracting, yet i had to admire them for coming to see pete when it was such a hardship. that the music meant so much to them had to be respected.
it still means that much to me, too. i don't want to shun, or speak dismissively of, music that helped form who i am, just because it's not what "the kids" listen to. yes, there's something corny about "we shall overcome" singalongs. but i think the general idea that music moves and unites us as few other things can, lives on and always will. i'm in my 50s but am a 'net addict--i get that the internet is uniting us in a unique way. but i don't think it will replace the power of music, now or ever. i think that's a lot of what last night's concert was about. so glad i was there.
(ps, richie's performance blew me away, too.)
I think about Pete's closing line in Talking Union: "Take it easy, but take it." Its a good lesson that applies to the generations of struggle that he has embodied -- unions, civil rights, Vietnam, the environment, and on. We have probably lost some of our collective memory of what those struggles entailed. Sometimes I walk from my office past a mural where two longshoreman who were killed in the days leading to the San Francisco General Strike and visit a memorial to the Spanish Civil War veterans. It seems distant. But Pete's music, and the music of others (Si Kahn and Utah Phillips among them) has done more than anything to keep that spirit, that sense of immediacy alive. As long as we remember the old songs and write our new ones, we will retain a legacy of hope and commitment. I hope that I can pass that on to my daughter. And I hope that I can retain the kind of humanity Pete embodies throughout my life.
Pete did so much to keep the old songs alive, with many traditionally styled recordings of the old tunes. But he was an innovator too. Lots of his records show his musical training and willingness to experiment. After Scruggs he is the most creative and innovative banjo picker of our time. Thank goodness we have so much of it on Folkways-Smithsonian. let's hear it for his brother Mike and his sister Peggy too!
Pete Seeger's influence on modern American music and politics can't be under rated.
From his days with Woody Guthrie, his singing with the Weavers,his days on the Blacklist, his role in convincing President Johnson to drop out of the 1968 Presidential race, to the vindication of many of his beliefs in the last election, Pete Seeger has been a moral voice for the disenfranchised of the world.
There was a superb PBS documentary about his life called THE POWER OF SONG.
I remember seeing him on SESAME STREET.
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