Dubai Khaleej Times

September 1996

The 'Un-American' Troubadour By Mahir Ali

His disdain for self-promotion is partly responsible for the fact that several of Pete Seeger's songs are better known than he is. If I Had A Hammer (co-written with Lee Hays) and Where Have All The Flowers Gone? (based on a passage in Mikhail Sholokhov's "And Quiet Flows The Don" ) were taken into the charts in the early Sixties by Peter, Paul & Mary. Folk-rock
pioneers The Byrds had a hit with Turn! Turn! Turn!  (most of whose words come from the Book of Ecclesiastes), which enjoyed a revival a couple of years ago by virtue of its inclusion in the Forrest Gump soundtrack. And, as Pete presumably knows - or is bound to discover during a trip to India later this year - the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome  is being
kept alive in a Hindi version ( Hum Honge Kamyaab) which is more or less a literal translation of the original.

But Seeger does not view himself primarily as a songwriter. His most vital contribution to American culture, as he sees it, has been to take the songs of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly to people who had never heard of them. That's characteristically self-deprecatory. Pete has often been known to remark that he wished people would pay less attention to him and more to the
great pioneers he learnt his craft from. Yet it was his own role as a "cultural guerrilla" during the Fifties that contributed in crucial ways to the following decade's protest-oriented folk revival which spawned artists such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. And it is in recognition of his indubitable services to popular culture that the Establishment which once viewed him as a subversive influence has finally begun to offer him some of the honor he so richly deserves.

When Seeger was named two years ago as one of the recipients of a Kennedy Center award (JFK, coincidentally, was Pete's contemporary at Harvard), President Bill Clinton described him as "an inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them . . . He was attacked for his beliefs, and he was banned from television - now that's a badge of honor." In January this year, Pete was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence."

But it is difficult to dispel the impression that Pete Seeger and rock 'n' roll do not go together. This notion derives partly from the fact that many reports of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival describe Seeger as being livid over Dylan's decision to "go electric". Pete, who was the master of ceremonies at the event, has been trying for a long time to put the controversy in perspective. Yes, he told me during a recent long-distance interview, if he'd had an axe he would have cut the offending cable - but only because Dylan's vocals were being drowned out. When Pete requested that the noise should be turned down, he was told that Dylan wanted it that way.  (Booed by a part of the crowd, Dylan left the stage - and returned shortly afterwards to play an acoustic set.) He is keen to point out, however, that he has nothing against electric music and often uses it as accompaniment; if he seldom plays an electric guitar that's only because he isn't terribly good at handling it. What he objects to is gratuitous loudness, and at his concerts he often gets technicians to turn down the volume.
 
Dylan inevitably cropped up again when I asked Seeger about which among the crop of early Sixties folksingers - they are sometimes referred to as "Pete's children" - had left the most lasting impression, on him personally as well as on American popular culture. He also mentioned Phil Ochs. And Joni Mitchell, whom he described as a "great melody writer" who knows when to be simple, "like Beethoven and B.B. King."

But Dylan was something else again. The mid-Sixties switch from acoustic guitar and harmonica based "pointing songs" to considerably more obtuse lyrics set to innovative rock was by no means his only major change of direction. Perhaps the profoundest of these transformations was his recourse to born-again Christianity in the late Seventies; Dylan has never been the same again: in terms of imagination, imagery and word-play, there's a world of difference between the lyrics he wrote up to 1976 or so and those that followed later. Pete defended Dylan's drift away from "pointing songs" by saying that at some stage "you have to start pointing at yourself", but admitted that he hasn't been listening much to Bob - or any other music, for
that matter - lately. But were the convictions Dylan expressed, explicitly as well as implicitly, in his early songs just a charade? Was he hitching a ride on the protest bandwagon for self-serving purposes? "Oh, I believe he has always been sincere," said Seeger without the slightest hint of irony.

It seemed to be a subject he wasn't particularly keen to dwell on. Yet I persisted by recalling my surprise upon discovering that the spectacle staged in Madison Square Garden a few years ago to mark the 30th anniversary of Dylan's artistic début, while it boasted a bunch of venerable rock stars, as well as those who were still in their nappies when Blowin' In The Wind
and A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall   were first sung, did not feature any of the earliest champions of his songs - such as Seeger himself, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul & Mary. Seeger again didn't allow any irony to creep into his voice when he said he thought Dylan preferred to hang out with "those sort of people" nowadays. He was quick to add that whenever they run into each other, which isn't too often, Bob is always "cordial."

It could hardly be otherwise. But the fact remains that the Dylan who extolled "the saintliness of Pete Seeger" and spoke about going into a trance each time he listened to Pete sing Guantanamera   seems to be a rather different person from the enigmatic rock superstar of today. Seeger doesn't envy Dylan his status as a celebrity, saying he would hate to be in a position where he couldn't move about in public without dark glasses.

The recognizability factor, however, is by no means the main thing that distinguishes him, as an artist, from Bob Dylan. Consistency may not always be a virtue, but in Pete Seeger's case it is responsible to a considerable extent for the respect and (sometimes grudging) admiration he inspires.

Pete was born to Constance and Charles Seeger on May 3, 1919. She was a violin teacher who wanted her youngest son to train as a classical musician. He was a musicologist who was gradually drawn to folk music and was involved in the left-wing labor movements of his day; he appears to subtly have exercised a formative influence in driving Pete towards the direction the latter eventually took. A certain amount of genetic determination may also have been involved: the elder Seeger's second marriage, to Ruth Crawford (who specialized in children's songs), produced Mike and Peggy Seeger, who followed in Pete's footsteps by falling in love with the banjo; Mike was a founder member of the New Lost City Ramblers while Peggy made a name for herself as an exceptionally talented interpreter of traditional as well as topical songs even before she crossed the Atlantic and teamed up with Ewan MacColl.

Pete did not, however, consider music a potential career till he was left with no option. While still at school, he was clear in his mind about what he wanted to be: a journalist. But after dropping out of Harvard - because the University of Real Life offered far greater scope for learning - he discovered that jobs were hard to come by in Depression-era America. For a while he earned his meals by sketching farmhouses as he wandered through the countryside. Then, in 1939, his friend Alan Lomax, a folksong collector and archivist, introduced him to Aunt Molly Jackson and Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Leadbelly, king of the 12-string guitar). The following year, at his first proper public performance, Seeger encountered Woody Guthrie; according to Lomax, the renaissance of American folk music can be traced back to that day.

Seeger was instrumental in setting up the Almanac Singers, a loose group of performers (occasionally including Guthrie) dedicated to the task of popularizing music - and raising consciousness - among the working class at a time when large unions and left-wing activism were not yet mutually exclusive. Despite a degree of success in winning over union audiences, the
Almanacs were hindered both by the changing political situation - the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union deprived them of their repertoire of anti-war and peace songs; Communist Party-supported accommodation between organized labor and capitalism in the wake of Pearl Harbor depleted it further by ruling out militant union songs as well - and by the FBI's growing interest
in their activities. Seeger eventually enlisted and ended up in Saipan, where soul-searching and singing experiences gave him an idea that blossomed into the post-war Peoples Songs Inc. But PSI turned out to be an idea whose time was past, and it went bankrupt. The FBI, too, had once more begun to pay attention. By 1949, the Almanacs and PSI (the latter was replaced by Peoples Artists) were history ; red-baiting was rife in the unions - and beginning to spread.

Pete's first major experience of nascent fascism came in September that year, when he was billed to perform at a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, NY, not too far from Beacon, where the Seegers had chosen to build themselves a home on the banks of the Hudson River. Robeson was a baritone who had also evolved into a widely appreciated and versatile stage and movie actor. His pro-Soviet political leanings and his race (he was proud of his African heritage) made him an obvious target for the Ku Klux Klan and like-minded groups of right-wing extremists. The first Peekskill concert had to be called off because of violence, but was rescheduled to take place the following week. And take place it did, with Robeson protected by war veterans and union volunteers as he sang Old Man River  and other songs to an audience of 25,000. Once the show was over, the concert-goers were guided by state troopers into a trap, making them easy prey for right-wing vigilantes who made no secret of wishing to "finish Hitler's job". Rocks and stones were lobbed at all passing vehicles, including that of Seeger, who had driven to Peekskill with his wife and children. They survived without major injuries; Pete later placed the stones that had shattered the windows of his car on the fireplace of his Beacon house.

In the circumstances, one might have expected him to emulate the militancy of Guthrie, whose guitar bore the legend: "This machine kills fascists". But the inscription that Seeger's banjo still bears is altogether more pacifistic: "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." His patience would sorely be tested - and occasionally lost - in the decades ahead. But Pete still holds the view that it's wrong to write off any segment of humanity as a lost cause. "You can't say, 'That man is a fascist
and I will not speak to him'," he told me, because in his opinion the potential for enlightenment exists in every person.

Towards the end of 1949, Pete and three singers with whom he had been performing for a year - Lee Hays, a comrade from the Almanac days, and the younger Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman - appeared at a nightclub and, against all expectations, found themselves on the threshold of fame. The band leader Gordon Jenkins spotted their act and had them sign on to Decca:
shortly thereafter they had a phenomenal hit with Goodnight Irene; tragically, Leadbelly, who wrote the song, had died just a few months earlier. Although the Weavers - as the quartet was known - later winced at the memory of their orchestrated Decca recordings, their popularity had other dimensions too. They struck a chord with Americans with a repertoire that stretched from traditional tunes and the songs of Guthrie and Leadbelly to hymns, ditties and lullabies from as far away as Spain, India, Israel and South Africa.

But the start of the Korean war pushed up the anti-communist ante, and Pete's association with progressive causes - most notably his enthusiastic participation in the doomed 1948 presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace - returned to haunt him. He was named in "Red Channels," and the Weavers found their list of engagements shrinking by the
day. They resurfaced at a 1955 reunion concert arranged by their enterprising and ideologically sympathetic new manager, Harold Leventhal. But that was the year Pete was subpoenaed to appear before the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to seek shelter behind either the Fifth Amendment or the First. While he stopped short of shouting
"You are the un-Americans" at the inquisitorial congressmen, as Robeson had done, Seeger clearly told them: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs . . . I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked . . ." Indicted for contempt of Congress, he was sentenced in 1961,
after a blatantly unfair trial, to a year in prison; on appeal, the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

One would have imagined that Pete's career would be virtually on hold as he fought back against the McCarthyist onslaught. But - partly out of necessity, as he needed an income to meet legal costs and feed his family, and partly because of his enduring compulsion to sing out - Seeger combated adversity by adopting "cultural guerrilla tactics": turning up unannounced
in university towns, speaking on local radio, performing a concert and hitting the road before the John Birch Society-wallahs got wind of his presence. He played in colleges and schools, he sang at summer camps . . .and subtly laid the foundations of the folk-protest movement of the Sixties, by when the young audiences he enthralled and taught to sing had grown up.
During this period he also made scores of recordings for his friend Moe Asch's company, Folkways - traditional songs, industrial ballads, albums of Guthrie, Leadbelly and MacColl songs, and so on.

Seeger left the Weavers in 1958 after commercial considerations compelled his three companions to veto Pete's opposition to recording a cigarette ad jingle. But there was little acrimony: he offered a former pupil as a replacement, and was present at a historic 1963 reunion concert in Carnegie Hall. The four original Weavers congregated for a final concert in 1980, shortly before Lee Hays passed away, and the touching occasion has been preserved for posterity on an excellent documentary named after one of their songs, Wasn't That A Time!

At the outset of the Sixties, Pete found himself being revered by a whole generation of youngsters. He was also signed on by Columbia: a deal which offered the prospect of better nationwide distribution and publicity. That was not to be, although Pete's output for the new label included several albums that are classics of the topical-folk genre. Furthermore, he was blacklisted by network television - frustratingly so, because he was among the first to recognize TV's vast potential as a medium for disseminating folk music.

In 1964, he returned from an extended world tour to Asia and Africa and plunged into the civil rights movement. "You can never be sure whether songs change people's minds," Pete said when asked about the efficacy of his favorite means of communicating ideas, "but the Rev. Martin Luther King used to say that the civil rights movement was sustained by its songs." At the time, however, there was little satisfaction to be had in hearing "We Shall Overcome"  sung all over the place, as the idea of a multiracial struggle for equal rights began to give way to the exclusivity demanded by the Black Power leadership, with non-violence being replaced by its reverse - and as US involvement in Vietnam continued to increase. Till then, Pete
had, despite everything, taken pride in being an American and in harking back to the revolutionary ideals of the Founding Fathers. What his country's government and armed forces were doing in Vietnam filled him with despair. Although he participated in and sang for anti-war rallies, the battle raging inside him drove him in a direction that many votaries of radical and left-wing causes found difficult to understand. He became deeply engrossed in a project which appeared on the face of it to have no ramifications for the class struggle or anti-imperialism: building a sloop with the aim of cleaning up the Hudson.

If truth be told, Seeger had begun to espouse environmental causes long before it became fashionable to do so - as is borne out by his 1966 album, God Bless The Grass  . The state of the Hudson had concerned him ever since the Seegers moved to Beacon. Now he saw an opportunity to do something about it, to improve his often strained relations with his neighbors in the
Hudson Valley - and, presumably, to sort matters out in his own head. But he did not - he could not - stop thinking, or singing, about the world beyond. His doubts about the value of community organizing were allayed to a considerable extent when, after a 1972 concert in Hanoi which he had rounded off with Hudson Valley songs, a Vietnamese writer and war veteran told him: "That was when I decided I could believe you. Only when Americans realize that they too must stay at home and fight to free their corner of the world - as we are fighting for ours - can the world live with America."  An America populated by people who think like Pete Seeger would have been easy to live with.

Seeger continues to believe in community initiatives. "Everyone made fun of the Chinese when they said people could smelt pig iron in their backyards," he told me, but it wasn't such a bad idea. Pete isn't a Luddite: he is fascinated by the miniaturization of technology and what it could mean for the human race, particularly the vast possibilities opened up by advances in computers and networking. He is willing to admit that our race may not exist after 100 years. "On the other hand, the next 50 years could be the most exciting" period that human beings have known: "the challenge of the 21st century is localization, small initiatives". Ideally, people should not only be able to do what they do best, but also - as Marx envisaged - a "whole lot of different things". The transformation, he noted, would be "toughest for dogmatists of all hues".

Once upon a time Seeger himself was accused of dogmatism, particularly over his uncritical attitude towards the Communist Party even after he left it in the early Fifties. But on the whole the charge makes little sense; he holds strong views, but cannot be accused of rigidity or narrowness. Pete is, however, unremitting in his criticism of the American media. Unable to keep the anger out of his voice, he recalls the peaceful student occupation of Duke University following Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, which network TV refused to cover unless violence broke out.

Pete believes that important things were achieved during the Sixties in terms of race relations and the eventual end of the Vietnam war (which was "a victory, not for the Pentagon, but for the people"). However, he says there is a great deal more going on in the US during the Nineties than there was 30 years ago, but it doesn't make the headlines; there were just two or
three major festivals in the Sixties, but there are loads of them taking place nowadays, yet no one hears about them - "it's only the bad things that make the news". And why should that be so? The government and the Establishment, according to Pete, want to make sure the Sixties are not repeated.

But he is not willing to succumb to pessimism either: citing a series of unexpected events - the peaceful collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid, Nixon's exit, the Pentagon's withdrawal from Vietnam - he wants to know, "If you didn't predict these things, how can you be so certain in predicting the future?"

This is part of the message Pete conveys to his audiences when he performs around once a week, mostly up and down the Hudson Valley. At 77, his vocal range has diminished, but he has lost none of his ability to get audiences to sing along - and, increasingly, even to sing in his stead. His audiences consist mostly of established fans, but they sometimes bring along their children . . . and grandchildren (just as Pete now performs with his grandson, Tao Rodriguez). He likes the idea of performing for people who have never before heard him, people who say they don't like folk music (but discover that Seeger also sings the blues and even pop songs), people of varying ethnic backgrounds, such as Hispanics who might be surprised to find him singing in Spanish. He has recently released his first studio album in at least 10 years (the last one, if memory serves, was a benefit LP for striking British miners), with choruses making up for the absence of an audience. Seeger must have at least 100 albums (his own estimate of 60-70 is much too modest) to his credit, the majority of them on Folkways, but also a dozen or so on Columbia (some of which have been reissued on CD, and the firm was scheduled to release a fresh compilation last month), plus three excellent double albums featuring him in concert with Woody's son, Arlo Guthrie.

Once a year, Pete travels abroad with his indispensable partner of over 50 years, Toshi Ohta Seeger. The country the Seegers have chosen to visit this year is India, where they expect to find themselves in November, travelling to Delhi, Calcutta, Varanasi ("to view a project to clean up the Ganges") and Kerala (whose literacy rate Pete is thoroughly impressed by).
 And so Pete Seeger carries on, trying to interpret the world as well as change it. He was once described as "America's tuning fork" - a tribute to his efforts to remove all the barriers that alienate folk from music. But equally important has been his role as America's conscience: the gentle man with the banjo is the very antithesis of Uncle Sam. Long may he strum.

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