Share this postI grew up on American folk music. My fondest memories are gathering with my extended family in Massachusetts to sing informally. I knew the lyrics to This Land is Your Land or Charlie and the MTA long before I knew the words to anything they would play on the radio.
I also grew up with progressive values. On the American side of my family, there have been union leaders, college professors, thinkers and writers; people who cared about social justice, for whom the works of people like Pete Seeger were meaningful. As the New York Times writes:
His agenda paralleled the concerns of the American left: He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. "We Shall Overcome," which Mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil rights anthem.
He was in a group called the Almanac Singers, which also included Woody Guthrie, another legendary progressive folksinger. Their album Talking Union and Other Union Songs was admitted to the Library of Congress as a historically significant recording. Union Maid is on that album, as well as a famous recording of Which Side Are You On?; but it's the lyrics of Talking Union itself that I think are particularly brave. It was originally written in the 1940s, in the midst of World War II - and then re-released at the height of the McCarthy era!
If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, now, ‘twont be long.
You'll get shorter hours,
Better working conditions.
Vacations with pay,
Take your kids to the seashore.
He was the kind of artistic hero who embodied the values I aspire to, and who does not seem to exist anymore.
Over on MetaFilter, I commented:
He was, sadly, blacklisted for being a communist, and recognized as a living legend by the Library of Congress. An anti-war singer, a champion of workers rights, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and a children's entertainer; an undeniable part of America's cultural history. I enjoyed this full-length concert with his half-sister, Peggy.
Here's his version of If I Had a Hammer, which he co-wrote; there's also a Smithsonian Folkways episode about him, which is an hour long and a free download.
