Posted on 01/29/2014 6:47:26 AM PST by Borges
That Pete Seeger, who died Monday at age 94, is being hailed as a sort of American hero — re-discoverer and popularizer of traditional folk music, champion of anti-war, civil-rights and environmental causes — is a testament to just how profoundly to the left popular culture shifted over the course of his lifetime. And the popular culture that honored him in life — with a lifetime-achievement Grammy Award and the National Medal for the Arts — did so in no small part because Pete Seeger himself did as much as anyone to move it to the left.
If Seeger was “America’s Most Successful Communist,” as I have called him in the past, it was because of his profound impact on popular music, especially through his songwriting.
To understand Seeger’s impact, it makes sense to look back to March 1962 — when a clean-cut group called the Kingston Trio released what would become a No. 1 hit, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” written by Pete Seeger. Adapted from a Ukrainian folk song, it was a lament about the tragedy of war and its victims — tuneful, subtle and evocative. And it was brilliant anti–Cold War propaganda: “When will they ever learn?” The song’s success was a watershed: It marked the beginning of the introduction of political themes and overt social causes into American pop music — a process that would be continued by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and countless others to the point that now we take it for granted.
It was not always so. Critics may ascribe cultural rebellion to Elvis Presley, but Presley himself was no rebel; his aspirations included being a member of a gospel-music quartet. In 1972, he endorsed Richard Nixon. There was nothing political in the lyrics of early rock ’n’ roll. The change that Pete Seeger started with “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” can be seen as the culmination of a process launched decades earlier, in 1935, when the Communist Party announced its “popular front” strategy to wrap the causes of the Left in the trappings of American traditions. As the writer V. J. Jerome put it in the title of an address to the American Communist Party’s 1951 convention, “Let Us Grasp the Weapon of Culture.”
It was the genius of Seeger (who had joined the Party in 1942) to realize that the uncopyrighted songs and musical styles of the rural American South, both white and black, could be adapted to serve as the vehicles for politics. This was no mere happenstance: Seeger was the son of Harvard musicologist Charles Seeger, himself a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. At first, Pete Seeger’s efforts in the 1940s and 1950s — with Woody Guthrie, whom he discovered and helped to popularize, and the Weavers, of which he was a member — were often overtly political. In a song co-written with Woody Guthrie (himself now an uncontroversial icon), “66 Highway Blues,” Seeger sang, “Sometimes I think I’ll blow down a cop/Lord you treat me so mean. . . . I’m gonna start me a hungry man’s union / Ain’t a-gonna charge no dues / Gonna march down that road to the Wall Street walls / A-singin’ those 66 Highway blues.”
But under McCarthy-era pressure, Seeger figured out that he had to be much more subtle. The result was a series of hits in the style of “Flowers” — lyrical, affecting, and effective. They included “If I Had a Hammer,” a huge hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary, (“It’s the hammer of justice / It’s the bell of freedom”) and the Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn,” in which Seeger subtly changed Ecclesiastes to include the anti-Vietnam lyric, “A time for peace / I swear it’s not too late.”
It was just this style that Bob Dylan, who began his career as a Seeger protege (although he would go on to transcend such politicized art), perfected in his anthem “Blowin’ in the Wind.” It was Seeger, as much as anyone, who popularized “We Shall Overcome” — a civil-rights anthem with no overt reference to race.
In other words, Pete Seeger led the way in devising the formula that pushed popular culture leftward: The music (or the movies) had to work as art and avoid heavy-handedness. It is, to be sure, a tragedy that this happened — as much for art as for politics. But in promoting the causes he embraced — undermining the view that the American experiment was noble and the nation good, and imprinting the idea that private business is anti-social — he must be considered a resounding success. For its part, the cultural Right has long, and unsuccessfully, been trying to match his example.
Pete Seeger in the final analysis was an enemy of the people.
Interesting.
The only good Communist is a dead Communist - and now Seeger is good.
That he had talent is quite beside the point - he made the wrong decision at every point in his life on the big issues, having joint the CPUSA in 1941, at the height of Stalin’s powers (and purges). Until Hitler invaded the USSR, he was against U.S. involvement in the war - thus aiding Hitler indirectly. He was a huge force for the Left and, unlike Joan Bayez, NEVER APOLOGIZED for being on the dark side and the consequences of having taken part in its activities.
I’m glad the SOB is dead - he can’t pollute any more minds now, and he’ll be answering for his actions.
It also meant then to score with chicks you had to mention "Modern Art, Civil Rights or Folk Music."
commie unionist
Quite true.
‘Pod.
I never heard of him till yesterday.
You’ve heard of his songs I’m sure.
Probably. But it never registered.
Sadly, this is true. If Pete Seeger died in say 1975 every obituary would mention word the “communist” in the first sentence. Today, it’s barely noted. He was a “folk” singer whose politics are essentially in line with American icons like Springsteen and Dylan.
Pete Seeger was a commie bastard. He’s a dead one now. Let’s see if the commie POTUS we have lowers the flag in his honor or makes some sort of honor speech for the enemy of the state.
All this talk about folk music, has me thinking out this song....
Teen Angst - Cracker
I don’t know what the world may need,
But I’m sure as hell that is starts with me.
And that’s a wisdom,
I’ve laughed at.
I don’t know what the world may want,
But a good stiff drink it surely don’t.
So I think I’ll go and fix myself a tall one.
Cause, what the world needs now
Is a new kind of tension.
Cause the old one just bores me to death.
Cause, what the world needs now
Is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head.
I don’t know what the world may need,
But a v8 engine is a good start for me.
Think I’ll drive to find a place,
To be surly.
I don’t know what the world may want,
But some words of wisdom could comfort us.
Think I’ll leave that up to someone wiser.
Cause, what the world needs now
Are some true words of wisdom
Like la la la la la
Cause, what the world needs now
Is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head.
I don’t know what the world may need,
And I never grasped your complexities.
I’d be happy just to get your attention.
And, I don’t know what the world may want,
But your long, sweet body lying next
To mine could certainly raise my spirits.
Cause what the world needs now
Is a new frank sinatra
So I can get you in bed.
Cause what the world needs now
Is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head.
Probably cuddling up now to his hero Stalin as we speak.
I don't agree with his politics. That does not prevent me from appreciating his contribution to a great era in music, which is now over.
Bob Dylan is not a Leftist.
Woody Guthrie wrote ‘This Land is Your Land’
It also shows you how far to the left the Democrat party has moved. For all the talk about Republicans moving to the right think about a Democrat party that in 2014 is basically aligned with the politics of Americas most famous communist. I mean Seeger is one of them.
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