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.
Have you ever read all the lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land”?
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
At Newport, Seeger played the audience a recording of a newborn baby, and said that the final night’s program was a message from everyone to this baby that the world it was being born into was full of hate, hunger, bombs, and injustice, but that the people - the folk - would overcome, and make it a better world.
Enough to drive Dylan away; electric set followed
Until he died, the sheeple had forgotten about Seeger. Now they will name this and that after him, but many still are so uninformed that they won’t know who Seeger was.
Isn't it hard to believe a liberal show like "Room 222" spoofing Pete Seeger? No one would do it now (and not because of his death or his age).
“This Land Is Your Land” is one of the United States’ most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 based on an existing melody, in critical response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”, which Guthrie considered unrealistic and complacent. Tired of hearing Kate Smith sing it on the radio, he wrote a response originally called “God Blessed America”.[1] Guthrie varied the lyrics over time, sometimes including more overtly political verses in line with his sympathetic views of communism,[2] than appear in recordings or publications.
The song wasn’t sung by Seeger until...
The song was sung by Springsteen and Pete Seeger, accompanied by Seeger’s grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009.
This song reeks of commie sentiment.
Jimmy Carter used to quote Dylan, but I though Dylan is leftist. Thanks for the info.
They assail capitalism to try to get the anti-capitalist sheeple to buy their products.
He can still pollute the uninformed sheeple with his remaining songs.
You do know your music history; thank you for that summary. FWIW, I don’t see where calls for equality in opportunity are a bad thing.
Then what do you think about calls for getting rid of private property?
Grandson of Pete the Commie
Tao Rodríguez-Seeger is the son of Emilio Rodríguez, a Puerto Rican filmmaker, and Mika Seeger. After his father was invited by the Sandinistas to document the nation’s civil war, Seeger spent nine years of his childhood in Nicaragua.
...the apple don’t fall far....
On October 21, 2011, Seeger was part of The Pete Seeger March which walked in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street to Columbus Circle. There he performed with his grandfather Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, and other musicians.
He, like the Obamadorkthing, is slime.
The only diff is that Seeger could sing.
Not a Dylan fan but did see him get medal of freedom from Obama (Obama is not giving these to the ted nugent types) and he performed at Obama’s inauguration, saying to the crowd, “change is coming.” Add his songs’ popularity among the anti war social justice crowd and i pegged him as a lefty. I apologize if im wrong. And would be happy to hear he’s not a lefty.
In 1973 someone summed the entire 60’s antiwar and counterculture movement in a single sentence:
“You know, a lot of guys joined the revolution just to get laid.”
Anyway, Seeger is dead. For those who mourn, I hope the rocks fall on them.
Yep, liberal chicks are easy.
Dylan’s output is 99% apolitical. In the 1960s, He wanted nothing to do with the hippies.
Crony capitalism shines a bad light on free market capitalism. But then again, it’s over-reaching, big government that makes crony capitalism possible and powerful. In the USA we HAVE equality of opportunity...only if government gets the hell out of the way. Guys like Seeger and other commies believe that government is the answer. I wholeheartedly disagree.
It’s ALWAYS the same with communists. THEY are the anointed who ‘deserve’ more, YOU are the ruled proletariat... with a boot stamping on your face forever.
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