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.
I don’t always agree with Seeger about how he would’ve created a more perfect world. But I’d whole heartedly support going back to honest music which expressed people’s thoughts and emotions.
They were in my youth, if often less good-looking too.
For a while it seemed worth adopting their politics. But eventually the stupidity and dishonesty of the whole crowd drove me back toward the light.
This is the problem with the few cultural offerings from the right.
Conservatives need to create music and movies that can stand alone, that are interesting, even compelling without preaching. The message has to be subtle. We are competing for cultural shelf space, and losing badly.
When Rolling Stone interviewer Mikal Gilmore prodded Dylan for the first time, trying to get him to say that Obama was being criticized because he was black, Dylan said:
“They did the same thing to Bush, didn’t they?"
The fourth time Gimore pushed the issue, Dylan said:
“Do you want me to repeat what I just said, word for word? What are you talking about? People loved the guy when he was elected. So what are we talking about? People changing their minds? Well, who are these people who changed their minds? Talk to them.”
When Rolling Stone interviewer Mikal Gilmore prodded Dylan for the first time, trying to get him to say that Obama was being criticized because he was black, Dylan said:
“They did the same thing to Bush, didn’t they?"
The fourth time Gimore pushed the issue, Dylan said:
“Do you want me to repeat what I just said, word for word? What are you talking about? People loved the guy when he was elected. So what are we talking about? People changing their minds? Well, who are these people who changed their minds? Talk to them.”
The best thing Pete Seeger ever did for me was to make my 1963 Vega long-neck banjo valuable. Ah, capitalism.
If you find it in Your heart, can I be forgiven?
Guess I owe You some kind of apology
I've escaped death so many times, I know I'm only living
By the saving grace that's over me
By this time I'd-a thought I would be sleeping
In a pine box for all eternity
My faith keeps me alive, but I would still be weeping
For the saving grace that's over me
Well, the death of life, then come the resurrection
Wherever I am welcome is where I'll be
I put all my confidence in Him, my sole protection
Is the saving grace that's over me
Well, the devil's shining light, it can be most blinding
But to search for love, that ain't no more than vanity
As I look around this world all that I'm finding
Is the saving grace that's over me
The wicked know no peace and you just can't fake it
There's only one road and it leads to Calvary
It gets discouraging at times, but I know I'll make it
By the saving grace that's over me
There’s a liberal religious group called The Family that used sex to recruit men. Rose McGowan’s parents belonged to it at one point IIRC.
The goal of getting someone into error is easier than getting them out and most men rush in when it comes to sex.
You may not like his politics, But Pete Seeger sums up my feelings about our POTUS in his song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”
Seems like some folks are still following that “Big Fool”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnJVkEX8O4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Here are the final verses of the Pete Seeger song:
Now I’m not going to point any moral —
I’ll leave that for yourself.
Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking,
You’d like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers, that old feeling comes on,
We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy,
The big fool says to push on.
Waist deep, neck deep,
Soon even a tall man will be over his head.
We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy,
And the big fool says to push on.
I am impressed. That Seeger song could be The Ode to Obamacare.
My thoughts exactly.
The creep that taught little kids about “the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees.”
What a guy!
Not Dylan!
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