Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
Pete Seeger
for Children
Peter Dreier
Friday, May 5, 2017
Capital and Main
Susanna
Reich, Stand Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to
Justice, illustrated by Adam Gustavson. (Bloomsbury, 2017, $18.95)
Every day,
every minute, someone in the world is singing a Pete Seeger song. The songs he
wrote, including the antiwar tunes, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “If I
Had a Hammer” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and those he popularized, including “This
Land Is Your Land” and “We Shall Overcome,” have been recorded by hundreds of
artists in many languages and have become global anthems for people fighting
for freedom. For over six decades, he introduced Americans to songs from other
cultures, like “Wimoweh” (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”) from South Africa, “Tzena,
Tzena” from Israel (which reached number two on the pop charts) and
“Guantanamera” from Cuba, inspiring what is now called “world music.” His songs
are sung by people in cities and villages around the world, promoting the basic
idea that the hopes that unite us are greater than the fears that divide us.
Seeger
helped catalyze the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. He inspired
people to take up the banjo and guitar, encouraged young performers, helped
start the Newport Folk Festival, and promoted the folk song magazine Sing
Out! that he had had launched with other musicians and activists. Many
prominent musicians—including Bob Dylan, Bono, Joan Baez, the Byrds, Natalie
Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Bonnie Raitt, Holly Near, Tom Morello and Bruce
Springsteen—consider Seeger a role model and trace their musical roots to his
influence. Among performers around the globe, Seeger is a symbol of a
principled artist deeply engaged in the world.
Seeger, who
died in 2014 at 94, wouldn’t have cared that most of the people who sing his
songs don’t know his name. But we should care, because Americans,
especially young people, need to know about the people and movements who fought
for things that today we take for granted. Learning how ordinary people
overcame obstacles to bring about great changes helps give us the confidence
and courage to overcome new obstacles and challenges.
There are
three things we can do to make sure that Seeger’s spirit and legacy lives on.
The first,
of course, is to follow his example of social activism. Seeger was a
much-acclaimed and innovative guitarist and banjoist, a globe-trotting song
collector, and the author of many songbooks and musical how-to manuals. But he
was also on the front lines of every key progressive crusade during his
lifetime—labor unions and migrant workers in the 1930s and 1940s, the banning
of nuclear weapons and opposition to the Cold War in the 1950s, civil rights
starting in the 1950s and the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s,
environmental responsibility and opposition to South African apartheid in the
1970s, and, always, human rights throughout the world.
The second
thing we can do to sustain Seeger’s legacy is continue to listen to and sing
his songs and to teach them to each new generation. Fortunately, Seeger
recorded over 80 albums — including children’s songs, labor and protest songs,
traditional American folk songs, international songs and Christmas songs — that
have reached wide audiences. Seeger’s children’s songs, like the beloved
“Abiyoyo,” are among his finest. Many of his performances and songs — including
the TV show Rainbow Quest that he hosted on a public
television station in New York in the 1960s — can be viewed and/or on the
internet.
The third
way to keep Seeger’s spirit alive is to teach our children about his life.
Writer Susanna Reich and illustrator Adam Gustavson have produced a book
dedicated to that objective. In 38 pages of text, paintings and drawings, Stand
Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to Justice provides
a wonderful portrait of Seeger, focusing on how his strongly-held beliefs
motivated his music and his activism. The book introduces children to the
notion that music can be a powerful tool for change. As Reich notes, Seeger saw
himself as a link in “a chain in which music and social responsibility are
intertwined.”
There are
several recent children’s books about Seeger, each targeted for different age
groups, with different formats and writing styles, including Let Your
Voice Be Heard: The Life and Times of Pete Seeger, Sing It!: A
Biography of Pete Seeger and Listen: How Pete Seeger Got
America Singing.
Stand Up
and Sing is written for kids from ages six to 10. Six year-olds are
most likely going to have the book read to them by a parent, teacher or
caregiver, while many nine- or ten-year-olds will be able to read it
themselves. The book conveys Seeger’s remarkable talent, convictions and
courage without being preachy or talking down to children.
The book
will also inspire adults, who may know Seeger’s songs but don’t know much about
his life, to learn more about this remarkable figure. Reich includes a helpful
bibliography of books, films and and interviews with Seeger that are available
on the internet. Indeed, adults might want to search the internet to find
videos of Seeger’s songs and performances to go along with reading the book to
youngsters and to themselves.
By
recounting Seeger’s life in words and pictures, the book allows the reader to
move through the 20th century decade by decade, providing a history lesson in
the process.
“Pete
Seeger was born in 1919, with music in his bones,” the book begins, and from
there Reich covers the key phases and moments in Seeger’s eventful life.
Coming of
age during the Great Depression, Seeger saw poverty and adversity that would
forever shape his worldview, but it wasn’t until he received his first banjo
that he found his way to change the world. It was plucking banjo strings and
singing folk songs that showed Seeger how music had the incredible power to
bring people together.
His father
(musicologist Charles Seeger) and stepmother (composer and folklorist Ruth
Crawford Seeger) believed in the power of music to bring about change. His
father took Pete to protest rallies about workers’ rights and other causes,
which exposed him to the deprivation and hunger of ordinary people.
While he
was in high school, Pete persuaded his parents to let him buy a banjo — a
fateful decision that eventually changed American music and American history.
During a visit to a folk music festival in North Carolina while still in high
school, Pete saw rural poverty and heard bluegrass music played on a
five-string banjo for the first time. When he returned home, he listened to
records and learned to imitate what he heard – “rhythm, melody, chords, and
words,” Reich notes. For the rest of his life, Pete learned, collected, played,
and popularized songs by working people from around the country and around the
world.
The book
chronicles Pete’s exposure to radical ideas while at Harvard (from which he
dropped out after his sophomore year to pursue folk singing) and after, his
friendship with Woody Guthrie, his days playing with the left-wing Almanac
Singers, his exposure to unions and his plan to help build a “singing union
movement,” his experience in the South Pacific during World War 2, his marriage
to Toshi, and their adventure building a log cabin home in Beacon, New York,
overlooking the Hudson River.
Gustavson
provides beautiful and haunting paintings and drawings of various aspects of
Seeger’s life and of the times in which he lived. There’s Pete sitting on a
piano bench while his father plays the piano and his mother plays the violin.
We see a sketch of unemployed men lined up for free food during the Depression.
The book includes illustrations of Seeger intently practicing his banjo,
performing with Guthrie, shaving in his run-down apartment, and wielding an ax
to construct his log cabin, with Toshi holding their baby near the tent where
they lived while they were building the house.
Reich
doesn’t ignore Seeger’s battles with Red Scare witch hunters that almost
derailed his career. “Then,” the book reports, “a scary thing happened.” Reich
recounts the infamous riot in 1949 at a Paul Robeson outdoor concert in
Peekskill, New York, where right-wing thugs assaulted the performers and the
audience members (most of them left-wingers) in opposition to their radical
views.
“In 1955
Pete was called into court by some congressmen who didn’t think he was a loyal
American,” Reich writes. “Pete refused to answer their questions in the way
they wanted. The threat of prison would hang over his head for the next seven
years.” This passage and others will surely raise questions about free speech
and democracy that all Americans, young and old, should be asking, especially
in the era of Donald Trump.
Reich
describes how Pete and his folk-singing group, the Weavers, had major popular
hits like “Goodnight, Irene,” then faced blacklisting by concert venues,
television networks, radio disc jockeys, and mainstream record companies.
“During
these years Pete could barely make a living,” Reich explains. A drawing of Pete
playing his banjo in front of a group of young kids illustrates how he survived
the blacklist, by performing at whatever colleges, schools, summer camps,
churches and synagogues, and progressive groups would invite him.
“Meanwhile,”
Reich writes, “the civil rights movement was picking up steam.” Readers learn
that Pete popularized the song “We Shall Overcome” and taught it to Dr. Martin
Luther King. Drawings of Pete singing with young activists, talking with King,
and joining the march from Selma to Montgomery show us that he was helping
spread the civil rights message through both his songs and his activism.
“Pete and
Dr. King dreamed of peace,” the book explains, “but in the 1960s the United
States was at war in faraway Vietnam.” Reich describes how Seeger came to write
the antiwar song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” and how TV censors refused to
allow him to sing it on the air, while Gustavson illustrates this episode with a
sketch of soldiers wading through a river in Vietnam and another of him singing
it in front of a TV camera. Reich doesn’t mention that it was the Smothers
Brothers who invited Seeger on their show to perform it and CBS who edited the
song out. She writes that “Luckily, a few months later he was invited back on
TV, and this time seven million people saw him perform “’Big Muddy.’” She could
have taught young readers a valuable Seeger-like lesson if she’d pointed out
that he was invited back only because Americans flooded CBS with calls and
letters in protest.
Reich tells
the story of Seeger’s final, and successful, campaign, launched in 1969, to
clean up the polluted Hudson River by mobilizing people to build the
Clearwater, a majestic replica of the sloops that sailed the river in the 19th
century. The effort, at first written off as simplistic and naive, helped
inspire the environmental movement. The boat brought people to the river where
they could experience its beauty and be moved to preserve it. The annual
Clearwater festival, which Seeger started, continues to this day. The
Clearwater conducts education programs for local school children to learn about
environmental science and activism, a model of hands-on environmental education
programs around the world. In 2004, the Clearwater was named to the National
Register of Historic Places for its groundbreaking role in the environmental
movement.
Reich
writes: “A clean river, a peaceful plant, a living wage – as Pete got older, he
continued to sing, to protest, and to inspire people to speak out for their
beliefs.”
Although
there are several illustrations of Seeger leading people in songs,
unfortunately there’s no drawing of Seeger singing in front of large crowds, at
a concert or political rally, with tens of thousands of people singing along.
Seeger was a gifted and disciplined musician, with a remarkable repertoire of
songs. Although he made it look effortless, he carefully crafted a performing
style and stage persona that inspired audiences to join him. Every Seeger
concert involved a lot of group singing.
Seeger’s
remarkable spirit, energy and optimism kept him going through triumphs and
tragedies, but he outlived all his enemies and remained one of the greatest
American heroes of all time. He endured and overcame the controversies
triggered by his activism.
In 1994, at
age 75, he received the National Medal of Arts (the highest award given to
artists and arts patrons by the U.S. government) as well as a Kennedy Center
Honor. President Bill Clinton called him “an inconvenient artist, who dared to
sing things as he saw them.” In 1996 Pete was inducted into the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame because of his influence on so many rock performers. In 1997 he
won the Grammy Award for his eighteen-track compilation album, “”Pete.” As
Reich recounts in Stand Up And Sing, President Barack Obama invited him to
lead 400,000 people in singing “This Land Is Your Land” at the Lincoln Memorial
as part of his inauguration celebration in 2009.
Gustavson’s
final drawing of Seeger standing on the edge of the Hudson River, wearing his
knitted wool cap and flannel shirt, staring into the distance, with the
Clearwater in the background, is a fitting symbol of his remarkable life as
both a practical man and a visionary, a man who built his home and built a
boat, but also built movements for social justice.
Inspired by
the rhythms of American folk music, this moving account of Seeger’s life
teaches kids of every generation that no cause is too small and no obstacle too
large if, together, you stand up and sing!
__________________________________
Peter
Dreier is an American urban policy analyst, and Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished
Professor of Politics, and director of the Urban and Environmental Policy
Department, at Occidental College.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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