Pete Seeger[/caption]Carol Forsloff---He was a rebel with a cause. His cause was human justice; and he made his declarations about it at a time when America was in the throes of anti-Communist hysteria, culminating in the McCarthy hearings. Pete Seeger held firm to his principles, even at a time when his music was blackballed by many, maintaining the rights of the underprivileged, the culturally and racially different and the working man.
Seeger's advocacy for humanitarian issues used the vehicle of music, something that often transcended the boundaries of political and cultural differences. Despite the controversies that had occurred about his political views, most especially in the 1950's, Seeger, the folk singer, heralded the folk music renaissance that swept the country. Everyone was singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and other anthems penned by Seeger, while the hippies paraded with guitars and flowers, joining in the music craze on almost every street corner in America.
Seeger died on Monday, January 27, at the age of 94. His was a rich and event-filled life, although in the decades past the folk music era, few people remembered his was the creative force that launched the music of many. Bob Dylan followed in Seeger's path, he too singing the famous songs about flowers and war and poverty and the common man's troubles. But for Dylan, according to his friend and former lover Joan Baez, it was the music, not the mission, that guided his work. For Seeger it was the mission.
News commentators on the Today Show brushed by lightly the announcement of Seeger's death, focusing instead on the weather conditions of cold and frost now sweeping much of the country and the upcoming Sochi Olympics where the skiing star, Lindsey Vonn, was interviewed about her withdrawal from the famous sporting event due to knee injuries. She will instead be assisting other sports broadcasters in reporting the news of the games. The death of Seeger was offered as a brief anecdote to the introduction of the news. At another time and place, it would have been front page on every newspaper, with his famous photos holding a banjo in one hand, with his head tilted to sing.
Another time and another place far away in another era, where folk music no longer is the rage and instead, among the core of few relative to other music genres, the folk music is called roots. And most of the time it is Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Everly Brothers, Peter, Paul and Mary and others who are associated with the folk music of the 1960's. The parenting of Pete is submerged, as the younger heirs of his music, now aging or gone, are remembered still.
This journalist never met the man but knew many of his friends in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Seeger's music was performed in coffee shops and homes years after the rest of the country turned to rock and roll instead. Vivian Richman, whose own music is in the Smithsonian, learned much about folk music from Seeger, a personal friend, then became one of those who helped carry the message and music of her friend. When she died in the late 1980's, it was Seeger's large bouquet in remembrance of his friend that folks remembered at her funeral and in the years since. For Seeger was known as a man who cared about others, not just in the crowds but in those small groups and with individuals who knew him best, as Richman often said about the man she considered a dear friend, mentor and music guide as well.
But it was Pete Seeger's call to action on injustice that he related in song that is the root of folk music, the very heart and soul of the 20th century's movement toward civil rights and to humanitarian causes. Like Seeger, however, the call to arms in music is no longer one heard much, while issues Seeger sang about are replaced by partisan politics and the Me-First money men whose voices ring the loudest. Yet history will remember him, even as modern musicians may not know that Seeger's music served as a model for many and will in years to come.
