Tag Archives: Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger and Social Change

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Pete Seeger performing on stage with a banjo in Yorktown, NY.1

Pete Seeger was an American singer, songwriter, folk song collector, and social activist. After his death in 2014, most people today credit Pete Seeger as “one of the most important American musical voices of the 20th century.”2 This reputation that Seeger maintains was not always the case. At one point during his 70 year career, Seeger was a member of the communist party in the United States and was convicted for contempt of Congress after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s.3 He managed to completely revise his reputation during his career and he “lends support to the argument that reputations are radically malleable, even when the figure has not changed dramatically.”

At the beginning of his career in the 1940s, Seeger would often perform at leftist rallies and became well known amongst communist groups. After Seeger began to have accusations of his leftist beliefs, those who were against him had a great effect on his reputation because those who defended Seeger also became the target of attacks. By 1953, Seeger’s record label had dropped him and, his current negative reputation “caused Seeger to be banned from many mainstream venues either because there were outspoken anti-Communists to oppose him or because venues wished to avoid potential controversy.”4

Seeger’s reputation began to change in the 1960s with the resurgence of folk music and emerging social movements. Eventually, the movements Seeger participated in began to gain social favor. While Seeger was shunned from many mainstream performance venues, he performed at colleges instead for a “younger generation that was ready to adopt figures who would challenge the status quo.”5 His music reflected many social concerns of the younger generation and he sang about “the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond.”6 One of his most notable songs is “We Shall Overcome,” which was adapted from old spirituals and became a civil rights anthem.

During the time he was actively releasing music and fighting for these causes which he believed in, he was still ignored and not taken seriously by many in the older generations because they were not taking him seriously. They believed he was “free to sing whatever he likes because this saintly old man can hardly be ‘seriously’ proposing rebellion.”7 They were wrong. This disagreement still happens very frequently in today’s society as well, both in music and other social platforms. There are many in today’s present society that overlook the voices of younger generations and assume no harm can be done or change cannot be made. Many cultures of people are constantly underestimated by those with white superiority who believe they are untouchable until it’s too late to realize they are not.

Bibliography

Bromberg, Minna, and Gary Alan Fine. “Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purification of Difficult Reputations.” Social Forces 80, no. 4 (2002): 1135–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3086503.

Kavallines, James. [Pete Seeger, full-length portrait, performing on stage at Yorktown Heights High School, Yorktown, N.Y.] / World Journal Tribune photo by James Kavallines. Photograph. Washington, D. C. , February 2, 1967. Library of Congress.

Pareles, Jon. “Pete Seeger, Champion of Folk Music and Social Change, Dies at 94.” The New York Times, January 28, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html.

Robb, Alice. “The History of Pete Seeger’s Reputation Is the History of the Past 70 Years.” The New Republic, September 26, 2023. https://newrepublic.com/article/116379/pete-seegers-reputation-shows-history-past-70-years.

1James Kavallines, [Pete Seeger, Full-Length Portrait, Performing on Stage at Yorktown Heights High School, Yorktown, N.Y.] / World Journal Tribune Photo by James Kavallines., photograph (Washington, D. C. , February 2, 1967), Library of Congress.

2Alice Robb, “The History of Pete Seeger’s Reputation Is the History of the Past 70 Years,” The New Republic, September 26, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/article/116379/pete-seegers-reputation-shows-history-past-70-years.

3Jon Pareles, “Pete Seeger, Champion of Folk Music and Social Change, Dies at 94,” The New York Times, January 28, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html.

4 Minna Bromberg, and Gary Alan Fine. “Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purification of Difficult Reputations.” Social Forces 80, no. 4 (2002): 1135–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3086503.

5Minna Bromberg, and Gary Alan Fine. “Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purification of Difficult Reputations.” Social Forces 80, no. 4 (2002): 1135–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3086503.

6Jon Pareles, “Pete Seeger, Champion of Folk Music and Social Change, Dies at 94,” The New York Times, January 28, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html.

7Minna Bromberg, and Gary Alan Fine. “Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purification of Difficult Reputations.” Social Forces 80, no. 4 (2002): 1135–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3086503.

Pete Seeger: American or Un-American

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Seeger performing on banjo

Growing up, every first Friday of the month my mom and I would go to folk music sing-a-longs with groups of her folk music loving friends. It was always a lot of fun; we sang great tunes by Pete Seeger, Bill Staines, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and much more, accompanied by guitars, drums, and fiddles. As a kid I always thought Pete Seeger embodied what it meant to “be American.” My mom worked with the Madison Folk Music Society, and actually met Pete Seeger a couple of times. Upon finding this video entitled “Folk singers linked to alleged ‘Communist Conspiracy’” I was shocked to learn that Pete Seeger was accused of being a communist (and didn’t deny it,) mostly because I had heard such negative things about the ideology and such positive things about Pete Seeger from my mom. I was surprised that she never mentioned this to me.

Many consider Pete Seeger to be the father of the folk music revival, and it’s no wonder why. He was born into a musical and pacifist family in 1919, and spent his adolescence playing the ukulele and four-string banjo. After dropping out of Harvard at 19 to become a journalist in New York, Seeger discovered he was talented at playing the five-string banjo and knew he wanted to learn more about folk music. He then worked for Alan Lomax at the Archive of American Folksong at the Library of Congress. After meeting Woodie Guthrie in 1940 and traveling the country together playing music for gas money, Seeger and other folk musicians started Almanac Singers. This group aligned with left-wing social movements, as they specialized in anti-war and pro-union songs. A representative example of their political message is evident in the song “Which Side Are You On?” While this song was originally written as a union organizing song for miners enduring a violent struggle with mine owners, its lyrics fit very well with Seeger’s questioning of politics and his advocacy for radical social change. Here is a video with the original recording of the Almanac Singers “Which Side Are You On?”

This leads me to the video that challenges Pete Seeger’s folk ideals. In 1957 Seeger was cited on ten counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1955. This video shows the original proposal to HUAC that Pete Seeger and his folk music were Un-American.

Screen shot 2015-03-07 at 11.01.37 AM

An article entitled “Congress Creates a Frankenstein” published in the Chicago Defender in 1953 argues that HUAC,

“began to destroy the freedom expression, freedom of speech, freedom of action and freedom of thought when it pulled in some of the country’s greatest artists, playrights, actors and producers to question them on their loyalty to their government.”

Seeger refusing to testify before HUAC

This committee was part of the second Red Scare, which refers to the fear of communism and its destruction of true American politics, culture, and society that spread across the country in the 40s and 50s. This critical opinion of the committee identifies fundamental problems with HUAC – it its pursuit of the “anti-American” it engaged in an essentially anti-American activity. Pete Seeger would certainly agree with this perspective. He refused to testify, as he believed that the questioning of his musical and political endeavors was his own business as an American, and the government had no right interfere.

So, how has Pete Seeger remained so “American” after all this time? Can we divorce a person and their art from their politics? Why do we still view communism as so distinctly at odds with Seeger’s message of peace? We often separate his communist ideology with his message of peace, but why can we not see these political views as an integral part of his message.

Sources

  1. Folk singers linked to alleged ‘Communist Conspiracy’. Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975. August 19, 1963. http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/video/videodetails.aspx?documentId=664253&videoSearch=folk.
  2. “Notable & Quotable; the New York Sun Recalls Pete Seeger’s Soaring Music–and His Late-in-Life Confession about Failing to Confront Communism.” 2014.Wall Street Journal (Online), Jan 28. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1492135733?accountid=351.
  3. “Congress Creates A Frankenstein.” 1953.The Chicago Defender (National Edition) (1921-1967), Nov 21, 2. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/docview/493013412?accountid=351.
  4. Anne Dhu McLucas . “Seeger, Pete R..” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed October 15, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2259314.
  5. Bromberg, Minna and Gary Alan Fine. 2002. “Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purification of Difficult Reputations.” Social Forces 80 (4): 1135-1155. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/docview/229870616?accountid=351.

Folk Music Revival During the McCarthy Era

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In the 1950s, several Americans who worked in the public sphere were under attack from United States Senator Joseph McCarthy during a time known as the Second Red Scare. Attempting to rid American media and entertainment of any trace of Communist sentiment, Senator McCarthy blacklisted writers, actors, and musicians who were suspected of Communist allegiance or sympathy. Anxiety over Communism lasted well into the 1960s, and one such victim of late McCarthyism was folk singer Pete Seeger in 1963. In the video below, former Governor Gordon Browning speaks at a press conference about Seeger’s suspected alliance with the “Communist Conspiracy” to warn folk music consumers of this potential “threat” to American entertainment.Screen shot 2015-03-07 at 11.01.37 AM

Seeger’s alignment with populist / socialist sentiment and his incorporation of it into music was no secret. He had been a member of the Communist Party from 1942-1949, and he was a founding member of The Weavers, a folk group that performed songs like “Talking Union”1 at workers strikes and other such political events until McCarthy blacklisted the group in 1953. Just two months before the 1963 press conference, Seeger released his album “We Shall Overcome” which featured songs that aimed to rally supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. That Seeger’s music was political is undeniable.2

However, Browning brings up an interesting point when he says:

Folk singing, for hundreds of years, has been a highly respectable art, and a very wonderful form of entertainment, and now we are concerned that the Communists are moving into this field and that they are going to pervert this wonderful form of entertainment so it will satisfy their own needs.3

Were folk revivalists, as Browning believes, using folk songs for political causes they were never meant to support, or has folk music always belonged to populist / socialist causes? In some ways, both are correct. It is certainly true that folk revival songs like “Talking Union” had more overtly political messages than traditional folk ballads like “Barbara Allen:”

Was in the merry month of May
When flowers were a-bloomin’
Sweet William on his deathbed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen

Slowly, slowly she got up
And slowly she went nigh him
And all she said when she got there
“Young man, I think you’re dying”

“O yes I’m sick and very low
And death is on me dwellin’
No better shall I ever be
If I don’t get Barbara Allen”4

Yet, folk ballads such as “Barbara Allen” often addressed universal themes like love and played important roles in rural, often poor and oppressed communities like those in Appalachia. While traditional folk song did not always directly encourage political activism like songs of the folk revival movement did, they represented the common person. So, Browning was not mistaken in noticing the overt political messages in folk revival music that were absent in earlier folk music, but he was wrong to assume that traditional folk music did not support the same sentiments that the Leftist songs of the folk revival movement did.

Footnotes

1“Talking Union,” Youtube video, posted by farmboy10001, December 8 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osnjAb-hoPo

2“Seeger Pete.” In Encyclopedia of Popular Music, edited by Larkin, Colin. : Oxford University Press, 2006. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195313734.001.0001/acref-9780195313734-e-25192.

3Gordon Browning, “Folk singers linked to alleged ‘Communist Conspiracy,’ Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975, 2:25, August 19, 1963, http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk/video/videodetails.aspx?documentId=664253&videoSearch=Pete+Seeger  

4“Ballad of America.” Barbara Allen (American Folk Song). Accessed March 8, 2015. http://www.balladofamerica.com/music/indexes/songs/barbaraallen/index.htm.