The folk singer's folk singer

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biographies, folk singers

I learned my first folk songs from my family, but the first book of folk songs I obtained, as a gift, was The Weavers' Songbook. I still have my old orangeish copy. I was taught guitar by my parents, but learned banjo from How to Play the 5-String Banjo by Pete Seeger, the ostensible leader (really, the soul) of the Weavers. I sang a few of his songs over the years, though I've been more inclined towards "love and family" ballads than pro-union protest. I love his "fun songs" (e.g. Kisses Sweeter than Wine) the best. I was surprised to read this last May of the celebration of his 90^th birthday; I'd though him long gone.

When Alec Wilkinson approached Seeger about writing a new biography (at 28 years old, an earlier biography by David King Dunaway is getting dated), Seeger said he wanted a smaller book, one that could be read in one sitting. The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger is just that. With about 40,000 words, it takes less than two hours to read.

What one finds inside is a rather breathless rush through a long, long life, one that matches Seeger's frenetic pace when performing, though his personal style at home is more contemplative. Seeger's parents were musical, particularly his father, an award-winning composer and performer. His half-siblings Peggy and Mike are renowned folk singers also. I still sing a song that Peggy and her husband Ewan MacColl wrote, "Springhill".

Because of a youthful stint in the Communist Party, Seeger had trouble in "Red Scare" America for decades. Yet as he testified to HUAC in 1955, he would sing for anybody, anywhere. He didn't pay particular attention to Communism, having become disillusioned rather quickly. He is more of a progressive, basing his activism on an aggressive belief that all men (and women) really are created equal, and deserve equal respect and dignity. I can get behind that: I have written elsewhere that the very act of thinking oneself intrinsically better than another creates (or exposes) evil in you.

Seeger's approach to music-making shows the source of his politics. Based on a written philosophical statement by his father, it is inclusive and participatory. He prefers sing-along to performing, regardless that it seldom pays. Where Tip O'Neill has said, "All politics is local", Seeger would say, "All politics is personal." He seemed incapable of considering the viewpoint of the power elites; he always sang to/with and exhorted the grassroots. Around the head of his banjo is the aphorism, "This Machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."

There is a deep humility in him. He didn't let fame get to him. He and Toshi have been married since 1944, a solid five years longer than I have been alive. They lived for years in a house he built, and still live nearby. Somehow bypassing the addiction and "poor impulse control" that plagued his friend Woody Guthrie, he has for seventy years remained the premier example of what a folk singer really is.