Pete Seeger: dead at 94
Ah, I see that Pete Seeger, troubadour of my youth, has died.
My feelings about Seeger are mixed, to say the least. First, the bad: he was an activist Communist, and even a Stalinist back in the day. Let’s not whitewash that, like the Chicago Trib article I just linked to did [emphasis mine]:
Seeger also was known for his liberal politics, working as an environmentalist, protesting against wars from Vietnam to Iraq and being sentenced to prison for refusing to testify to Congress about his time in the Communist Party. The case was dismissed years later…
Seeger’s life of music and political activism could be summed up in “The Hammer Song,” the enduring anthem he wrote more than 60 years ago with his good friend Lee Hays to support the progressive political movement in the U.S.
Popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary in the 1960s, the song embodied the heart of Seeger: his musicality, his activism, his optimism and his lifelong belief that songs could and should be used to build a sense of community to make the world a better place.
Liberal? Progressive? Supporting Communism to make the world a better place? Those are euphemisms, I’m afraid. And although his “time in the Communist Party” did end some time in the 50s, his time of sympathy with the Communist Party went on.
Contrast the Trib article with this piece from 2009 (hat tip: Instapundit):
Seeger was a member of the Communist Party from the 1930s through the 1950s. He left the party but never gave up the faith. He told the Washington Post in 1995 “I am still a communist.” Like his comrades and fellow travelers Seeger twisted and turned with every pronouncement from Moscow…Seeger’s sycophancy for murderous communist tyrants didn’t end with Stalin. During the Cold War he praised Ho Chi Minh and provided a hearty jacket endorsement for Tomas Borges’ the brutal Sandinista thug’s book…To be fair Seeger did eventually get around to realizing the horrors of Stalinism, albeit 50 years too late…[but]the moral equivalencies Seeger used to water down his apology for supporting a regime that murdered more people than 20 million people [were unimpressive].
Those of you who follow this blog closely may recall that I know that genre well; quite a few of my more distant relatives (not my immediate family, however) shared Seeger’s politics. What I mostly remember of get-togethers in my youth with that side of the family were the shouting matches about politics (if you don’t believe that liberals and Communists can fight very bitterly with each other about politics, you should have come to those family parties). Quite a few of the most rabid relatives never, at least to the best of my knowledge, denounced Stalin at all. So Seeger was ahead of them.
That probably colors my ability to acknowledge Seeger’s huge political flaws but to also look at his singing and music separately from his politics. Not that he always separated them, but for the most part his music can stand alone. I’ve written about Seeger before, and for me it was the energy of his voice that was the draw:
We had a shaky old record player on which I’d play the scratchy Weavers records that featured Seeger’s unique voice and vibrant banjo. I loved those old songs, but I especially loved Seeger’s voice.
Why? It wasn’t pretty, nor was it exceptionally musical. There are many ordinary people who can make far more beautiful sounds, although I’m most definitely not one of them. But Seeger had what I’ve noticed is a prerequisite for great voices: a unique and utterly identifying timbre, much like a fingerprint, and instantly recognizable as that person and no one else.
Seeger’s voice had an uplifting quality mixed with something indefinable, something between a lilt and a sob. Although the lilt always dominated, the sob was always present as well, much like the complexity of a fine wine with a hint of many flavors to give it a special richness and depth.
Seeger played a mean banjo, too. Here’s a video of the Weavers in their prime, singing a typical number (the vast majority of which were traditional and non-political, except in the most subtle sense), a medley of songs from around the world that supposedly illustrate our oneness (I tried to find one of my very favorites, “Follow the Drinking Gourd,” but no dice). Note, also, the pride of place given to an Israeli song, back when Israel was still beloved by Leftists:
When I think about it, virtually every pop, folk, or rock singing voice that interests me has that same quality of distinctiveness of sound.
Seeger was not a simple figure. But for the joy he gave me and so many others, I loved him. RIP.
I can’t be as forgiving as you. To me he is in the same category as Leni Riefenstahl, only far less talented. She at least was a real artist.
“. . . his time in the Communist Party. . . to build a sense of community to make the world a better place.”
So the media meme is that there’s no shame in being a Communist to make the world a better place, but it is decidedly not okay to be a capitalist who makes the world a better place. Has any reporter anywhere ever written that thought in an article or an obituary? I suspect not.
By virtue of contrast see the consistently brilliant Thomas Sowell make precisely that latter point in his article today. A quote:
The link:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/01/28/the_inequality_bogeyman_121379.html#ixzz2ripao9ZD
T:
Yes, that “make the world a better place” though Communism seems especially and bitterly ironic to me.
Quite a few Communists believed that, though, especially in the 50s. They were utterly wrong. I’m not excusing them because they were idealists. But it is the case that many of them were idealists who supported an evil system.
Someone like Seeger (and many of my relatives) thought the system continued to be good, it was just the unfortunate practitioners like Stalin who went astray. They never got that Stalin was inherent in the system itself.
Most of them still don’t get it.
Dear Pete: Regrets that you couldn’t have taken a little trip to the Soviet Union of Comrade Stalin’s time. The Great Father of the Peoples would have had your creative/non-conformist-artist a** shipped off to Vorkuta or Kolyma for 2-decades of re-education at the Gulag Level OR to the bowels of the Lubyanka or Lefortovo Prisons in Moscow for the bullet-in-the-back-of-the-head method of reasoning.
Happy trails and know that in the 60s I enjoyed your music.
Pete was the embodiment of the American spirit, completely real, without any sense of self-importance. He could fit as well into the year 1814 as 2014. He had many friends on both left and right. He risked his freedom standing up to McCarthy, Hoover and HUAC. He never named names. He had a right to his opinion and he just believed in fairness and freedom. He was never against capitalism, just unfair treatment and exploitation of people and resources. When he was blacklisted he went on the road across the USA singing to little kids at school. FBI thought that can’t be harmful, but those kids became teenagers and knew how to sing out against the travesty in Vietnam. One man and a banjo did that. Then he led the cleaning up the Hudson River. So when you think of Pete Seeger, imagine him with an American flag of freedom behind him.
Good riddance to this Commie Pied Piper!
bevan:
Yeah, yeah, Communists are just good old American flag-waving capitalists, believing in freedom.
Dream on.
Neo says about communism making the world a better place: “Quite a few Communists believed that, though, especially in the 50s. ”
I would suggest the amemdment that “quite a few people who lived in capitalist societies believed that”
Actual communists thought otherwise, whether they were active participants in the party, or victims of it. The actual revolutionaries weren’t interested in making the world a better place, they were just interested in making it their place.
There’s nothing more pathetic or disheartening to see articles like that romanticizing a political movement that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions, often brutally. When a record that includes exterminination of millions isn’t able to penetrate the thick skulls of these people, you have to wonder how liberty has a prayer.
I never got his appeal. The Mamas and the Papas were amazing, and of course Bob Dylan. Simon and Garfunkel as well – although for some reason, as the years go by, their stock has seemed to drop in the music world.
I don’t know why, but the only ones in the music world whose politics I have trouble overlooking is Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I can still enjoy them most of the time, but boy they’re preachy.
” . . . [they believe that] it was just the unfortunate practitioners like Stalin who went astray. They never got that Stalin was inherent in the system itself.”
Neo,
Pick a Communist, any Communist: Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Chavez . . . . The list goes on, and in each the cycle is repeated. Yet with all of these repetitive iterations, it’s still not the system, but the fact that it wasn’t correctly applied.
The system is not just totalitarian itself, but it attracts those who espouse totalitarianism. “Most of [the leftists] still don’t get it,” and they never will, but as you noted they dream on. This is precisely why we need to disabuse ourselves of this “worthy adversary and their good intentions.” They are neither worthy nor good.
If I Had a Hammer, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Guantanamera, are beautiful songs, moving songs.
My siblings and I used to listen to the Peter Paul and Mary album with the first two songs (and other lovely songs) over and over. There was no political content for us, just beautiful simple lyrics and melodies.
Seeger did have a gift from God, his distinctive and appealing voice, with the something compelling and unique neo describes.
It is a funny life, where things of beauty on occasions have a provenance of ugliness.
Southpaw,
I think you’ve hit on something here: “a record that includes exterminination of millions isn’t able to penetrate the thick skulls of these people . . . .”
Look at what we, as a culture, romanticize:
Revolution (Communists and Che Guevara)
Artists (the starving artist, La Boheme)
Pirates (Long John Silver, Jack Sparrow)
Indigenous tribes (The Noble Savage)
All of these and more are (now) seen as superior to western civilization and yet, the reality is that they were all much more tolerant of and conducive to brutality than western civ.
17th century pirates were more like the Somali pirates of today that a swashbuckling Errol Flynn. Amerindians fought with and conquered other tribes (far from simply living in peace) and it is my understanding that scalping originated with them and not European settlers.
So the real question is “why do we romanticize these past events?” It seems to be a Western self-loathing.
I’m reminded of a line in The Shootist where Ron Howard’s character asks John Wayne what made him such a great gunfighter. He responds that when it comes time to shoot another human being most men hesitate, if only for a fraction of a second. He concludes: “I don’t.”
Cold and calculating and self serving, that is the natural state of the world and it remains the modus operandi of the left which continue the guise of making the world a “better place.”
Oh, and Pearl Jam. I love their music, but they have fundraisers for NARAL, so no money of mine goes to them.
True story: When I was a wee lad of eight years old, my folks sent me to a summer camp, and there were three of us boys who palled around together: I, an Italian boy named Tony, a boy named Danny Seeger, and M J R. Someone remarked once that Danny’s dad was a famous singer, but neither Tony nor I — nor Danny — was impressed in the least. We were just pals, quite oblivious to who’s famous and who isn’t.
I never forgot Danny’s dad being a singer, and I made the connection a few years later, wondering if it was the *actual* Pete Seeger. *Decades* later, I saw a documentary on tee vee about Pete Seeger, and they interviewed his son — a man named Daniel, looking my age; and doing an internet search, I saw Daniel is/was *exactly* my age. Yep, my little buddy Danny *is/was* Pete Seeger’s son!
As for Danny’s dad’s worldview and political leanings, phooey. And that’s putting it (much too) mildly. R.I.P.
T and Southpaw- You use the right word, “romanticize”. This is the product (most recently) of the anti-rationalism of the Romantic Movement. Sentimentality over rationality. Speaking of Pearl Jam:
I kiss the earth and then I get to thinking /
but I don’t wanna think, I wanna feel
OOOPS — I included me in there twice. Lousy editing.
JUST “an Italian boy named Tony, a boy named Danny Seeger, and M J R.”
John B. Sloop, Sinnerman!
It’s surpassingly strange to me, but automatic to others, the socialism urge. But remember even the Pilgrims had to learn socialism doesn’t work by experience.
http://www.libertyunderfire.org/2011/11/1430/
Still, artists seem especially vulnerable. Note Oscar Wilde:
“With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_Man_under_Socialism
They seem to come from the tilt your head back and “open your mouth real wide” school of singing. That is, that whole lusty voices raised in unison in praise of proletarian solidarity thing, that seems to almost sexually excite the collectivist kind …
If they weren’t hefting musical instruments, they might get a little wild eyed-grinning and bent elbow air punching in as well … by progressivist folk-mimicking crackee!
I wonder if anything would have changed their minds …
T – agree. I’m also wondering if the definition of “a better place” would be something a majority could agree upon.
The issue seems to be the difference between what people “think” and what they know, or what is already known, by someone.
The supply of ignorance is infinite, and replenishes itself with every new born person. Whole generations can be raised in total ignorance of what is known, and “Thinking” which is ignorant of record is as dangerous as no thinking at all – it’s just opinon. this is all obvious, but it seems that everything boils down to education, and the Left have won the war on that front. There’s no shortage of opinions on politics and government how things should be, by people who know nothing about history, economics, their own government, or much of anything- if you ask them to explain their position, you often find that they get frustrated and respond with
“well, that’s just what I think”.
Israel’s miraculously shifted from socialism to capitalism according to George Gilder:
“What Gilder sets out to do in his poetic prose is show how Israel’s accelerating migration over the past twenty years from a socialist to a capitalist economy has transformed the Jewish state from an economic basket case to a powerhouse player in the world economy.”
http://spectator.org/articles/41110/israel-inside
And this is a good watch:
http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/episodes/2012/08/entrepreneurialism-what-can-the-us-learn-from-israel.html
Neo,
One additional comment. Above you wrote: “Someone like Seeger (and many of my relatives) thought the system continued to be good . . . .”
I just recalled a presentation I heard in 2002 by Lester Thurow. In it, he said that socialism “has a much better ethic [than capitalism]: “‘help your neighbor.’ The only problem is it doesn’t work.” Whenever we’re given the choice between helping our neighbor or helping ourselves, we usually put ourselves first.
While we smirk about the downfall of the commies, keep in mind, on your next visit to WalMart, that the crafty and patient Chinese communists were able to subvert capitalism by underbidding it. Try buying any product today where a bit of revenue doesn’t go into the red coffers. This is what really galls me about the neocon mentality, completely blind to the fact that 90% of our production has been outsourced to the people we spent decades fighting, by proxy, in SE Asia. Yes, they allow capitalism, but it’s to their own benefit. So, who won?
One final comment, On T’s statement about Lester Thurow, how “Help your neighbor” “doesn’t work”….that’s complete bullshit and denies the Christian spirit of compassion we see with every tornado disaster. This is one of many great things about the USA, so please think before throwing out generalizations. Thanks and stay warm!
Bevan,
“. . . the crafty and patient Chinese communists were able to subvert capitalism by underbidding it.”
False premise. They didn’t “subvert” capitalism, they bought into it. Their economic revivial has succeeded to the extent that they have become capitalists and failed to the extent that they remain Communists. In that respect, they have proven themselves better capitalists that we are because they loosened the overriding control of the state to do that while we through Progressive statist policies are tightening those statist controls (incandescent light bulbs, Keystone pipeline, etc.)
“Help your neighbor” “doesn’t work”….that’s complete bullshit and denies the Christian spirit of compassion we see with every tornado disaster.”
Once again, false premise. Thurow never said it was an all or nothing situation. Capitalists (and much to your chagrin conservatives) have been shown to be more compassionate than Communist or socialist communities and that is because in capitalist societies one is capable of accumulating an excess which can then be shared. That is precisely WHY the USA can exercise a spirit of Christian compassion. In a society based upon “. . .to each according to his need” when all one has is only what one needs then there is no excess to share.
Those willing to forgive Seeger and his ilk should read today’s Powelineblog, and also this 2005 piece from the remakable City Journal: http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_urbanities-communist.html
Forgiving Pete Seeger for being a good musician despite being a good commie is akin to forgiving someone you knew not well but had great sex with, only to discover HIV positivity. Excuses, excuses, when you see not the artistry of their subtle, enchanting and sublime subordinations.
I admire the manipulations, the craft and stealth embodied in Seeger’s pieces like “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”, while they embed pathologies into the brains of the vulnerable, and the vulnerable pay them for so doing. Yes, he was an artist. And a dissembler, a con man.
Financially he was I suspect a member of the 1% most of his life.
And Bevan,
“Help your neighbor” “doesn’t work”….that’s complete bullshit and denies the Christian spirit of compassion ”
If you really want to prove Thurow wrong, I’ll be happy to accept a check from you. Shall we say $5,000? It would help me out immensely; and you do want to help don’t you? Christian compassion and all that . . . .
Just let Neo know and she can give me your e-mail and I’ll e-mail you my name and delivery address.
Bevan(2:36pm)… Ol’Pete believed in “fairness” and “equality” the same as the CPUSA Progressives did and do. And, today’s Left as well.
But, FREEDOM?? Nope..Nada…Nein…Nyet…NO F***ING WAY. He championed a system that was the absolute antipathy of FREEDOM and LIBERTY.
Thank You, Ben Franklin, for telling us the deep, profound difference between Freedom and (Cough) Equality: The latter is two wolves and a sheep sitting down for supper. The former is the sheep coming fully armed and ready to contest the meal.
I expect His Infantile Majesty to set ol’Ben straight about that in his Fair & Equal State of the Union tonight.
Damn Seeger and his voice.
He stood for mass murder and refined sadism and the most vicious aspects of human nature.
He could not have been unaware. Thing is, he thought those were good things.
Why? We ask that as if he were in some sense human, rational, and compassionate. Were he human, rational and compassionate, he would say that the victims were all enemies of the revolution who deserved what they got as a punishment for sabotaging the revolution. It would be the best that could be said, the best of a vile selection.
We saw the same demonizing of the Vietnamese boat people.
That’s not good enough and, for all we know, perhaps he said it hoping we’d believe it, but that’s the best that can be said. And maybe he didn’t believe it.
Oh, and Bevan – I personally avoid buying anything with “Made in China” on it any more. Sometimes it means buying vintage “Made in the USA” and sometimes stuff from Mexico, India or wherever.
I’m about the same age as Neo, and some of the others, and grew up singing the folksongs that Seeger and the Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary and the Kingston Trio made popular. Loved the songs, but in the case of Seeger, I have always pictured him with the old soviet flag waving gently in the breeze behind him. He was a Stalinist of the old order – the same ilk as Lillian Hellman and Eric Hobsbawm and any number of other hard-core fellow travelers. Any idealistic Westerner who didn’t have their eyes opened and jump off the Red bandwagon after the Nazi-Soviet Pact was either too g**damn dumb to live anywhere else but cloud-cuckoo-land — or was a stooge for a disgusting, murderous régime. I’ll grant that many of them didn’t need to be paid – they did it for jollies, or because they were too embarrassed to back down after having made a spectacle of themselves being all forward-thinking and all.
Absolutely superb article in the City Journal. Wow.
I like the ending, however. Shows the law of something like unintended consequences.
And here’s a antidote I have often posted.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLLMzr3PFgk
I agree with Neo.
waitforit
Perfect.
I’ve heard it said that country music has a number of themes:
Work hard.
Party hard.
Don’t mess around on your significant other.
Get right with The Man
Children and old folks rule.
Show up for the wars.
Look after your neighbors.
bevan:
Compulsory, forced “help your neighbor”—often at the point of a gun or threat thereof, accomplished by theft of your own goods to effect that help, at the hands of a power-mad elite willing to commit mass murder to urge you towards that help—doesn’t work.
And that’s what Communism is. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with voluntary compassion or charity, Christian or otherwise.
What’s more I suspect you know that. If you don’t, at this point in time you certainly should.
From a Pajamas commenter:
“So what’s my eulogy for Pete? He was an idealistic man who stupidly believed Communism was the answer. He had a genuine interest in and talent for music. He combined the two, using his music as a leftist propaganda tool. He tried to make the party line go down easier by disguising it (and himself) as authentic, aw-shucks, down-home, apple-pie bits of traditional Americana. It made him famous. I don’t know if it made him rich.”
Well, it did make him prosperous. A recent Bloomberg estimate cites his net worth at $ 4.2 million.
“A recent Bloomberg estimate cites his net worth at $ 4.2 million.”
“. . . to each according to his need.”
Is there such a thing as flying the Flag at staff and a half in celebration?
In May 1941, the Almanac Singers, which included Pete Seeger, published “Songs For John Doe,” which were against intervention in WW2. From Wiki:
A supporting posting from Solomonia discusses what Howard Zinn and Pete Seeger did in response to Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union.
As a tool of the CPUSA, and by extension of the Soviet Union, Pete Seeger changed his views in tandem with what Fearless Leader dictated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almanac_Singers
They will Obey. They gave up the choice of free will long before we ever knew them.
Sage words from a commenter on Seeger at PJMedia:
“Can’t we just discuss Hitler’s art work without bringing up all those dead Jews?
“Sounds a little clanky off the ear, if you have a conscience.
“Separating the artistic endeavors of a man who advances evil from that evil is not merely difficult for some. It’s unworthy to try. And why should they. For those for whom traitorism is the defining characteristic, whitewashing away his “motivations” with puppies and kittens anecdotes is unseemly.
“I really don’t care what the root causes of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore and Bill Ayers have to become traitors to the truth. I don’t care what motivated Walter Duranty. And I see no need to gush over their great genius.
“Once you cross the line into anarchy, treason and advancing tyranny…your artistic or vocational exploits become secondary to your legacy. 100 million dead deserve our memories and sympathies more.
“And freedom deserves that we never fail to remember. Seeger made a choice to soil his legacy. The stain of it isn’t wiped away by alibis, excuses or whitewashing of it.”
Don – But what about the value of appreciating beauty? We don’t punish Seeger by turning off his music; we punish ourselves. (Well, maybe not “punish”, but you get my meaning.) I’ve never seen a Michael Moore movie, but I suspect that there’s nothing to be gained by doing so. His works seem purely propagandistic. If there’s some art to them, though, and a person can find value in them without retching, then that is worth celebrating.
Don Carlos:
Seeger was a Communist, but he was not Stalin. He is guilty, but not at the level of Stalin or Hitler.
The comparison to Hitler is incorrect. Seeger’s primary claim to fame, and the reason we’re discussing him at all, was his music, which was sometimes political but often not. Hitler’s art was so minor (and extremely mediocre) as to be not just secondary but a tiny little footnote to his crimes.
And by the way, note that I didn’t say “let’s not bring up Seeger’s politics.” I discussed it at the outset of the post, without whitewashing it. However, I can appreciate his art anyway.
Neo- I can appreciate his “art” also. Or rather his artfulness. I respect with fear and loathing the abilities and craftiness of those that suck people in by the millions. Like Seeger, who was singing a pacifist tune until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and turned on a dime to become a war advocate. His “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” is a seductive pro-union anti-capitalist piece. The real Joe Hill was executed for murder IIRC.
“Folk music”? What volkmusik? Es gibt keine Amerikanische Volk: There was no American volkmusik until communists like Seeger wrote the songs, pronounced them “Folk”, popularized them and prospered from them. Every socialist is a capitalist in his/her personal life. Every one.
I lived thru the ’50s and ’60s. The folkmusicians of the time sucked us in, in our naivete, much like Hollywood sucks us in today. Seeger et al. were part of the beginning of our great national unraveling. It is way past time we learned some lessons. Viva McCarthy!
A dried up communist Seeger – the pesudo folk idiot that fed red diaper doper babies and their kids this rubbish. Peter Yarrow, of Peter Paul and Mary was jailed for pedophilia involving a 14 year old girl These drugged out pedophile gender bending slime are disgusting.
Buh bye pete. Another commie bites the dust along with mary of peter paul and mary. Demonrats marxists socialsts. Put them all in the same boat ( and sink it) lol. Without these lowlife morons screwing everything up we would have a great country. Why dont these folks move to n korea or cuba if its soooo great. Cause theyre hypocrits. Dont forget that bastard pinko bruce springsteen too