Pete Seeger
Where Woody Guthrie's Anti-Commercial Legacy has Lived On
Of all the tributes to Woody Guthrie that I’ve seen or heard about in this year of his centennial—including an exuberant concert at Brooklyn College and an extravagant gala at the Kennedy Center—the only surprising one took place last Wednesday evening at the Cabaret Convention in New York. The event, its mercantile name notwithstanding, is a series of glitzy concerts by (mostly) serious-minded nightclub performers, staged annually under the auspices of the Mabel Mercer Foundation. READ MORE >>
Music of the RNC, Then and Now
John Hammond and the Myth of the Musical King-Maker
Guantanamera, Guantanamo
I am told that “Guantanamera,” a song derived from a poem by the Cuban turn-of-the century revolutionary Jose Marti and made famous by the American Communist folk singer Pete Seeger, refers to a girl, presumably very beautiful, from Guantanamo. The original Spanish lyrics do not confirm this. Nor do the lyrics of the fourth verse, improvised by Seeger and Arlo Guthrie: And for the cruel one who would tear out this heart with which I live I do not cultivate nettles nor thistles I cultivate a white rose. READ MORE >>
The Spanish Civil War was the iconic international struggle of the thirties. Franco and "los cuatro generales" were the villains. And the Spanish people were the victims. Their songs were our songs, Pete Seeger our medium. We did not travel to Spain; we boycotted Spain. We paid homage to Guernica by visiting Picasso's gruesome mural of that name at MoMA (and hanging posters of the painting in our dorm rooms.) We choked up whenever we saw Robert Capa's famous photograph "Falling Soldier." This was the first war against fascism, and democracy was defeated. READ MORE >>
The Final Say On Seeger
I don't think I will have reason to write about Pete Seeger ever again. (I suppose I've written about him quite enough in this space, and so, too, has Ron Radosh who probably knows more about old Pete than even the F.B.I., which probably tracked him as if he were a Soviet agent looking for an atomic lab to blow up.) READ MORE >>
Seeger Sings The Stalin Blues
"Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" is a documentary film about well, Pete Seeger. Now, I admit that I haven't seen it. And, frankly, I have had my fill of Pete all my life. So I guess I won't see it. Enough is enough. Let's say from the late forties on, when he and his folk group, The Weavers, were still singing "Tsena, tsena..." You don't know "Tsena, tsena...?" It was a song from Israel when the Soviets had reason to support the Jewish state as a crow bar to ply out the British from the Middle East. READ MORE >>
Not-so-secret Seeger
"Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" is opening at the Tribeca Film Festival, the creation of Robert De Niro, who also is the creator of the tremendous real estate values attached to the greater Tribeca neighborhood. The blurb below from the festival's publicity alludes to the film, made by Jim Brown, as a "social history" about "one of this country's most compelling forces for change." All well and good. READ MORE >>
