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Pete Seeger: American heroism through music

Full disclosure: I've been a Pete Seeger fan since I heard the opening banjo notes of "Darlin' Corey," on the 1955 LP "The Weavers at Carnegie Hall." That album signaled the folk-singing quartet's triumph over the McCarthyite blacklist that had banished them from the airwaves and stage since shortly after their recording of "Irene, Goodnight" became the surprise number one hit of 1950. For me, it triggered a life-long involvement in folk music and a need to learn to play the five-string banjo.

Years later, I presented Pete in concert in Montpelier. I also had the honor of producing two CD collections of Seeger's topical songs for Smithsonian Folkways Records.

So it was with a bit of trepidation, as well as anticipation, that I watched "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" on Vermont Public Television a few weeks ago. The film will also be shown as part of the upcoming Green Mountain Film Festival.

I needn't have worried. Directed by Jim Brown, who has also documented the Weavers, "The Power of Song" is a moving yet unsentimental tribute to the man who, according to guitar teacher Jerry Silverman, "more than anybody, introduced America to its musical heritage."

Seeger has done that, as the film makes clear, not simply by learning, recording, and performing the music of working, rural, and other Americans (and others) but by getting his audiences singing. Seeger, Bob Dylan tells us, has an "amazing ability to … make an orchestration out of a simple, little song, with everyone in the audience singing, whether you wanted to or not… . It'd be beautiful."

That would have been plenty. But Seeger has also been a musical Johnny Appleseed Jr., using folk music, as he has written, to "plant the seeds of a better tomorrow in the homes across our land." "The Power of Song" traces the path and some of the fruit of those plantings, from Seeger's first exposure to vernacular Southern music by his ethnomusicologist father through a succession of causes: unions, anti-fascism, the 1948 Henry Wallace presidential campaign, civil rights, anti-war, and, most recently and perhaps most successfully, the reclamation and protection of the Hudson River.

At the center of all of these is Seeger's unflinching devotion to the freedom of belief and expression. Called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, he neither invoked the Fifth Amendment nor answered any questions about his or others' political affiliations. He simply said, "I have my right to my opinion." The result was a contempt of Congress conviction. When it was overturned on a technicality in 1962, Seeger, who had always included international folk songs in his repertoire, packed up his family for a world-wide tour, filming and recording indigenous music wherever he went.

In "The Power of Song," Seeger is frank about his involvement with communist organizations. He even manages to say good things about both the communist Daily Worker newspaper and the Wall Street Journal in the same sentence, a slight smile reflecting the irony of their juxtaposition. This is the elder Seeger (he's 88 in the film), a man seeking common ground among rival ideologies and approaches.

That Seeger has been able to do this through music is nowhere more pointedly reflected than in the film's recounting of his post-concert meeting with a man who, angered by Seeger's anti-Vietnam War stance, had come to assassinate the singer but instead joined him in singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," one of Seeger's many anthemic songs.

Johnny Cash, who had Seeger as a guest on his post-blacklist TV show, also received vitriolic responses. Looking every inch the rockabilly rebel, Cash calls the folksinger "one of the best Americans and patriots I've ever known." Other musicians also sing Seeger's praises –among them Joan Baez, the Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines, Arlo Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen.

"The Power of Song" abounds with testimonials to Seeger's political and personal integrity. Even at the height of the Weavers' commercial popularity, when the quartet was performing at the top Hollywood and Las Vegas nightclubs, Seeger refused to stay in fancy hotels. Later, he left the re-united Weavers rather than lend his voice to a cigarette commercial.

This is all effectively recounted in standard documentary style blending well-chosen archival film, sound, and photographs with interviews that include Seeger's three children (his son Danny went to Goddard College); sister Peggy; two grandsons; and brother John. Seeger's wife Toshi, long-known in the folk music community as the practical partner, also appears. The film makes sure she gets the public credit she deserves as well. (Toshi's role as co-producer, does, however, undermine the film's objectivity.)

Most of the Seeger interviews take place at the Hudson Valley log house the Seegers began building in 1949 and where Seeger still chops firewood with an axe, singing, at least in the film, as he does so. Seeger, from privileged Yankee stock, is a pioneer at heart, a combination Boy Scout, frontier preacher, and back-to-the-lander, a do-it-yourselfer way before self-sufficiency was a cultural trend. Folk, that is, non-commercial, homemade music is the central manifestation of this ethos.

Seeger's involvement in virtually every social justice and peace movement from the 1940s to today presents Brown and his editors with a lot of territory, and, overall, they cover it well. Such better-known issues as civil rights and the Vietnam war receive less explanation than the Wallace campaign and especially the 1949 Peekskill, N.Y. riot, the rock-throwing melee that followed an outdoor concert featuring singer-actor-activist Paul Robeson. Seeger's son Danny's account of being thrown by his grandfather to the floor of their car as rocks shattered all the windows, along with the accompanying photographs, is a chilling reminder of Americanism gone terribly wrong.

There are, however, a few surprising omissions, perhaps most notably the controversy surrounding Seeger's angry reaction to Dylan's "going electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. There is also nothing about Seeger's invention of the long-necked five-string banjo or about his considerable and often ground-breaking musicianship. And, while some of his own songs appear in the film, there is little about his philosophy of what makes a good, and effective, song. Only "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," censored by CBS when Seeger appeared on the Smothers Brothers' TV show (ending 17 years of being blacklisted) and "We Shall Overcome," which Seeger adapted and taught to the world, receive close attention.

Still, the film more than succeeds in telling Seeger's story and in paying tribute to his immeasurable cultural importance. Watching him sing and work with others on the sloop Clearwater or with a group of kids (still his favorite activity) reminds me once more of the power of Pete and his music. Even if you saw the PBS broadcast, go see the film again, on a bigger screen with a roomful of people. You'll probably find yourself singing along.

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