Pete Seeger, musician and long time anti-war activist is 90
Now we don’t want to fight for oil, bring ’em home, bring ’em home, underneath some foreign land, bring ’em home.
We Shall Overcome: An Hour with legendary folk singer & activist Pete Seeger...
Tributes to Pete Seeger at 90 by: Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Tom Morello, Michael Franti, Tim Robbins & many more...
Pete Seeger, musician, song writer and political activist -- not least for the anti-war, civil rights and environment movements -- was 90 on 2 May.
Blacklisted in the 1950s and hounded by the FBI, which restricted his public performances, he re-emerged in the 1960s as a pioneer of protest music in support of the anti-war movement and civil rights and as an activist for environmental causes.
This video is a short biography of Pete Seeger’s 70 years of tireless campaigning through the power of song.
The soundtrack to this video is Pete Seeger’s classic anti-war song Bring ’Em Home, written originally for the anti-Vietnam war campaign, but updated here for the Iraq war, on which he is joined by Ani DeFranco, Billy Bragg and Steve Earle.
Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled This machine kills fascists, Pete Seeger's banjo was emblazoned with the motto This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender.
Here's a live version of Bring ’Em Home by Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen's album The Seeger Sessions album, celebrated Pete Seeger through songs he has been associated with over the past 70 years.
At the 90th birthday tribute concert, Bruce Springsteen said: At some point, Pete Seeger decided he’d be a walking, singing reminder of all of America’s history. He’d be living archive of America’s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards more humane and justified ends.
From The Seeger Sessions, here’s Bruce Springsteen’s live version of another anti-war song associated with Seeger, Mrs McGrath.
It's a myth that Seeger was so insensed when Bob Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that he tried to cut the power cable with an axe. Seeger says, "Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century... but I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now."
At Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2009, Pete Seeger was joined by Bruce Sprinsteen and others to sing Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land. As always Seeger insisted the two verses were sung which others left out as "too radical":
In the squares of the city - By the shadow of the steeple
/ By the relief office - I saw my people / As they stood there hungry, I stood there wonderin' / If this land's still made for you and me. / There was a big high wall there - that tried to stop me;
/ Sign was painted - it said private property; / But on the other side - it didn't say nothing;
/
That side was made for you and me."
|
