Pete Seeger: "So Long, it's been good to know you."

•     Two weeks ago, I received an early morning e-mail from a friend, informing me that Pete Seeger had died at 94.  The obituaries that soon followed, ranged from enthusiastic encomiums on his contributions to the causes of world peace, civil rights and the environment, to those which critically dwelled on his Communist Party membership and/or sympathies. Presumably, either of these assessments could be said to have informed both his music and public positions.  It is, nonetheless, rare to see the same man both hailed as an American patriot and castigated as "Stalin's Songbird."   
•     All the commentators, however, agreed that Seeger's status as our nation's most influential and prominent folksinger was undisputed.   Can we separate the man from his music?  More importantly, should we?  I think the two were inextricably intertwined, and that bearing this in mind is essential to understanding Pete Seeger and his role as a public person.   Let's agree with the obituary writers on one thing: Pete's contribution to the world of folk music was second to none. Even if you removed his public positions on issues global and local ("think globally, act locally" was among his favorite sayings), forgot about his political sympathies (expressed and otherwise), and limited your knowledge of the man and his music to songs of apolitical Americana, Seeger's contribution would be immeasurable.  That said, we are not likely to--nor should we--view him simply as a folksinger.  Pete Seeger, from the time he came of age until the time of his death, was a political person with a long-held (though carefully orchestrated) world view.  While one can honestly say (as Pete often did) "I am a communist with a small 'c'," it seems dissembling for a person to describe himself that way when that same person was, for some time, an upper-case (as in "Card Carrying") Communist as well. That Seeger's views evolved over the years is doubtless as true as it would be for any intelligent person who examines the world around him and learns from it.  But it is equally true that Pete's expressed world view was affected by the ideological blinders which prevented him from criticizing anything or anyone to his political left.     
•   Many people look at Seeger's standing up to the notorious House Committee of Un-American Activities ("HUAC") as an exemplar of his courage and commitment to civil liberties.  He, unlike many other "unfriendly" witnesses before HUAC did not invoke the Fifth Amendment (against self-incrimination) but, rather, the First Amendment.  His position was that his political views, affiliations and voting patterns were private and, as such, protected from governmental inquiries.  That some of these activities may have been worthy of government inquiry does not detract from the contribution he (and other controversial figures throughout history) made to the cause of civil liberties.  He had displayed similar courage both before and after the HUAC appearance when he was attacked by a stone-throwing mob after performing along with Paul Robeson in Peekskill in 1949, as well as his countless appearances down South during the civil rights struggles of the 60's.  One of the most powerful, though lesser-known songs associated with and sung by Pete (though composed by Walter Lowenfels and fellow-Weaver, Lee Hays) is "Wasn't That a Time." This song was also performed by the Weavers in a bowdlerized version, until Lee Hays toughened it up in the Weavers 1980 reunion at Carnegie Hall.  It was written in 1948, against the backdrop of the HUAC hearings and Smith Act prosecutions, neither of which lent luster to the causes of civil liberties and freedom of expression.  In the song's original lyrics, the writers asserted, "there is no freedom in a land where free men go to jail."  Gee, Pete could have been singing those lines with far greater applicability to Mother Russia than the U. S. of A.  That said, they still were powerful words, albeit with less strength than they would have had had Seeger's indignation been world-wide.  Clearly, he would not have been able to sing those lines in the U.S.S.R. had the song been about, say, crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters, or the toleration of dissent within the Soviet Union.      
•    Growing up as a left-liberal on Manhattan's Upper West Side, I started singing Pete's  songs at my "progressive" (lower-case "p") Camp Birchwoods by the tender age of nine.  By the time I went away to college, I probably owned about ten of his albums (on the Folkways label, natch!), not to mention everything recorded by the Weavers.  I had also seen him perform, with or without the Weavers, at least a couple of times a year since I was fourteen.  I went to all the Hoots, sang along with all the pro-union, ban-the-bomb and civil rights songs, and don't regret a moment of having done so.  Those were wonderful, "feel good," times, and there was nothing (before or after) that compared to singing along with Pete.     
•    Some old communist friends of my parents (who wouldn't have hurt a fly, let alone storm a barricade) gifted me the rare "Songs for John Doe," the 78-rpm recordings of anti-war (WWII, that is) songs made during the interregnum between the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact of 1940, and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941.  All of a sudden, the "I hate war and so does Eleanor, but we won't be glad till everybody's dead" lyrics vanished along with any undistributed copies of the album, as the party line changed to embrace the (reinstated) war against fascism. By the way, Pete had been a pre-pact anti-fascist during the Spanish Civil War, and his version of "Viva la Quince Brigada remains an anti-fascist classic that I can still sing and play from memory.  But look, Pete was only twenty-one or so when he recorded "Songs for John Doe," and the just past 1930's was a time when many people of good will saw the possibility of of a better world emerging from the ashes of the Great Depression.  The "Soviet Experiment" had a lot of non-communists excited, and communism offered a muscular response to the ills facing the world: a strong labor movement, resistance to fascism,  and a vigorous anti-Jim Crow activism.  
•    It was often said by anti-communists that the communists exploited legitimate grievances.  True though that was, much of America was doing nothing to address those grievances. And, let's face it, capitalism was not exactly showering itself in glory.  To borrow a phrase from Clifford Odets, perhaps we were all "Waiting for Lefty" in a country where the communists were the not only the most forceful voice for change, but among the few speaking out.     Getting back to the Hitler-Stalin pact, at the time of its signing, a lot of idealistic, but disillusioned, people left the Party which they had either joined or "fellow-traveled." Not so Pete.  He continued to swing and sway with the "good old party line." This unpleasant reality was something about I resisted acknowledging until my mid-twenties, by which time I begrudgingly realized that Pete, for all his noble sentiments, never found a left-wing cause he didn't like. As Pete himself (much) later related, while clearly a communist sympathizer, he didn't actually join the Party until 1942.  By then he was twenty-three, and even though the Soviet Union had become our wartime ally, he knew they had, until recently, been allies with Nazi Germany. He also doubtless knew that the U.S.S.R. was infamous for its "show trials," penalized freedom of speech with Gulags, imprisonment and death, not to mention the official government policy of starving the Kulaks.  While this last atrocity began in the 30's, when Pete was too young to have known about it in any meaningful way, it had been broadly publicized in the United States by 1941--and was--by any definition, a genocide involving 5-15 million people.  
•    Do I lay this at Pete's feet, or at those of the wide-eyed intellectuals who were taken in by "The God that Failed?"  Of course not, but it was worthy of criticism and unworthy of silence.  Is it possible to be in favor of the right things for the wrong reasons, and if so, is that preferable to silence?  Clearly.     
•    And so, we admirers of Pete Seeger are forced to confront the conundrum of assessing a life that was both on the right and wrong side of history--often at the same time.  Perhaps I'd best leave this to the philosophers.  Though I'm clearly not the first to point this out, it was--and is--important to separate art from politics--even when they are intertwined in the mind of the performer.  Whether, for example, Wagner intended the Nibelungen to be a metaphor for Jews (or whether he was Hitler's favorite composer) is immaterial to appreciating the "Ring Series" for the masterpiece it is.  I liked John Wayne a lot more than I liked his politics, and recognize the extraordinary acting abilities of Vanessa Redgrave even as I deplore her  political sympathies.     
•    Ever mindful of Shakespeare's words from Marc Antony's eulogy for Caesar, I don't want to be guilty of a doing a "so let it be with Seeger" by interring the good with his bones as I make his evils long live after him.  The sadness of Pete's sins (acknowledged and otherwise) is that they detract from the integrity of his otherwise great achievements.  But that said, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"  "Turn, Turn, Turn," "The Bells of Rhymney," "If I had a Hammer," and the overtly political  "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" stand on their own as classics.  Some of his lesser-known songs are among my favorites:  "Empty Pocket Blues,"  "Oh Had I a Golden Thread,"  "My Rainbow Race," and "Autherine."  And don't forget that he introduced much of the world to the aforementioned "Wasn't that a Time? "Guantanamera," "Wimoweh," and the ur campfire song,"Kumbaya. "     
•    I know I'm leaving out some songs that I've forgotten.  So be it, as such are the burdens of memory.  Pete was a fine musician, revolutionizing both folk banjo and the twelve-string-guitar.  Without him, the folk revival of the 60's would probably never taken place.  It is ironic that the blacklist kept him from reaping many of its benefits. Pete had a terrific folk voice and a gifted ability to arrange and harmonize.  And, as a live performer, fuggedaboutit!  Nobody could touch him.     
•    The last time I heard Pete was in September of 2012.  It was at the Brooklyn College leg of a nationwide tour saluting the 100th anniversary of Woody Guthrie's birth.  Arlo Guthrie was supposed to be the headliner, but had to back out at the last minute for personal reasons.  Pete, who had virtually retired from performing due to a much diminished voice (he was, after all, 92), was a last-minute replacement. Considering that I never expected to hear him perform live again, this was a special treat for both my wife (whom I had dragged along to yet another folk concert) and me.  Pete talked a lot about the origins of the song "Reuben James," which was about the first U.S. ship sunk in World War II, a little over a month before Pearl Harbor.   It is a great and rousing song, set to the tune of the Carter Family's "Wildwood Flower" and filled with Woody's incomparable lyrics. Although Pete didn't hit the high notes, both the song and his performance were high notes in and of themselves.  And that night, all I could think of was Pete Seeger the performer. The concert hall was filled with love.    
•     The first time I heard Pete sing  "Reuben James" was fifty-five years ago, at a Carnegie Hall concert he gave with his guest, the great blues harp artist, Sonny Terry.  I attended the concert with a group of fellow campers from the previously mentioned Camp Birchwoods.  Seated alone in the back row was a shrunken Woody Guthrie, huddled in an overcoat.   None of us had ever I heard the song before, and Pete began it with an excerpt from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."  He quoted words that could stand as his own epitaph:         
•    "Have you heard  it was good to gain the day?  I also say it is good to fail.  Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.  Vivas to those who have failed, and to those whose war vessels sunk in the sea: and to those themselves sunk in the sea, equal to the greatest heroes known."       
•    I will never forget that song, that performance, and its poetic introduction.  I don't know whether Pete intuited that how much I wanted to hear the song again that night in 2012, but I like to think so; he was that way with an audience.  Pete has now joined his wife, Toshi, who passed away just about a year ago.  I also like to think that he is  reunited with Woody as I imagined in my song, "The Folksingers' Sweet Bye and Bye."  Pete Seeger was not only a witness to a unique time in our nation's history, but was an active and effective participant in making that history. So long, Pete.  Warts and all, it has been good to know you.