The Times reported today that Pete Seeger died in Manhattan yesterday. He was 94. That means he was already 70 when I arrived at Reed.
My older brother was the first one to share Seeger’s name with me and it was also through him that I first heard Seeger’s music: One summer, while my brother was in college, a friend asked him to store a box of LPs for the break. One of those LPs was an early 60’s recording of Seeger singing at Carnegie Hall concert on behalf of some social cause (freedom riders most likely, but perhaps labor or Vietnam war). I played that album 40 times or more that summer and I could sing every song by heart. It never occurred to me that I was probably ruining the LP by playing it so often and my brother never complained.
My one chance to see Pete Seeger live came some time later during my junior year of college. He filled the Beckman auditorium at Caltech. His high-pitched voice, his banjo, which bore the label “This Machine Surrounds Hate And Forces It To Surrender,” and his 12-string guitar provided all the inspiration and musical guidance needed to get several hundred science nerds to lift their voices into song. (Ironically, Arnold Beckman, the auditorium’s donor and one-time chair of the Orange County Republicans was about as opposed to Seeger’s politics as a person could be.)
That was all a long time ago, but Seeger’s voice and music will live on. My kids grew up singing Abiyoyo. And for nearly 20 years, inspired by the likes of Seeger, a group of my Portland friends have gathered in local pubs twice a month to sing songs together. If you like to sing, join us upstairs at the Caldera Public House on SE Stark, first and third Tuesday of every month around 7 or 8 PM (and try not to step on the toes of the Celtic musicians who block the front door).
