Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seegerwas an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth3 May 1919
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
All songwriters are links in a chain.
How can you save the world you have not seen if you can't save the community you have seen?
Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.
There are many people writing songs. That is absolutely wonderful. Who knows, there may be some kid in diapers and he or she might succeed in capturing in a few dozen words what great writers have spent years trying to say. Just the right word in the right place with the right melody behind it and the right rhythm. It might get around the world inch by inch, and people realize that this world is in danger, that we're in danger. That's the way "This Land Is Your Land" got to be so well known.
You have a right to your opinion and I've got a right to mine. Period.
Now somebody will ask me, Pete, how can you prove these songs really make a difference? And I have to confess I can't prove a darn thing, except that the people in power must think they do something, because they keep the songs off the air.
I believe that my choosing my present course I do no dishonor to them, or to those who may come after me.
I guess I've learned more from the Clearwater than anything else. All I did was help to plant a seed, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.
The real meaning of courage was the personal sacrifice of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.
Some folklorists just collected dead bones from one graveyard, only to bury them in another, their library.
I fought for peace in the fifties.
I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches.