I think I'm a liberal because the music is better.

[alarimer]

RIP Pete Seeger. You did so many good things simply with a banjo and your voice. Without this music, I do believe that it would have taken much longer for the civil rights battles to be won. Music binds people together in ways that few other things can. A group of people singing "We Shall Overcome" brings chills to the spine in ways a speech cannot. You cannot help but sing along to "Where have all the flowers gone", even if you "can't sing." And he encourage people to sing along. And they did.

He had a hand in many of the songs we think of as being from that era, many of which were old folk songs or spirituals that were adapted and adopted for the civil rights struggle.

I don't think there is anyone, any singer or songwriter, alive today that could do what he did. Which was to bring people of varied backgrounds and cultures to join together in a single purpose. Who can fill that void? There is no one.

[Hoyt]

1. I think you are right.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Not just any old banjo.

He had them made with three extra frets so's he could tune down to suit his voice.

Vega Tubaphone :

[alarimer]

3. I didn't know that.

I know a little bit about the history of the banjo. It was originally an African instrument, later adapted for folk music.

I love the banjo, even though people make fun of it. They always want to bring up that scene in "Deliverance". But Peter could make it talk.

Pete's banjo "surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."

[dipsydoodle]

7. I don't make fun of them.

I did have about 150 but now I've only got about 80 left - sold the others.

From memory his first one was a Bacon on which he had the neck extended. Then he did a deal with Vega to make them available to the public.

There was an African instrument which later became the banjo. Earliest know example referred to here : The Stedman 'Creole Bania': A Look at the World’s Oldest Banjo http://banjoroots.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/stedman-creole-bania-look-at-worlds.html

[Kali]

4. K and R!

[LWolf]

5. The music is part of it, to be sure.

Born in 1960 and raised on protest music, I mostly feel like an anachronism in the aggressively self-centered, militaristic, capitalist 21st century. Even most of those who call themselves "liberals" don't seem all that liberal to me, except economically.

Nothing fires my heart like music, and the music from my youth is the hottest fire, still.

[Bennyboy]

6. I think you are DEAD WRONG...(and right too)

let's get something straight< I love Pete Seeger. When I read "if I Had A Hammer' in the fifth grade it blew my mind. My teacher, Mr Powell, gave it to me even though he knew it to be subversive.

But to think that music ended or stopped being important with Pete Seeger (Or Bob Dylan, or U2 or Bruce Springsteen or whatever) you are missing out totally.

Bob Marley had a far greater influence than Pete did worldwide. Bob heard Pete's music and that influenced Bob's songs, they influenced everyone's songs. Everywhere you go in the world, Bob Marley is there.

Michael Franti? Nobody in music today cuts across so many lines, racially, sexually, politically..... Ani? The songs of today are just as important in creating social change as they ever were. They may not be reaching your ears but Pete has influenced everyone from rappers to folk singers.

the music didn't die with Pete, it will live forever in influence.

[alarimer]

8. That't not what I'm saying

I quite agree about Michael Franti. The rest, not so much.

But what I meant (and probably wasn't clear) is that I think the music energized the movement in a way we do not see today. There are no anthems that EVERYBODY sings, while they march. And if they do, guess what, it's not one written in 2014, I can promise you that. There is chanting, some, maybe, but mostly the music, whether it's Springsteen or someone else, is sung by that person, in concert, from a stage. Not the same thing at all.

It's not the songs, really, that I'm talking about. It's the way they are used.

But then, that's what folk music is, really, meant to be sung by groups of people around a campfire or whatever. Rock music, pop music, whatever else it may be, is not. And that's what I'm talking about, really.

[Bennyboy]

11. Sorry,

I kind of took what you were saying wrong there.

One thing you have to remember, Pete never had a very wide audience. Nor was he on the radio or TV. He goes back to regional stuff, when your music didn't reach past how far you could drive in one day. He played in the labor camps and in homes with not much more than a banjo on his back... His was a story of struggle to pay the bills for most of his career, so what might be an anthem to you does not necessarily make it an anthem for the world, like say, "Highway To Hell" is. I bet if you ask 100 random people today to name two songs by Pete, NOT ONE person would be able to answer.(and that is a shame, but another subject).

When I grew up, Pete Seeger, and folksingers in general, were commies and hated around my house. Especially Pete Seeger. Very few people liked Pete for long time. And coming from that Wonder Years lifestyle, I am sure that he was not liked by most people. Sides were taken.....


(It will be interesting to hear the right wing's response to this)

Not a knock, but Pete's appeal lies with older white people. The aging liberals. Bill Clinton. Me. Not so much to anyone else.

"Who's side are you on ? Who's side are you on?" is the one question I would love to ask Obama myself....

I will say this, when i see a protest anywhere in the world on TV or around here, one thing you hear a lot of is "Get Up, Stand Up" or other Bob Marley songs. The Arab spring, Bob Marley was the background music playing in Tahir square. Bob is the music for the people for protest worldwide. ("Imagine" too).

* That's why he was killed by the CIA, he was the guy who was going to unite us, and the world, in so many ways.... racially, economically through music, and the PTB couldn't deal with that.

Pete never captured the consciousness of the world like Bob did.

[Bluenorthwest]

17. Pete was constantly on the radio in the 40's. In the 50's with the Weavers he

sat on Billboard's number one spot for 13 weeks and had many other enormous and international hits. He was a huge, giant musical star. He wrote songs that were instant standards and recorded again and again by others as well.
He was also blacklisted in the late 50's and out of national media because of that until the late 60's.
You seem to have Pete confused in some ways with Woody Guthrie, who did travel to the labor camps and was not as widely known.
Pete also had a TV series that is a mind boggling banquet of musical pairings his guests are diverse and fantastic. 39 episodes, each about an hour long. '

[Bennyboy]

18. Ya know, I am thinking only of my experience...

by the time he was in my ears he was pretty much hated. due to the communism tag. And I probably do have them both confused< I recently read a Woody Bio and Pete is mentioned many times there. As the young guy.

Damn, Commies. damn commies. Damn! Commies!

[Bluenorthwest]

19. But your facts are all wrong, that matters. It means you conclusion is going to be

wrong as well. All of your facts are incorrect, yet you repeat them forcefully. I was a kid in the 60's and Pete had big hits recorded by lots of people, he was on TV, packed concert halls and was not exactly 'hated' outside of right wing conservative homes. He was loved at my house.

[Bennyboy]

20. yeah you're right thanks

for the corrections. Learned a lot thanks.

[TlalocW]

9. How can you say that when the conservatives have songs like

"Ballad of the Green Beret?" And uh... "Okie from Muskogee?" And... hmmmmm....

Never mind.

TlalocW

[Aristus]

10. You forgot: "Gonna kick their ass 'n' take their gas!

Put a boot up their ass; it's th'Amurikan way!"

[Bennyboy]

12. I always liked ..

"Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to war" myself.

[VWolf]

13. Don't forget

all the Nuge's collected works:

Cat Scratch Fever
Wango Tango

... erm, I think that's it.

On second thought, probably better to forget them.

[lame54]

14. Then you simply don't know what you are talking about...

The right possesses the greatest song ever written

[VWolf]

15. I get an error when I try to watch it

"Embedding Disabled by Request"

Somehow appropriate.

[VWolf]

16. FWIW,

the video has 2,100 thumbs down to 1,400 thumbs up.

I guess that's somewhat encouraging.