He Had a Hammer

Pete Seeger, singer, folk-song collector and songwriter was more than a folk singer; he was an agent of social change

“If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.
I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.”

– Pete Seeger (May 3, 1919 - January 27, 2014)

For more than half a century, the career of Pete Seeger, a 20th-century troubadour carried him from singing at labour rallies to college campuses to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama. Known for his crisp-as-a-mountain-stream singing and banjo playing, Seeger was also a strumming embodiment of the connection between folk music and leftist politics: He sang for the labour movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches, anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, for Solidarity, the Polish trade union and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. A founder of the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, he marched alongside Dr Martin Luther King Jr and, years later, joined artists expressing opposition to George W Bush's incursion into Iraq.
He helped write, arrange or revive such perennial favourites as “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” and popularised the anthem of the civil rights movement, “We Shall Overcome,” which became the hymn of hope for people all over the world. "I still believe the only chance for the human race to survive is to give up such pleasures as war, racism and private profit," he said, beliefs he held until his death.

He never sang alone, he always invited the audience to sing with him.

Wherever he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action. One of the most recognisable figure for generations of listeners, he was one of the few remaining links to two of the 20th century's early giants of American folk music: Huddie Ledbetter, the black ex-convict from Texas and Louisiana better known as Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie, the minstrel singer-songwriter from Oklahoma. He was also a mentor to legendry singers in the '50s and '60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon.
From Guthrie, Seeger learned to express political and social criticism through music. In 1955, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed him to explain his political beliefs. He refused to answer questions and offered to sing his songs instead. “I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody. I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature. .. I love my country very deeply.”

His goal was to put a song on people's lips, instead of just in their ears. Photo: AFP

Convicted of contempt of Congress, he was sentenced to a year in jail. After a prolonged appeal process, the conviction was overturned in 1962 because of a technical flaw in the indictment. The government never retried him. “I ask people to broaden their definition of socialism,” he told The Washington Post in 1994. “Our ancestors were all socialists: You killed a deer and maybe you got the best cut, but you wouldn't let it rot, you shared it.” The pressure from the government only fuelled his creativity, and he adopted cultural guerrilla tactics to make sure his music was heard--singing in colleges, schools and on local radio and television, slipping away before anyone could object. BBC's Mark Radcliffe paid tribute saying: "Pete Seeger repeatedly put his career, his reputation and his personal security on the line so that he could play his significant musical part in campaigns for civil rights, environmental awareness and peace.
Pete Seeger never sang alone. He would tap out a beat, pick a few chords and invite the audience to sing with him. Pretty soon the audience would be singing the entire song to him. “He has an amazing ability to look at a good crowd and make them sing parts of the song,” Bob Dylan said to PBS (The Public Broadcasting Service) in 2007. “You want it or not, you find yourself singing with him and be beautiful.” During a performance at Moscow's Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, he led an audience of 10,000 Russians in a four-part harmony of “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” His goal, he once said, was “to put a song on people's lips, instead of just in their ears.” In a 1979 interview with the Rolling Stone, he objected to being called a folk singer. “Either like music or don't like it. But to have to make a big thing about definitions – leave it up to scholars whose business is to try to find boxes to put things in… I try to discourage them."
He helped bring dozens of classics into the idiom of popular folk music. These included Guthrie's “This Land Is Your Land” and “So Long. It's Been Good to Know Yuh.” Lead Belly's “Midnight Special,” the folk song “On Top of Old Smoky,” the Hebrew song “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” the Zulu hit “Wimoweh” and the likes of “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Guantanamera,” the nonsense song “I Know an Old Lady (Who Swallowed a Fly)” and “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” which became popular as a protest song during the Vietnam War era.

The lofty singer hailed from a family famous for its contribution to music. His father, Dr Charles Louis Seeger was a noted ethnomusicologist who taught at Yale, Juilliard School, Berkeley and UCLA; his mother taught violin at Juilliard. In 1935, he attended a folk music festival near Asheville, North Carolina, with his father. Young Pete became enthralled by rural traditions. “I liked the strident vocal tone of the singers, the vigorous dancing,” he is quoted in “How Can I Keep From Singing,” a biography by David Dunaway. “The words of the songs had all the meat of life in them. Their humour had a bite, it was not trivial. Their tragedy was real, not sentimental.”
He attended public schools in New York and boarding schools in Connecticut before enrolling in 1936 at Harvard, where one of his classmates was John F Kennedy. He worked briefly at the Library of Congress before dropping out, travelling the country with Wood Guthrie in freight trains and hitchhiking, mixing with like-minded political leftists, singing and picking up new tunes and techniques.

With Bruce Springsteen. Photo: AFP

Amid the rampant anti-Japanese prejudice in the United States during World War II, in 1943, while on furlough from Army service, he married Toshi-Aline Ohta whose father was Japanese. After leaving the military, he formed the Weavers, with three other singers, Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman, which sold more than 4 million records by 1952. During the 1970s, the '80s and the early part of the '90s, he continued to make regular performances and recordings, and his compositions were recorded by other groups. In his later years, he was active in environmental causes, including efforts to clean up the Hudson River.
Although the singer-activist recorded more than 100 albums, he distrusted commercialism and was never comfortable with the idea of stardom. And yet he was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972, and in 1993 was given a lifetime achievement Grammy Award. In 1999, he travelled to Cuba to receive the Order of Félix Varela, Cuba's highest cultural award, for his “humanistic and artistic work in defence of the environment and against racism.” "Pete Seeger is a man who believed in the power of music,” David Dunaway, Pete Seeger's biographer says via email, “…Even the birds in the air and the fish in the sea would thank him if they knew how much he cared about the earth and its many peoples."
Dubbed "America's tuning fork" by poet Carl Sandburg, the bearded banjo-playing singer became a standard bearer for causes from nuclear disarmament to the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. Civil rights, peace and labour movements all gained a higher profile when he got involved. In Barcelona in 1971, students rioted when Franco banned one of his concerts. He never toppled a government with the weight of his banjo. But he was satisfied if his little songs inspired a different way of looking at bigger troubles.Like a ripple that keeps going out from a pond, his music will keep going out all over the world spreading the message of non-violence and peace and justice and equality for all. “He devoted himself to what he believed in, which was not only the American people but people of the world,” Dan Seeger, his son said in the documentary “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.”

He believed in justice and freedom for all. Photo: AFP