Local folk musicians honor a legend
Pete Seeger turns 90 on May 3, 2009. That evening, in New York’s Madison Square Garden, there will be a huge musical celebration paying homage to the man who has been the face and voice of American folk music for well over half a century. True to Seeger’s long-standing support for environmental issues, the event will also serve as a benefit for one of Seeger’s cherished projects, the Hudson River’s Clearwater Sloop.
On Thursday, May 7 2009, there will be a much smaller, but likely just as celebratory tribute to Seeger in Ann Arbor. That night, the Ark Coffeehouse will host nine local folk musicians, one for each decade of Seeger’s life, in a concert titled, “For Pete’s Sake!” And, again consistent with Seeger’s frequent support of many good causes, all the proceeds will benefit the Ark. In alphabetical order, the musicians are: Chris Buhalis, Kitty Donohoe, Gemini (Laz and, yours truly, San Slomovits), Mustards Retreat (David Tamulevich and Michael Hough) Dick Siegel, Paul Tinkerhess and Matt Watroba. They will tell stories from Seeger’s long, eventful and influential life and, following in the familiar Seeger tradition, will lead their audience in singing along with Seeger-penned classics like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “The Hammer Song,” and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” as well as some of the countless traditional and contemporary, American and international folk songs from Seeger’s enormous song bag. Matt Watroba, host of the popular WDET radio folk program, “Folks Like Us,” will also play excerpts from a lengthy interview he conducted with Seeger last year.
When Seeger headlined the Ark’s annual Folk Festival in January of this year, his Michigan fans could see and hear for themselves that this nonagenarian has not yet hung up his banjo. The whole country witnessed the same thing about a week before the Festival when Seeger, along with his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and rocker Bruce Springsteen, led the enormous crowd at President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Concert in singing “This Land Is Your Land.”
At the Ann Arbor Festival, Seeger walked out to a standing ovation. The lengthy and warm applause was clearly not only for his many musical contributions to our culture, but was also an acknowledgement of Seeger’s character and of his stances on many of the pivotal events and causes in American history during his lifetime. To name just two, there is, first, his long-standing support of civil rights; he regularly shared stages with black musicians like Josh White and Leadbelly in the 1940s and ‘50s, when such integrated events were not yet common. He sang at Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963 and was one of the musicians primarily responsible for introducing the anthem, “We Shall Overcome” to the Civil Rights Movement.
In 1955 he refused to name friends and associates to the House Un-American Activities Committee, a stance that led to him being cited for contempt of Congress and got him blacklisted for years. It derailed a career that was already in full bloom at the time. (In 1950, Seeger’s folk quartet, The Weavers, had a hit single with Leadbelly’s “Goodnight Irene” that topped the charts for 13 weeks.) Those people are now just a dark-stained footnote in a black chapter of American history, but Seeger is still here, still speaking out, still singing.
The Ark’s Seeger birthday concert will be a celebration of a remarkable life, one that continues to serve as an inspiration to musicians, music lovers and ordinary citizens alike.
