{"id":4315,"date":"2016-05-01T09:17:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T16:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=4315"},"modified":"2016-04-29T16:40:10","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T23:40:10","slug":"big-birthday-memory-7-may-day-pete-seeger-joe-hill-music-and-values-past-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/01\/big-birthday-memory-7-may-day-pete-seeger-joe-hill-music-and-values-past-and-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Birthday Memory #6: May Day, Pete Seeger, Joe Hill, Music and Values, Past and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pete<\/a>
Pete Seeger with Bob Dylan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I\u2019ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. This post \u2013 from March 3, 2008, appears today in honor of\u00a0May Day.<\/em><\/p>\n

I once had the opportunity to interview BB King. In preparation, I brought his latest album home and played it for my sons. The older, then around 5, asked me “Why is this man named King mommy. Pete Seeger is the king of music, right?*” Well, how do you answer that? Our boys grew up on the Weavers, the Almanac Singers, Pete and Arlo at Carnegie Hall\u2026 all rich with wonderful songs (with pretty wonderful values) for children. I asked my husband, no folkie, why he didn\u2019t complain about the “noise” \u2013 and in fact joined us every Thanksgiving at Carnegie Hall to hear Pete and later Pete and Arlo. He said (I\u2019m paraphrasing here) “It\u2019s offering them something whole to believe in. Even if they don\u2019t always believe it \u2013 they\u2019ll understand the feeling of believing \u2013 and always seek it.” As far as I can tell, that worked.<\/p>\n

Rerack a few years though \u2014 to the Vietnam war, when songs like this informed some of my earliest political ideas.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

In fact, Pete has been a hero of mine for more than 40 years (How is that possible?) As I sit watching the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary on his life, I can\u2019t stop thinking about all the hope, idealism and dreams tied up in his music \u2013 at least in my life \u2014 and, for a time, the lives of my sons. Seeger always has believed that music has infinite power; his own music made us believe that we could bring about the world we dreamed of. I\u2019m embarrassed by how much I long for those feelings; it\u2019s probably one reason Barack Obama and his young supporters interest me so much \u2013 they remind me of\u2026. ME. Pretty feeble, isn\u2019t it? To still be whining about long-lost days and dreams. Most of all, to feel such rage and sadness at what we weren\u2019t able to do for our children; we leave them a world, in many ways, so much tougher than the one we inherited.<\/p>\n

Pete, though, would hate such talk. I once met him, around the time that there were civil rights battles raging in the old Chicago Back of the Yards neighborhoods that Saul Alinsky helped to organize. I asked him if it didn\u2019t bother him that the residents there revealed attitudes so contrary to what had been fought for \u2014 for them \u2014 just a generation ago. His response “No. When people are empowered they have the right to want what they want. If we believe in empowerment we have to accept that too.” NOT a usual man, Mr. Seeger.<\/p>\n

The music was more than a transmission of values though \u2014 from “A Hole in My Bucket” to Union Maid. It was our family soundtrack. One of my kids was watching WOODSTOCK while he was in college, and was astonished to hear Joan Baez singing Joe Hill \u2013 and to recognize it from when he was little (this is a bad YOUTUBE version; the proportions are off, but just listen..<\/p>\n

In our house, that old labor song had been a lullaby. I\u2019d learned it from Pete\u2019s concerts. Recently, so many years from those lullabies, another family favorite presented us with a great, rolicking tribute to this remarkable man. I wanted to end with a more of this (way too) sentimental tribute to Pete, but the joy of watching another generation up out of their seats in song is probably a better way to end. Right?<\/p>\n

*He went on to become an enormous BB King (and Albert, for that matter) fan, for the record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I\u2019ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. This post \u2013 from March 3, 2008, appears today in honor of\u00a0May Day. I once had the opportunity to interview BB King. In preparation, I brought his latest album home and played it for my … Continue reading Big Birthday Memory #6: May Day, Pete Seeger, Joe Hill, Music and Values, Past and Future<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3799,3800,3,4,3798,3801,27,8,9],"tags":[279,3250,1675,1676,2625,871,3818,3816,1410,359,3817,455],"class_list":["post-4315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-3799","category-3800","category-aging","category-baby-boom","category-big-birthday","category-big-birthday-70-1946-2016","category-current-affairs","category-music","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-bb-king","tag-joan-baez","tag-joe-hill","tag-may-day","tag-pete-seeger","tag-saul-alinsky","tag-the-almanac-singers","tag-the-weavers","tag-vietnam","tag-what-did-you-learn-in-school-today","tag-woodstock"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-17B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4315"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4321,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions\/4321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}