A tribute to Pete Seeger(1919-2014)

When some of the greatest musicians in the world gathered five years ago to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of the musician who inspired them all, Bruce Springsteen told Pete Seeger: “You outlasted the bastards, man.”

And so he did.

This man, who died at the age of 94, was blacklisted by some shitty American Committee and sent for a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s to the sidelines of what was becoming an entertainment industry for the oft-neglected final verse of This Land is Your Land—“Nobody living can ever stop me, As I go walking that freedom highway; Nobody living can ever make me turn back, This land was made for you and me” 

But did that stop him.? NO.! He went on with his singing, kept on writing songs like Where have all the flowers gone, kept playing his banjo inscribed with the message  “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender,” and kept traveling across the country and around the world—for every cause from labour rights to civil rights to environmentalism to peace.

He sung folk songs of America and other lands to people everywhere. He was proud that he never refused to sing to any group of people because he might disagree with some of the ideas of some of the people listening to him. He sung for rich and poor, for Americans of every possible political and religious opinion and persuasion, of every race, color, and creed.
That sense and sensibility was stronger than the forces that sought to silence him. The son of privilege who lived for a good bit of time with his dear wife, Toshi, in a cabin that had no running water or electricity but offered an exceptional view of the Hudson River he loved, never lost what everyone hailed as a “stubborn, nasty, defiant optimism.” And the radical singer of radical songs about radical notions like loving one another, talking rather than shooting and singing rather than surrendering, lived long enough to engulf a rather bigger portion of my heart.
And so it went. Decade after decade. Singing and agitating and inspiring the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren of those who heard him singing. And this is how we all see late Mr. Seeger.
                        But he did so much more than that. He showed us how to do our time with grace, with a sense of history and honor, with a progressive vision for the ages and a determination to embrace the next great cause because the good fight is never finished. It’s just waiting for a singer to remind us that “the world would never amount to a hill of beans if people didn’t use their imaginations to think of the impossible.”

"A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To Everything
There is a season
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven" 

Thank you for the sacrifices and great and memorable music, RIP