I remember being fascinated by the live aspect of it. I can hear the recorded applause, the families laughing at his stories and singing along. It made me want to participate too. It represented everything that childhood was supposed to be about: learning to get along, appreciating other cultures, not being afraid to work hard at something, dancing, being silly, making friends and story telling. It was all there. Twenty four songs, a whole concert, on a black vinyl disc.
We each had our favorites. Mine were Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal, Be Kind to Your Parents (still cracks me up) and Michael Row Your Boat Ashore. And then there was Abi Yoyo. Abi Yoyo. Not exactly a song, Abi Yoyo is the tale of a town that turned its back on a magician and his son because his special talent of making things disappear was aggravating to its citizens. (Well, you'd be aggravated too if you went to sit on a chair and it suddenly disappeared.) But when the giant Abi Yoyo comes down the mountain to threaten the town, the magician's son plays the ukele and sings a song just for him. Abi Yoyo dances to his song to the point of exhaustion and falls down whereupon the magician instantly causes him to disappear. "Zup. Zup." He is, of course, a hero. Abi Yoyo. Never turn your back on someone; you never know when you'll need that special talent. And we all have a special talent. Thanks Pete.
I was a Brownie and a Girl Guide back in those days. We ended our meetings sitting around a really good fake fire (logs with a light bulb and fan and colored tissue paper that we plugged in; you'd never see such a contraption today). We would sing for at least a half hour, maybe more, every week--we met every week without fail. And I mean we really sang. Real songs. One of my major (and only) complaints about my Girl Scouting that I so dearly love is that today's girls don't know how to sing. They prefer only silly songs that have little meaning and mostly they kind of holler them rather than sing. We really sang. Canadian sea shanties, patriotic songs, popular songs of the day and loads and loads of folk songs. Some of my fondest memories of being a Guide were sitting around that fake fire with the lights turned low and singing Where Have All the Flowers Gone, If I Had a Hammer, Turn! Turn! Turn! and We Shall Overcome (it was the sixties, after all). No one ever told us that Pete Seeger wrote them; they were just the songs of the times. Our youthful, idealistic times. We could harmonize and did so really well.
We frequently ended up with one of Pete Seeger's favorite songs to sing: Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land. But we sang the Canadian chorus. Yes, there's a Canadian chorus:
This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From Bonavista
To Vancouver Island,
From the Arctic Circle,
To the Great Lakes waters
This land was made for you and me.
We sang harmony on that too. Thanks Pete.
Pete Seeger was such a powerful voice for those who couldn't find theirs and causes that needed to be brought into the light. He used his music, like many back then, to try to affect change. I was probably about 13 when I saw him perform Bring 'Em Home on television. I remember being completely blown away by the rawness of the lyrics and his boldness at singing right at government. It may have been the first time I realized the power that music has to unite, to stir people and to radically proclaim truth. Thanks Pete.
When I woke up to the news this morning that this gifted man had died, I flashed back through all these memories in an instant. I could hear him pounding the stage while he told his youngest audience the story of Abi Yoyo. I could see 35 young and innocent girls sitting around an electric campfire harmonizing "a time for every purpose under heaven." I saw him singing truth to power, standing for labor and fighting for the Hudson River. What a remarkable life. What a privilege to have this thread of his example and music woven into the cloth that is my own.
~~~
Everyone will be posting the video of Pete and Bruce Springsteen singing This Land is Your Land from Obama's first innauguration but I was a Willie Nelson fan before I fell for Bruce so I offer you this from last year's Farm Aid in Saratoga Springs, with John Mellancamp, Dave Matthews and Neil Young. A frail Pete Seeger, still protesting. New York was meant to be frack free.
