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Pete Seeger and the American Soul
So Pete Seeger was there in the 1950s singing about the perils of McCarthyism. When he was (naturally) brought in for questioning by the House Committee on Un-American Activities he did not plead the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions. Instead, courageously, he denounced the Committee's efforts to question him about his political and religious beliefs. For this he was convicted and blacklisted from television and radio.
And Pete Seeger was there during the Vietnam War, singing about the need to bring American troops home. When CBS infamously censored his rendition of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" in 1967 he waited and came back one year later and sang the song on television. Forty years later, the censors gone, he was there singing protest songs about the Iraq War.
His critics often called Pete Seeger anti-American. I think the opposite was true. I think he loved America so much that he was particularly offended and disappointed when it strayed, as it so often has, from the noble ideals upon which it was founded. I don't think that feeling, or the protests it engendered, were anti-American. I think they were wholly, unabashedly American.
In that passage from "Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck wrote (and Fonda spoke) these words: "A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody." I think that's what Pete Seeger was. He was the little piece of the big American soul. And for 75 years he spoke on behalf of the souls of tens of millions of Americans who were too scared, or too busy, or too tired to speak out against the injustices they saw.
And Pete Seeger was there during the Vietnam War, singing about the need to bring American troops home. When CBS infamously censored his rendition of "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" in 1967 he waited and came back one year later and sang the song on television. Forty years later, the censors gone, he was there singing protest songs about the Iraq War.
His critics often called Pete Seeger anti-American. I think the opposite was true. I think he loved America so much that he was particularly offended and disappointed when it strayed, as it so often has, from the noble ideals upon which it was founded. I don't think that feeling, or the protests it engendered, were anti-American. I think they were wholly, unabashedly American.
In that passage from "Grapes of Wrath," Steinbeck wrote (and Fonda spoke) these words: "A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody." I think that's what Pete Seeger was. He was the little piece of the big American soul. And for 75 years he spoke on behalf of the souls of tens of millions of Americans who were too scared, or too busy, or too tired to speak out against the injustices they saw.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/pete-seeger-and-the-american-soul/283396/
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