Rights Rhythm: Spain in My Heart

Last week I kicked off our discussion of Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine with Pete Seeger's take on the Spanish Civil War song 'Viva La Quinte Brigada.' How about we close out with a little more music? This is from an album of contemporary musicians putting their spin on anthems of the era, Spain in My Heart: Songs of the Spanish Civil War. The album includes Pete and Arlo Guthrie singing Woody Guthrie's song 'Jarama Valley', another version of 'Viva La Quinte Brigada' by East LA natives Queztal and the always inspiring Lila Downs (see video above) with 'El Quinto Regimiento.'

The idealistic appeal of "fighting the good fight" against the fascist troops of General Francisco Franco as he warred against Spain’s democratically elected government drew more than 45,000 volunteer soldiers from over 50 countries during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). This influx created a canon of war-related songs sung by the freedom fighters and revived during the American folk boom of the Fifties. Rather than emulating the strident chaos of battle, the CD conveys more subtle aspects of the conflict – yearning for simpler times ("Asturias," "En La Plaza De Mi Pueblo"); longing for distant loved ones ("The Bantry Girls’ Lament"); the equal significance of life, love and death ("Llegó Con Tres Heridas"). The war and the bravery of the anti-fascist forces are addressed in such songs as "Jarama Valley," "El Quinto Regimiento," "Taste of Ashes," and "The Abraham Lincoln Brigade." No matter in what language the songs are performed, the bravery, pain and loss felt by soldiers and civilians alike are rendered with a conviction and feeling that transcends words and forges an aching link with the listener.

Sample more tracks from the album below.

Rights Rhythm: Defeat Facism with Pete Seeger!

Let's warm up for the discussion of our August mystery, Rebecca Pawel's Watcher in the Pine, set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War with a recent performance of Pete Seeger and grandson performing in front of a massive audience in Barcelona in the video above. Pete recalls the solidarity album he and other American anti-fascists helped put together in 1943, Songs of the Spanish Civil War 1: Lincoln Brigade, and urges the crowd on just as vigorously as back in the day. Pete would want you to sing along: find the lyrics here. Sample the original album below. Rumba la rumba la rumba la!

Justice at Last? Pete Seeger on Victor Jara

Did you catch the news that Chilean authorities have arrested the former army officers accused of involvement in the murder of singer Victor Jara? Jara was killed after the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in 1973. Listen to the clip above from PRI's The World to hear Pete Seeger tell the story of Jara's death and how the musician inspired him. Further arrests in the case are expected, according to the BBC, including one officer who currently lives in the U.S. An international justice case worth monitoring.

Something else to watch for in the coming year is a new documentary, The Resurrection of Victor Jara. See the trailer below:

Podcast Pick: Pete Seeger in His Own Words

Here's the Podcast Pick of the Week from WNYC, an interview with Pete Seeger, a Rights Readers favorite (see The Protest Singer).




Pete plugs a new collection of his published articles, letters, drafts and notes edited by Rob and Sam Rosenthal, Pete Seeger: His Life in His Own Words and once he gets warmed up he has some stories to tell. You've probably heard about the centennial of Woody Guthrie's birth a few days back and of course interviewer Brian Lehrer asks about working with Guthrie. Pete also recommends a favorite magazine, Orion which reminded me that I had not checked in with this great source of inspiration for the environmental movement in a while. A sampler of things I enjoyed at the site: a visual ode to meaningful trees, Draw me a Tree, a poem Cherries, Luis Alberto Urrea (an author we should explore together) reading an eloquent column on respecting migrations from all directions, a critique of the current state of environmental education. And just to bring things back around, Alec Wilkinson, author of The Protest Singer has a piece in Orion about an Iranian scientist who is helping to diversify the fruit farms of Idaho and writes in The New Yorker about Pete Seeger: His Life in His Own Words and singing with Pete today,

Then the microphones broke down. Seeger managed to have everyone sing a song with him by repeating the words to the people in the front row who could hear him, then having them repeat them for the people in the back. His voice was wobbly and not very loud but passionate. The halting quality of the lines, passed from one group of people to another, made them seem as if they were part of a protest song that was too dangerous to sing all at once. 

Rainbow after the Storm: Solidarity Sing in Norway

Thousands of Norwegians gathered in the streets of Oslo on Thursday to sing a Pete Seeger  song, "My Rainbow Race", that the mass murderer Anders Breivik had termed 'Marxist brainwashing.' The protest was an effort to reclaim the children's tune and unite in solidarity against  Breivik's ravings against multiculturalism at his on-going trial for the killing of 77 people. Pete must be so proud!

It's not often I find a human rights-related topic to blog about in a Nordic country, unless it's as a model of civility to emulate, but we did get in on the Scandinavian thriller craze, sampling some of Stieg Larsson's Millenium series and Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast.  Many have remarked on the irony of the countries with some of the lowest crime rates in the world producing such a high fictional body count. But some have noted that many of these authors have also raised flags about the rise of neo-Nazism and these were themes we encountered in the books we chose. Still, the Breivik massacre has to be a game changer for these writers in terms of how they view their country and the forces of evil that lurk in their stories. Last fall, The Guardian probed several authors, including Nesbø, for how this event might affect them. Nesbø said he doesn't expect to address the issue directly, but he is sure it will affect his writing in some way.  Some clues for where he might go may be found in an eloquent essay he wrote last year, again for The Guardian, about Norway's lost innocence,

After the bomb went off – an explosion that was felt where I live in Oslo – and reports of the shootings on the island of Utøya began to come in, I asked my daughter whether she was scared. She replied by quoting something I had once said to her: "Yes, but if you're not scared, you can't be brave."

So if there is no road back to how things used to be, to the total, unconscious and naive fearlessness of what was untouched, there is a road forward. To be brave. To keep on as before. To turn the other cheek as we ask: "Was that all you've got?" To refuse to allow fear to set limits to the way we continue to build our society.

Keep on as before. Keep on singing

Rights Rhythm: Note of Hope

Last year at this time we were discussing Alex Wilkinson's book about Pete Seeger, The Protest Singer and wondering where our generation's protest singers and songs were. Then a couple months later, some good folks in Wisconsin got a little upset when some of their rights got taken away and they started to sing.  Here they are jamming with Arlo Guthrie.  Did you know the Solidarity Sing Along is still going strong every weekday at the capitol?  They've even created a special holiday songbook to bring some seasonal cheer to the 'people's house.'

If they need still more new material, there's a new album, Note of Hope, of Woody Guthrie’s lyrics freshly set to music by artists like Lou Reed, Ani Difranco, Jackson Browne, Tom Morello and Pete Seeger.  This is all a warm-up for next year's Woody Guthrie Centennial. For more on the album, see Guthrie's daughter and album co-producer Nora Guthrie's interviews with WNYC and American Songwriter,

There are some real activist artists on the records like Ani DiFranco, Tom Morello, Pete Seeger; was that a conscious decision? 

One of the things I found are so many people are activists in their own ways. We just don’t hear about it. They each have a cause or a picket line that they’re involved with. Woody’s kind of activism is a 360 degree kind of activism — he’s not just focused on unions. But when you listen to Jackson Browne’s love song, when they’re sitting on the bench at night and the stars are shining and what is this young couple talking about and whispering into each other’s ears? Some of the lines are “and we talked about this and we talked about that, and we talked about the union. I was like “wow, Woody wrote the union into this romantic song.”

So you don’t have to be a political activist, you can be a lover and find ways to bring all these ideas and stuff into your conversation into your home and into your town. I kind of found out that all these people are activists in a way, and to me, the thing is to find words or a lyric that match up with that.

Here's that Jackson Browne track for union romantics and sample the others below that.  You might also want to see the Tom Morello track put to use in a video supporting the Occupy movement. Sing out!




 

We've Got Our Eyes on You

Back last December when we were discussing Pete Seeger, I mentioned that I'd be looking for opportunities to share more of his songs.  You may remember that I am now in Wisconsin, and you may have heard about our little polite disagreement with our Governor over the matter of collective bargaining rights (which, let me just remind you are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Now the rallies and marches I've attended so far haven't featured any singing, possibly influenced somewhat by frigid temps and whipping winds, but I have noted reports of Solidarity Forever, breaking out under the Capitol dome. Surely Pete would have something to say about this? You bet!

"Maybe the Republican governor, he's done us a favor by bringing the problem to national attention," the 91-year-old Seeger said in a telephone interview from his New York home. "It shows the whole country how much we need unions. We may end up thanking him."

It seems he sang a few songs on behalf of the Wisconsin unions, though its not clear which ones, but I've chosen, "We've Got Our Eyes on You" which is less familiar than some of his other union songs, but the lyrics of this song addressed to lawmakers seemed the most appropriate for our situation today. Sing it!



You can find this rarity on the boxed set Songs For Political Action: Folkmusic, Topical Songs And The American Left 1926-1953.  Many of his other union songs are collected on If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope & Struggle.

One more time with feeling!

Not done with Pete Seeger yet!  First, here is the lovely group of Readers assembled to celebrate Pete and the season. As always, looking sharp!

Here are a couple of clips from Pete's show Rainbow Quest singing holiday songs with Bessie Jones. This seemed like the most appropriate way to wish you all good cheer on this day. Thanks so much for interest in the blog and our activities! Keep singing into the New Year!

Our December Book: The Protest Singer by Alec Wilkinson

This month we read The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger by Alec Wilkinson.  Wilkinson writes regularly for the New Yorker and you can check out some of his other pieces, including his most recent about rhythm and blues singer Bettye LaVette, here.  If you'd like to learn a little about his background, you can listen to this interview.

As for Pete Seeger, here's a vintage (1984) Fresh Air interview. And then just last August, NPR's Talk of the Nation had Pete on to discuss his latest Grammy-nominated album, Tomorrow's Children made with children from his home near Beacon, New York and featuring new songs on environmental themes. After a bit of a slow start the interview really kicks in when Pete can't resist breaking into song and gives a nod to Rights Readers favorite Wangari Maathai ("There should be a song about her.") The Huffington Post also has an interview,

MR: And might you have any advice to new artists?
PS: Sing in front of as many different kinds of people as you can. Old folks, middle age folks, kids, infants, and sing for people you disagree with too. Learning how to communicate with people we disagree with is something the whole world has to learn.

The New York Times checks in on Pete's current Sunday routine ‘Letters to Answer, and Logs to Split’ while this Atlantic reflection contains some great nuggets,

"In 1910," he said, "John Phillip Sousa wrote, 'What will happen to the American voice, now that the phonograph has been invented?' And it's true—parents don't sing lullabies to their children anymore, they'll put them in front of the TV to fall asleep. Men used to sing together in bars all around the country—now there's a TV or loud music there instead."

From NPR, Pete Seeger and friends close out the 2009 Newport Folk Festival including Pete's song "Walking Down Death Row", a song I hadn't heard before. 

We've previously mentioned the PBS documentary The Power of Song (view the trailer here) and the Smithsonian-Folkways podcasts. Take note also that the PBS site has bonus interviews and a handy timeline, while the Folkways Seeger profile also comes with a slideshow and video and audio features.  And please do check out the Beacon Sloop Club and the Clearwater. Have you found yourself humming along while reading? Ready to burst into song? Look to Sing Out! for inspiration.

The episode concerning the censorship of Pete's appearance on the Smothers Brothers is described in fascinating detail by David Bianculli in Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour".  He also tells the story in this Fresh Air interview (transcript). Here is the performance of the American War Songs Medley from the show and the censored clip of "Waist Deep In The Big Muddy".  I like this clip of "Wimoweh" and "Where have all the Flowers Gone?" better though, because no Pete Seeger performance is complete without the audience reaction (and who doesn't love Tommy Smothers?).



The episode of Rainbow Quest featuring Roscoe Holcomb mentioned in the book is excerpted here.  There are just too many good Seeger YouTube clips to share in one post so we promise to think of more excuses to post them in the future. By popular request though, here is Pete and Friends performance of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" at the Obama inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.



Check out this video from the kids at Clearwater who have added some new verses to "This Land is Your Land."

What's your favorite Pete Seeger song?