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01 Jul 06 - 06:07 PM (#1773732) Subject: Pete Seeger interview w Billboard Mag. From: Genie Billboard 6-26-06 Featured Artist - Q&A: Pete Seeger I just found this interview at www.billboard.com and was delighted. (I woke up about 4:00 AM today -- having fallen asleep with the TV on -- to the joyful noise of Bruce Springsteen and his band closing Conan O'Brien's show to a rousing old Pete Seeger folk song. The particular song slips my mind, but it's one I know well.) Thought I would bring you a few excerpts from Pete's Billboard interview, but click the link to read the whole thing. (Nice pic of Pete at Billboard too. ======================== "'My father, Charles, taught me that the folk process is tens of thousands of years old; it's a part of every field and every walk of life.' -- Pete Seeger June 26, 2006 Leo Sacks Like a train in a Woody Guthrie song, Pete Seeger ]just can't stop. ...[At] 87, [he] still believes that a song can change the course of humankind. Billboard recently visited Seeger ... to get his reaction to Bruce Springsteen's "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions." ... Seeger hopes the album will inspire other popular performers to explore the great American songbook. Of music with a message, he says: "There aren't hundreds of songs -- there are thousands. You don't have to reinvent them. Just sing them the best you can." ... [From] the home of ... Connie Hogarth and Art Kamell, founders of the Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., Seeger ... had hiked from his mountaintop home a mile away, tall and trim in a schooner's cap damp from a gentle rain. ... Seeger also discussed what happens when parents ignore their children; greed, consumerism and narcissism; anti-Semitism in the American workers' movement; indigenous peoples and the world's 4,000 languages; faith, friendship and Toshi Ohta, his wife and companion of 63 years; African melodies and a pressing need for U.S. copyright reform; planting forsythias; and the lesson of Noah's Ark: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign/No more water, fire next time." ... BB: Springsteen says he's attracted to your work because it represents the scope of the American experience. PS: Bruce once said, and I never forgot this, "A rock singer can last as long as he can look down in the crowd and see his own face looking back." I liked that. ... ... BB: Did you see any of the shows on Springsteen's current tour? PS: Had I found a disguise to wear, I would have. ... ... BB: Do popular performers, through their enormous influence, have a social responsibility to speak out? PS: Does Billboard cover the coffeehouse circuit? Thousands of people are making up songs about war and peace. We just don't hear them on the radio. BB: What would Woody Guthrie sing about today? PS: He'd say, "Reach the kids!" You never heard "This Land Is Your Land" on radio or television so how come everyone knew it? It got into the schools! BB: In the new forward [sic] to your autobiography, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" (Sing Out Press), you refer to folk music as "the folk process." PS: My father, Charles, taught me that the folk process is tens of thousands of years old; it's a part of every field and every walk of life. Cooks rearrange old recipes for new stomachs. Lawyers rearrange old laws for new citizens. ... PS: Honest songs aren't written for money. ... ... BB: Tell us about the courage it took for you to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955. PS: The real meaning of courage was the personal sacrifice of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. BB: Are you writing any new songs? PS: Sometimes a new melody will bubble up. Then I realize it's my subconscious singing, "Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself/It's later than you think." ... ... ... BB: 'A benediction, please.' PS: If there's something wrong, speak up!' " |