Pete Seeger–The Voice that Belongs to the Body

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We don’t expect that figures of this stature to privately turn out to be the same as their public persona. Having come of age in a television and internet-saturated culture, I expect what I see will be appearances, performances, veneers. And yet, Pete is exactly who he says he is. The man could be a caricature of the public figure. He doesn’t smoke and left the Weavers in protest when the group was hired to do a cigarette commercial. He doesn’t drink, shuns fancy hotels, and Toshi likes to joke that if Peter had chased women instead of causes, she would have had a good reason to leave him. He is unbending.

During our meetings he would occasionally look up from a page of the manuscript featuring, for example, a photograph of the earth as seen from outer space and say something like, “It’s not going to be one organization that saves the world but all sorts of little organizations. Think globally, act locally, they say!” Or he would look at the tablature of some old fiddle tune and say, “Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.” Or the topic of war would arise and he would say, “I think one of the saving things of the world would be getting people to be willing to talk to each other,” or “If you love your country, you’ll find ways to speak out and do what you think is right.” In response, I would nod, as if he were teaching me these things for the very first time, as if he hadn’t been teaching me these things my entire life.

On the one hand, each time he expressed such a thought, he did so in a tone so earnest it sounded as if he heard anew what he was saying each time he said it, believing the words all over again. On the other hand, these were the sorts of trademark Seeger comments I had read in countless newspaper and magazine interviews, and heard him say countless times on television or film. As he said these things in the privacy of his own kitchen, preaching to his most devoted choir, I couldn’t help wondering whether such sincere sentiments had devolved into aphorisms. In some ways, the fervor with which he uttered his own little sayings reflected an old man desperately grasping for his identity as it began to fade.

The impulse didn’t matter though. Either way, he has reached millions with his messages—basic ones that religion and politics also teach when they are doing what they ideally should—of loving one’s fellow man and working together to bring about a better world. Asked once by an interviewer about his belief in the afterlife, Pete replied, “When Toshi and I had our first child who died when it was only six months old, I was in the army, and my father wrote me and said, ‘I don’t think I could cheer you up in the usual way. But remember this, that something good that has happened can never be made to unhappen.’” The same might be said for Pete: he has taught the room to sing. We know the words and the tempo. We will see what happens when he steps down from the podium to listen from the darkened hall.

The last time I went to Pete’s house was in late December and I had the beginnings of what would become a nasty cold. The phlegm in my chest was taking hold and I couldn’t stop myself from coughing every few minutes. Each time a fit caught me Pete would wait patiently for me to finish and take a sip of tea to soothe my throat before continuing to double check the index for the final time. Did we include Robert Frost? Did you make a list of where Lee Hays should be listed as an individual and not as a member of the Weavers? What do you think about including the Big Bang Theory? No, I guess, we can’t include everything, but I really do think that Robert Schumann and Bertrand Russell are important. Oh, and Sacco and Vanzetti. They need to be in there too, of course. The publishers are going to be so irritated with me. They don’t want to add these pages. Well, I guess they can always decide what they want to do when they get this. They can make the final decisions…

Eventually, Toshi came over to the table and refilled my mug with hot water. “Don’t cough on us,” she said. “You’ll kill us.”