Wednesday, August 6, 2008


Pete Seeger: The Power of Song


Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is a documentary film that first appeared on PBS American Masters series last winter. Filmmaker Jim Brown has created the biographical documentary of record about Seeger that comprehensively covers both the activist and artistic aspects of his career. This is an exquisite documentary film crafted to serve as a time capsule of how this man moved through the 20th Century.

"Some people make musical history, Pete Seeger made history with his music." Bill Clinton said this about Seeger at his Kennedy Center Honors induction. And this documentary underscores Clinton's statement throughout, but probably most natably as a kind of godfather for the folk boom of the sixties.

Power of Song has no great stress on Seeger as recording artist. The story of Seeger reaching for a fire ax during the Dylan's 1965 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival where he "went electric." And many of the specific event highlights (March on Washington, Carnegie Hall concert, etc.) of the civil rights era are not covered. But the film feels unified and complete. Early years discovering folk music under the encouragement of his father, his days with Woody Guthrie, the surprise hit status of Goodnight, Irene by the Weavers, and his efforts to clean up the Hudson river are all covered.

Bob Dylan has a sound bite early on where he talks about the miraculous power of Seeger's to get a crowd singing in harmony and make them sound good. I remember a cassette tape I made of a Seeger broadcast live at Portland State University on KINK in the early seventies. This tape was played often on family ski trips, we all loved the story songs and group singalongs. I remember liking the version of Guantanamera so much better than the slick one that was on the radio. I still remember the chorus of Woody Guthrie's Deportee from that tape. ("Goodbye my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Goodbye My Amigos, Jesus y Maria...") In he concert, Seeger promised the sold out crowd at PSU, he would return in the Summer and have an outside concert.

The whole family went to Washington Park amphitheater that summer in anticipation of an event alike the concert we had played so often. But it was kind of a mess. Every petition gatherer and cause of the time seemed to have a representative. I got freaked out when this guy tried to get me to commit to stop eating grapes and lettuce. Come'on guy, I was maybe 14. I also recall Seeger being a little surly that day. When he recited the Declaration of Independence, it was with a kind of bile. When he soundchecked Turn, Turn, Turn, a favorite of mine because I loved the Byrds, he quit after "A Time to Die" because he kind off handed said mmmm, it is too nice a day to talk about death.

That summer concert kind of ended my romance with Seeger's music and those magical PSU tapes. It was easy to kind of see him as an anachronistic, throw back, a little pink man with his banjo being romantic about radicals. I liked the Seeger/Guthrie albums that came out in the seventies, but again, they kind of felt like living museum pieces indulged in the body of American folk song.

Filmmaker Jim Brown in an interview on the American Masters website stated that he actually had a limited number of choices of performance footage of Seeger because of the 17 year broadcast blacklist that the Smothers Brothers were finally able to get lifted (which also became a huge controversy because of his Vietnam protest song, Big Muddy) Brown says" "Selecting the concerts was actually not that hard because there weren't that many of them. Thank God there was Canadian television where most of them are from, because even though he was blacklisted in the United States he was able to perform in Canada."
The blacklist was the result of Seeger's standing up to HUAC, one of the many moments in his life and career where he stood up for principles and maintained his dignity.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song is worth seeking out as history and musical profile. A good biographical documentary, in my experience, has the ability to make the outside world feel like it is standing still and gives me the feeling that I wish it would not end any time soon. I'm not sure why films like this one and the recent American Masters film about Les Paul elicit this kind of response from me. Perhaps this is due to the fact that these kinds of films with the well-crafted, biographical perspective, have a way of connecting intimately with the history of the century where most of years of my life were spent.
posted by well-executed buffet at 3:35 AM
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