Interview with Pete Seeger
by Frank Matheis, appeared in Dutchess Magazine, August 1998
Frank Matheis visited with Clearwater festival founder, Pete Seeger, and his wife Toshi Seeger, the primary organizer of this years musical program, in their Beacon home overlooking the Hudson. We went to seek the wise bard’s latest views on many issues, from Dutchess County to the world at large. When we asked Pete Seeger, always affable and forthright, what song he would sing for Bill Clinton today, he replied: “I’d sing the same songs I sing for everybody else. I’m trying to find a way to say with a grin what needs to be said.” Seeger, armed with his banjo inscribed with the slogan: “This machine seeks out hate and forces it to surrender”, did sing most wonderful songs, including one about our population in Dutchess County and beyond “…a-doubling, a-doubling, a-doubling, we’ll all be a-doubling 42 years…” . While this print interview cannot reflect the colorful spirit and the glimmer in the eye of the valiant singer and environmental advocate, nor the impromptu musical portions of the interview, here are some key excerpts of Pete Seeger’s views. Ever modest, he told the interviewer right from the outset: “Well, keep in mind that I’m going to be 80 years old next year, and don’t look for wisdom from old people. I think you should look to young people. And if we do our job right there’s going to be young people that are going to stick around Dutchess County, because they’ll say this is the greatest place in the world to live.”
How will change come about in the world?
I believe the world will not survive until we solve the problem of the rich getting richer — and richer and richer — and corporations becoming more and more powerful ,until there are a handful of corporations who could buy and sell the world. This obviously can’t go on forever. Now, exactly how it’s going to happen I’m not sure, but I’d say if there is a human race here in 200 years we will have found a way to share. I think it is going to happen through a lot of small organizations. I don’t think any one big political party or any one big church or any one big government — certainly not even the big United Nations -can accomplish this. This huge change that will take place, I think, through the work of millions of little organizations, whether it’s a small church or a small magazine or a small political group, a small group like the Clearwater.
A line in your world famous song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” asks “…When Will They Ever Learn ?” Will they ?
“Ever” is a long time. I don’t think the human race has a long time. I think we’ve got a couple of centuries at most — maybe a hundred years. And I think it’s women who may be the ones to make this big change — who are going to tell the men. You know, when Sadat spoke on the radio to the Egyptians and told them that he was going to Jerusalem, it was heard throughout the Arab world. He said: “There will be no more war.” And he repeated it: “There will be no more war.” And I am willing to bet that in millions of Arab homes there were women who said to their husbands: “Did you hear what he said?” And the husband said, “Well, that’s what he says.” Well, the women were not necessarily going to agree. And they could tell their children the next day, “Your father thinks that Sadat is wrong. But you heard Sadat say that — didn’t you?” It’s going to be women more than men who will do the job, saying there’s other ways you can solve this problem than by going to war. Yes, there’s a reputation that if you don’t want to go to war you must be some kind of a scaredy-cat…
…Bombs always kill innocent people, whether in Oklahoma City or a Tokyo subway or in the World Trade Center or in Hiroshima, or in Iraq. Do we really want to go in for that sort of stuff?
Can music (and festivals like the Clearwater Great Hudson Revival) bring change?
Every word means different things to different people, and I say when words fail — they will fail from time to time — try pictures — the lens may be able to leap the language barrier. And melodies and rhythms can too. It’s been fascinating for me to see how Clearwater has gotten its message out to open the river — not so much through the printed page as through these festivals. People come down and they see the river close too — not something they just look at from a distance. And the next thing you know they’re talking, and they’re eating food, and they’re learning things they might have never learned otherwise…
…Plato once wrote it is very dangerous for the wrong kind of music to be allowed in the republic. There’s an old Arab proverb: When the king puts the poet on his payroll, he cuts off the tongue of the poet. So my guess is that all sorts of people think that music does change things, but you can’t prove a darn thing.
Churches have used music, armies have used music, peaceniks have used music, unions have used music. I’m not very much in favor of trying to make things official. Somebody wanted to make the song “This Land is Your Land” a national anthem. I say, heaven’s no — can’t you see the Marines marching into another little country playing “This Land is Your Land, this land is my land”? So — and just because you put a uniform on something it doesn’t mean it really solves the problem. In the long run sometimes it makes problems. But I do believe that songs do change things. They change people’s personal lives. Who knows?…
What message does Pete Seeger have for his friends and neighbors in Dutchess County?
I urge people in the county, and all along the valley, to start planning not just five or ten years ahead, but to think what this valley is going to be like when their grandchildren are here, or great-grandchildren, or great-great-grandchildren. It’s one of the most beautiful counties in the entire world — beautiful farmland, beautiful streams, beautiful hills. But if we keep on doubling the way we are now it’s going to look like New York City in a hundred years.
I admit — how are you going to have prosperity if you can’t double? That is the big problem which Dutchess County has to figure out. Do we really want this Hudson Valley to look like New York City 140 years from now? I don’t think so.
But I’d say let’s first of all help the farmers stay in business. You know, in Connecticut — where my brother lives — there’s a big field in back of his house. And I said, “How come there’s no developer filled up this field?” He says, “Oh, as long as the field is still used for agriculture your taxes don’t go up. They stay.” But if at some time in the future you decide you are going to develop the land, and sell it off in one-acre lots, or half-acre lots, you have to pay all the back taxes. So it gets harder and harder to find a developer willing to do it. But the taxes stay low as long as it stays farmland. Now, admittedly politicians say: “ Oh, we’ve got to get taxes or we can’t run this government” — but don’t raise the taxes on the farmers! There must be some way to handle this. I’d say we are ingenious people. There must be solutions to find out how we can make Dutchess County better and better without having to become bigger and bigger. That’s really — that should be the slogan — make Dutchess County better and better instead of bigger and bigger…
…All I know is during the next few decades there are going to be some of the most exciting things done, and some of them might be done right here in Dutchess County — finding ways in which there can be jobs for people without having to destroy the farms…
… You might consider that we spend a huge amount of money on jails. If we could just spent that same amount of money on finding jobs for young people — back during the ’30s Roosevelt had the Civilian Conservation Corps . There are all sorts of outdoor jobs that young people can do who have got muscles and energy. They can be putting in firebreaks, so if a forest fire comes it doesn’t jump too far. They could be putting in bridges and trails.
In 1995 you were awarded the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Award, along with Hillary Clinton and Taconic Publisher Hamilton Meserve. During the acceptance speech you observed about the irony of being a radical in the eyes of some and a national treasure in the eyes of others.
(Seeger laughs out loud.) I didn’t know I’d said that, but you see –I’m not that happy about publicity directed at me — I have to tell you. It’s an honor that you’re interviewing me, and it’s an honor receive that award — both my wife and I are great admirers of Eleanor Roosevelt. But, I keep reminding people that there are a lot of truly heroic people in this world who never get any attention at all. They do a job wherever they are, as well as they can do it, and the work with their friends and their neighbors to get a job done if the job is too big for themselves, whether it’s small business or church or library or the volunteer fire department. There’s little organization just over the line in Putnam County there is a beautiful point of land in the Hudson, called Little Stony Point. The same man who with me started the Clearwater, he and I started a little group called Little Stony Point Citizens Association, because we wanted to keep the litter cleaned up on the beach!. They had a bridge there. And when the bridge engineer said this has got to be torn down, it’s not safe, we were the ones that got to State Senator Leibell to help us get the money to put in a new bridge so that people can get and go swimming down at Little Stony Point.
Right now I’m working with the kids in the local school up here in Beacon to see if we can’t get swimming in the Beacon waterfront. I was delighted that the principal of the school looks upon it as a valuable thing for the kids to learn. How do they learn? It takes petitions, it takes money-raising to get something done. The first thing you have to do is test the water, make sure it’s safe. The County Health Department has already taken some tests, but it’s going to take more this coming spring. And if the kids stick at their job, in a few years there is going to be swimming down at the Beacon Waterfront. … New York City used to have 30 — I think 30 floating pools a hundred years ago. They’d float in the East River, and be tied up, and for a nickel you could change your clothes and then leave them in a locker, and then you’d dive in the water of the East River, float between the boards that were tied together. So you’d swim in the East River, but the lifeguard wouldn’t lose anybody — like putting a dish drainer in the water.
Despite a time of economic prosperity, music and other arts budgets in public schools are under siege in Dutchess County and all over New York. Pete Seeger comments:
It’s true we need to learn the science. I tell people, “Did you know that it’s been proven that if you listen to a lot of music and you make a lot of music that you’re usually better in mathematics?” As a matter of fact, they say that people who listen to a lot of Mozart are usually better at mathematics. Never can tell exactly. But, at any rate, I think it is really foolish not to want to make music a part of the school curriculum. It doesn’t mean you have to specialize in it, but just as sports should be part of every kid’s life, music and the arts in general — painting and so on — it doesn’t mean you’re going to become an expert — but it means it’s part of your life.
What is Pete Seeger’s opinion about our current state of the union?
I’m very worried about the fact that people don’t bother to vote. I know exactly how it happens — no use — why vote if there’s no chance. And I think it’s a very, very serious thing. It’s shocking when you think that people gave their lives to get us the right to vote — not just in the American Revolution and the American Civil War, civil rights movement and the women’s suffrage movement — and less than 50 percent vote. So I am a strong supporter of the Center for Voting Rights and Democracy. It’s a little committee with a little newsletter. But they’re pushing for what is called proportional representation all around the country. The idea of winner-take-all, in the long run it’s not good for the country.
What was the effect of you being red-baitted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigative hearings on your family in the 1950’s?
It didn’t have that much of an effect on me. I made a living singing at schools, colleges, summer camps and they didn’t like the Un-American Activities Committee anyway. So I didn’t get fired. I didn’t get rich. All through the ’50s my family never went hungry. My children went to school in the little community where I lived near Beacon, it’s called Dutchess Junction. When all this publicity came about with me (an the House of Un-American Activities), the principal of the school sent a note to all the teachers, saying, “If anybody makes it hard on the Seeger children because of all this publicity about their father, please let me know.” Well, this was such a decent thing to do. She didn’t have to do that. But she was a good woman and she didn’t want children to suffer.
There were some problems. Some local people made trouble. Somebody started a fire in the woods just north of this house. I found out about it and the fire department came up — I’m a member of the volunteer fire department. We put it out. The next Sunday he started a fire at the other end. Some of our neighbors must have gotten to the guy — they knew who it was — said, “What are you trying to do ? Burn him out, and burn the whole mountain down because you don’t like Seeger?” And he never tried it again. I am really kind of sorry for the people who have been taken in by this whole campaign. As a matter of fact, here just last fall I was down working on the waterfront, and I was picking up litter or something — but nobody else was around. And a little pickup truck drove by, and there was an old man about my age — and he didn’t know who I was — he says, “Is this where Seeger lives?” And I said, no, that’s the Sloop Club — and I’m a member of the Sloop Club. But he just said, “God damn Communist” — and drove away in his car — he didn’t even recognize me. (Laughter.) He read something somewhere.
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So, he said with a grin and then he did sing.