The Seeger Concert: New York Shall Rise Again

By Al Giordano

Eight years ago, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, I penned, Never Shut Up, New York, for The Nation: a lament and a prayer that my hometown would someday rise again from the smoke of war, censorship and the savage capitalism that had displaced so many of us authentic New Yorkers with fake ones, truth be told, long before those twin obelisks went down.

The essay began with a scene from Madison Square Garden, at the October 2001 benefit concert for firefighters where a senile and putrid Paul McCartney competed with an illegitimate president in Washington for the prize of most opportunistic asshat in the wake of tragedy. It’s been many years since I felt any love at all for the simulacrum of New York that occupies the space of its former greatness. It would take Pete Seeger and friends celebrating his ninetieth birthday on Sunday to remind me, once again, that Hudson River water still runs through my blood and, gasp, I still feel twinges of pride about it.

The concert – to benefit the Hudson River Clearwater Sloop project that since 1969 has made that river cleaner and its neighbors better organized – began with eleven members of the Native American Cultural Alliance, one of whom said: “Ever since that man named Hudson came up the river it’s gone all to hell. And you, Pete, started to clean it up.”

Twenty thousand concert-goers then saw a video about the 1968 construction of the sloop boat around which the project is anchored, a boat that, since then, 500,000 school children have boarded and helped to sail and from its port or starboard saw their city and their valley for the first time from outside of it. Much as the 1969 moon landing allowed citizens of earth to see our planet from a new perspective, such is the Clearwater Sloop to New York. Seeger remembered Mary Travers telling him, “Pete, there’s a war going on. That boat is a distraction.” History has proved otherwise. The Sloop project, in the end, proved more durable and brought more permanent change than an entire national anti-war-in-Vietnam movement because it was a local organizing project.

The concert started out slow enough, with muddling performances by the likes of John Mellancamp and an audience mainly of sixties generation folkies with a healthy contingent of their kids and grandkids, most of which didn’t sing along with his version of “If I Had a Hammer.” Bruce Cockburn and Ani DiFranco had some, but not much more, success getting the so far sleepy spectators to join in on Florence Reese’s coal miner anthem, “Which Side Are You On?,” including some inspired new lyrics from DiFranco:

“Lord knows the free market is anything but free

It costs dearly to the planet and the likes of you and me

Oh, which side are you on, boys

Which side are you on…”

Topical songwriter Tom Paxton, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Eric Weissberg (best known for his banjo theme for the motion picture, Deliverance), and Jacob Silver (Anarchist Orchestra) did an inspired bluegrass version of “John Henry,” during which the audience showed its first stirrings of life.

Weisberg then joined Laura Cortese (Anarchist Orchestra), Michael Franti (Spearhead), and Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers) for “Dear Mr. President.” One of them said, “I’m kinda glad to be singin’ this for this president and not the last one.” The public went wild with applause.

Whatever the daily poutrage one reads in certain corners of the (Caucasian and college-educated ghetto of the) blogosphere, or among certain demographically similar activists of the post-Seattle milieu, the folks who have been protesting and organizing against every president since Truman sure seem to love them some Obama. And this became a unifying theme throughout the night.

The mother-daughter team of Bernice Johnson Reagon (Sweet Honey and the Rock) and Toshi Reagon together with bluesman Guy Davis, Jacob Silver, and Patterson Hood (who had perhaps the most awesome night overall among all the stars assembled, his infectious enthusiasm permeating each song he, his voice and his guitar touched) led the crowd in the old gospel spiritual, “Oh, Freedom” (“and before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my lord and be free…”).

Billy Bragg did an a capella version of "The Internacionale” - "C'est la lutte finale/ Groupons-nous et demain/ L'Internationale/ Sera le genre humain" – in English. Dar Williams and some other country-rockers sung “Union Maid.”

Pete came on stage with his grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, legendary bluesman Taj Mahal, Toshi Reagon, and Steve Earle, to sing what really is the theme song for riding up and down the river on the Clearwater Sloop: “Sailin’ Up (Sailin’ Down).” The singer says “up,” the audience calls back, “down! …Up, DOWN! Down, UP! Up and down the river, sailin’ on, stoppin’ along the way… The river may be dirty now but it’s gettin’ cleaner every day…”

I remember back in the 1980s when Pete first pushed Tao, now 37, on stage. The kid was about 18 then, shy and almost wallflowerish. I’m pleased to observe that his transformation to folk-rock organizing virtuoso is now complete. If any among the 70 musicians on that stage Sunday has mastered Pete’s best skills – the sheer ability to organize and lead other musicians and an audience to sing along – it is Tao. Anybody who’s ever been in a rock band can spot the ringleader on stage; the one providing the cues to inform each player that it is his and her turn for a verse or an instrumental solo.

Throughout the two concert sets and three encores, the assembled were witnesses to Tao's glorious rite of passage. I left absolutely certain that we’ll be hearing more, again and again, from Tao Rodríguez-Seeger and the músicos he organizes: the new shop steward for songs of freedom and struggle!

There was a kind of mostly-Canadian lullaby section of the first set featuring Kate & Anna McGarricle, Bruce Cockburn, Emmy Lou Harris and the New York City Labor Council Chorus singing “The River Is Wide” and “If I Had Wings.” It brought a curious moment when Rufus Wainwright appeared from the shadows to sing a lilting verse: a bunch of the aging boomers in Section 90 of Madison Square Garden, in unison, were asking each other “who’s that?” A lesson on the market-niching of America: Outside that hall, Rufus sells more CDs and wins more Grammies than almost anyone on the stage on Sunday, but the folks, at least in my section of the arena, knew of his folky aunt and mother but not about him. Well, they sure know about him now.

There was a wonderful video interlude about Pete marrying Toshi Seeger during a World War II soldier’s furlough in 1943. Not knowing many people who have been happily married for 66 years, that was hugely impressive.

Taj Mahal and Tom Morello dueted on “Waste Deep in the Big Muddy,” which Seeger had sung during the Vietnam War on The Smothers Brothers TV show (the tune’s “old fool” character was clearly Lyndon Baines Johnson) only to have CBS Censor it. A public outcry forced the network to invite him on again for a do-over. 

Joan Baez sang an obligatory “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” And Ruby Dee took the stage backed by Bela Fleck on the banjo, reciting Pete’s 1969 poem, The Torn Flag:

At midnight in a flaming angry town


I saw my country's flag lying torn upon the ground.

I ran in and dodged among the crowd,


And scooped it up, and scampered out to safety.



 

And then I took this striped old piece of cloth

And tried my best to wash the garbage off.


But I found it had been used to wrapping lies.


It smelled and stank and attracted all the flies…

What for this audience member was the high point of the first set brought Tao Rodríguez-Seeger together with with the horn section of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans and a monster truck country-rock jam band line-up: Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell and Tyler Ramsey, Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule, and an especially energetic Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, thundering Pete’s 1970 classic, “Bring ‘em Home.” Here’s some home video of that, shot by an audience member and posted to YouTube. Tao is the skinny bespectacled guitar player in a vest. Watch him conduct and lead what is a distinctly American kind of orchestra:

Pay attention to how that previously sleepy crowd was woken up by some real pros: That, Field Hands, is Pete Seeger’s legacy, and it's a metaphor and simile for the organizer's role in society.

When at 7 p.m. (the concert had begun at 5 p.m.) dozens of the musicians joined on stage to sing “We Shall Overcome,” it was hard not to believe that an entire concert had just finished. But, no: that was just the first set…

The second set began with veteran TV producer Norman Lear walking out on stage to read a letter from President Obama saluting Seeger: a far cry from the years when the government he now heads blacklisted Seeger from radio and TV appearances and sentenced him to ten years in federal prison for contempt of Congress because he refused to fink on communists and other radicals.

Pete then walked on stage with his banjo and led 20,000 in Amazing Grace. Here’s an excerpt on how the master schools the rest of us:

In a rather surreal moment (that will probably make more sense on the upcoming DVD of the concert than it did live), Tom Chapin was joined by the Muppet’s Oscar the Grouch to sing the environmental anthem, “Garbage.” Kris Kristofferson and Ani DiFranco dueted on “A Hole in the Bucket,” a children’s song popularized by Seeger. Tommy Sands and His Irish Band led the audience in Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.” Richie Havens sang “Freedom/Motherless Child.” Joan Baez did an a capella “Jacob’s Ladder.”

But it was Arlo Guthrie – joined by US Rep. John Hall (D-NY) on guitar and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band – who lit up the second set with “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep,” then “It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song.” (Later, Arlo would team up with Emmy Lou Harris to shere Pete’s eulogy song for Woody Guthrie, “Precious Friend.” No two men, noted Arlo, “were more different in temperament than my father and Pete,” but they found a way to join forces, sing and organize together.)

Ben Harper was joined by his mom and his aunt to sing “Gather ‘round the Stone.” Peggy Seeger, a young 74, read an emotional open letter to her brother accompanying herself on the piano. Kristofferson, Havens, Haynes, Rodríguez-Seeger and others did a foot-stomping version of “Maggie’s Farm.” Roger McGuinn led a similar all-star team in Seeger’s adaptation of the Old Testament verses, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Dave Matthews sang, “Whiskey, Rye Whiskey.” (The 16-year-old son of a friend, after the show, told me that was the high point for him.)

And then came Bruce, with a talk that should be required viewing for every aspiring change agent in America and beyond:

Later, scores of performers flooded the stage to end the set with “This Land Is Your Land” (all the verses, of course) and spirited encores of “Well May the World Go (When I’m Far Away),” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Goodnight Irene.” But it’s that spoken speech by Springsteen that sticks with me most of all, and the image he shared of Pete smiling ear to ear at January’s inaugural. For, really, when the privileged activists of academia from their over-socialized perches call you or I dupes or worse for feeling good – for the first time ever, for most of us – about the new trajectory for the United States and its people, they’re hurling the same petty insults at Pete, who, at 90, half deaf, can still out-organize all of ‘em with one banjo plucking hand tied behind his back.

Which is never to say that there isn’t lots more work to be done. As Cuban folk legend Silvio Rodríguez reminded us this week after the US State Department gummed up his visa thus preventing him from joining us Sunday at Madison Square Garden:

You can pass this message to Pete's grandson Tao, and to Bill the attorney, along with my gratitude for their efforts as well as my sorrow resulting from the lack of respect shown by the State Department to them for having invited me to celebrate the 90th birthday of our dear friend Pete Seeger, living legend of North American song.

I believe that the attitude of the State Department is very contradictory, given the desire expressed by President Obama to bring the United States closer to Cuba. As a Cuban cultural worker, I continue to feel blockaded and discriminated against by other governments. Hopefully this will truly change someday.

After Sunday, I’m more certain than ever before that it will… because we’re organizing to make it happen. The show's not over. And we’re still in the middle of our song.