The following article appears in the Sept. - Nov. '97 issue of FolkNotes.

Conversation with Pete Seeger: On Folk Music

An interview with Larry Hoyt

In January, 1994, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Pete Seeger, primarily in regards to Pete's work with the People's Music Network. During the course of our phone conversation, the topic shifted to a more general discussion of folk music:

LH "You're pretty much identified as being a folksinger, and..."

PS "What does that mean to you?"

LH "To me, it means that you perform songs that come from the grass-roots level, not just from people who identify themselves as professional songwriters. What does it mean to you?"

PS "I wrote about this in a new book that I've got out ("Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"). Once upon a time, folk music was music of the peasantry class, ancientand anonymous. In this country, the term was broadened to include the songs of cowboys, and lumberjacks, and prisoners on chain gangs. Then Woody Guthrie came along, and (music collector and historian) Alan Lomax told him 'You're a great folk song writer, don't let anyone dissuade you from your main job in life which is writing songs.' And Woody did it so forecefully, a whole string of us following Woody got the name 'folksinger' too. People now think a folksinger's somebody who makes up his own songs and stands on stage with a guitar. I tell people the most common, widespread folk music in America is African-American religous songs, what some call 'gospel music.' And there are 57 hundred varieties of other folks who came to this country from other parts of the world. They brought their music with them, and it often changes when it gets here. Whether they just arrived, or if they were here long before Columbus, their songs are just as much folk music as anything else."

LH "Do you think rock and rap could be considered folk music?"

PS "At some time, probably the best will. My father, who was a musicologist, put it this way - don't think of folk music as any particular group of songs or any group of singers. Think of it as an age-old process which has been going on, literally, thousands of years, whereby old elements are re-worked for new audiences. There's an element of folk music in string quartets, operas, as well as in jazz...but I use the term 'folksinger' as little as possible because it's so disagreed upon. Just call me a 'river singer' - I sing up and down the Hudson River."

LH "In the late Fifties and early Sixties, there was what many people called a folk music revival..."

PS "This is the problem. When the music business gets hold of something they can make money off, they tend to take it and oversimplify it and make a little money, and then turn to something else to destroy..."

LH "You were there when what's generally called folk music had its greatest popularity in the late Fifties and early Sixties..."

PS "What we called 'The Great Folk Scare.'"

LH "Ha, OK, you were there during the great folk scare. Do you think that folk music will ever be that popular again?"

PS "You know the human race won't get sucked into the sun till about three billion years from now, so my guess is that there'll be waves of this and that. Imagine yourself sitting on a beach, and you watch the tides coming up and down. Eventually, big waves will leave their mark on the sand."

LH "Are you familiar with other forms of contemporary pop music?"

PS "I'm afraid I don't have time to. If you ask me what's going on in the pop music field, I'm laughably ignorant."

This page maintained by Dana Cooke. E-mail me at djcooke@aiusa.com.