Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger - May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014


Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 94.

His death, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, was confirmed by his grandson Kitama Cahill Jackson.

Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.

For Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action.  MORE
 
Video produced for Inconvenient Proof, filmed at Helen Garland's Birthday Cruise on the Hudson River in 2009


Pete always played at the birthday parties for his old friend, Helen Garland, CEO of the Earth Society, the second NGO founded at the United Nations.  Many are grieving today as they remember a life well and truly lived.  God Bless you, Pete, and thanks for giving us the music which moved Movements for Peace, Love, Justice and Care of the Earth. 

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