There's Better Things to Do

`New City Songster''s Volume 20 Editorial Revisited

In April 1985, volume 20 of New City Songster, a UK protest folk songbook, contained the lyrics to Colin Bargery and Graham Goffee's "Little Boxes," Sue Edmonds" "To Our Town," John Quiggin's "Bobby, I Hardly Knew You," Peggy Seeger's "If You Want The Bomb" and "Ode To A Scab," Andy Victor's "Tales of '81," Sandy Kreitzer's "The Storm," Ewan MacColl''s "Daddy What Did You Do In The Strike?","The Media," "Only Doing Their Job"  and "Miner's Wife," Clem Parkinson's "Temperance Shearers," Mike Waterson and Martin Carthy's "A Stitch In Time," Larry Penn's "Nobody Cares About That," Maria Tolly's "Wishes," Jack Purdon's "Blackleg Mining Man," Kerith Power's "Upwardly Socially Mobile," Ed Pickford's "Hamster Sid," Paul O'Brien's "The Divil's Advice," Craig Johnson, "Down Along The Soo Line," Jan Bessent and Bill Murphy's "My Kitchen and My Loo," Irene Scott's "Screen Printer," Stan Patman's "Anti-Nuclear Angels," Pete Seeger's "My Get Up And Go," Keith Power's "Liberation Road," and Dick Gaughan's "Which Side Are You On, 1984?".  And volume 20 of New City Songster also included an editorial which stated the following:

"It's so easy to give up these days, to get disillusioned, disenchanted, despairing. It is easy to blame the dream and say it is unachievable when it is really the dreamer at fault.

"We have heard it said by many that protest singers, and writers of topical songs, are just `singing to the converted.' Even if this were so, what's wrong with that?  Do not the converted need encouragement and sustenance as we batter our minds and bodies over and over again against the walls of the system? Whoever brings this accusation against those who gather weekly in churches to sing of their hopes and beliefs to one another (and, incidentally, to their god)? We strengthen each other by singing together, and express our single purpose in chorus and verse. The converted DO have the solace of group activity: demonstrations, meetings, jail.

"We also find ourselves alone and still needing reminders of that group. When you're on your way home, going shopping, taking a bath, putting the kids to bed, cooking, washing, standing by your machine, pen-pushing, whatever: it's good to remember that song, that chorus, to have music that reminds you of the ultimate goal and the road that leads to it.

"The converted need to remember constantly that the powers of creation are on OUR side, because it's those powers that are going to bring about the big change that is coming. If we can create songs we can create a good and fair society. If we can beat the sense of isolation we can beat Thatcher. Those who can sing together can fight together."

`New City Songster''s Volume 17 Editorial Revisited

In September 1981, volume 17 of New City Songster, a UK protest folk songbook--which contained the lyrics to Ted Edwards' "The Coal and Albert Berry," Don Minifie's "The Ballad of Pat Brady," Deborah Silverstein's "Draglines," Ewan MacColl's "Nobody Knew She Was There" and "What The Poet Called Her," John Pole's "Under The Leaves of Life,", Clem Parkinson's "Fishes Need--Bicycles," Ewan MacColl's "The Vandals," Yan Sharangparni's "Misfit's Story," Peggy Seeger's "Enough Is Enough," Ewan MacColl's "Kilroy Was Here," Paul Wilson and Marilyn Tucker's "Uni-Multi-Factors International," Jim Moreland and Keith Gregson's "I'm A Pneumo," Clem Parkinson's "Microbe's Picnic," Alan Lavercombe's "Laid Off," Ted Edwards' "Thy Fayther's Comin' Wom," Charlie King's "Taft-Hartley Song" and "The Dancing Boilerman," and Rod Shearman's "Is The Big Fella Gone?"--was published. And volume 17 of New City Songster also included an editorial which stated the following:

"...There has never been a greater need for good songs. We are standing on the brink of the Third and Last World War, at a crossroads that has no left or right turns, only forward and backward.

"The songs that are coming in reflect varying attitudes toward this cliff-edge, but they essentially all say the same thing: the human race is in trouble, there is alienation on all fronts. It is no longer just the boss against the worker, but male vs. female, old vs. young, city vs. country, big business vs. the people, first vs. second vs. third worlds, black vs. brown vs. yellow vs. pink vs. white. And of course, the nuclear threat hanging over the whole thing.

"It is hard to write hopeful songs these days, but we are doing it. That is the job of the artist, not to point the finger and say `Look at all that's wrong with the world' and then cut his throat. He/she must point to the way out. In all the songs in this volume, the huge issues of unemployment, race hatred, class war, ecological devastation, nuclear cataclysm are put into perspective as obstacles that we can overcome. This is done by personalising, by putting into detail the human response.

"It isn't only the comedy reactions of the characters in UNI-MULTI_FACTORS INTERNATIONAL, or PAT BRADY--nor the use of BIG  FELLA as an endearment to the whale--nor the detailed descriptions in NOBODY KNEW SHE WAS THERE. It is all these approaches at once, a total of individual human actions which is presented. Faced with nuclear annihilation, you feel mighty small. You may say, `What can one person do?' then, in despair at your seeming impotence, do nothing. But the bucket fills with water drop by drop until one mighty small drop takes the water over the top. No drop is indispensable to the final spillout. All the songs, all the constructive responses to the world situation are now not only important but vital.

"The first drop in the bucket is just as important as the last."

`New City Songster''s Volume I Introduction Revisited

In late 1968, volume 1 of New City Songster, a UK protest folk songbook--which contained the lyrics to Ewan MacColl's "Ballad of the Big Cigars," "Lament for the Death of a Nobody," "Brother Did You Weep?," and "Student Edward" protest folk songs, the lyrics to Peggy Seeger's "Song of Choice" and "I Support The Boycott" protest folk songs, and the lyrics to the Critics Group "Grey October" anti-Vietnam War protest folk song--was published. And volume 1 of New City Songster also included an introduction which stated the following:

"This is volume 1 of a continuing series. It is not a folk magazine as such, with articles, reviews and traditional songs, but is strictly devoted to circulating new songs: songs for tomorrow, today and possibly yesterday, but no further back. While realizing the value of placing new songs in a cultural context, i.e. publishing them side by side with their traditional predecessors, it is undoubtedly a fact that many new songs have immediate topical relevance and are often out of date before they are published: others may deal with burning issues, too burning perhaps for most `folk' magazines to handle. As a result, people do not see them, often till too late--and they do not get sung."

Revisiting BBC's 1983 Folk Music Series Episode with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Conclusion

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is the conclusion of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

As far as the festivals you’ve been performing at in the Nineties. Is there any difference between the audiences and the performers, compared to the Eighties? In what people are singing about? What response you get?
Peggy Seeger: I’m not much of an authority on what’s happening in America. I really haven’t been here long enough. Ewan MacColl and I didn’t do festivals. Because we didn’t like the “stop-start,” “stop-start” thing that goes on in festivals. I compare it to greyhound racing. You know, the gun goes and you have 5 minutes to do your bit and that’s it. Generally, I prefer concerts. I’ve been doing festivals because I think it’s an important discipline to have. And, probably apart from anything else, it gives me a chance to hear other performers, which I love to do.

I am very impressed at what’s going on at a lot of the festivals. There’s a lot of young people. Quite a lot of children. And it’s an audience with a very catholic taste. They seem to be able to take almost anything that you give them.

Have they heard of you? The U.S. media doesn’t seem to give you much airtime?
Seeger: No. The U.S. media has not given me much airtime. I hope to remedy that. I don’t know that I’m popular stuff. My songs have a lot of words. And some of them take a lot of thinking about. I think I’m probably not “sensational” enough. I’m not “smooth” enough. I don’t know. There’s something that I’m “not enough of.”

What about public television? I know whenever they’ve needed to raise funds, they invite a lot of the folksingers from the Sixties who allegedly are excluded from the commercial stations because they have “no commercial appeal?”
Seeger: I don’t know that I’m excluded. When I do sing on television and radio I seem to get a lot of appreciation. There’s a lot of us out there, you know. There’s a lot of people vying for these spots. I’ve been on “Prairie Home Companion.” I’ve been on “Mountain Stage.”

I was out of the country for so long. And also my name was tied to someone else’s, as part of a duo. And people get used to saying “Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.” And when Ewan MacColl dies—I actually met people who said they didn’t know I was still alive. You know, I’m only 61 [in 1996].

So, it’s a very fickle audience. But there are a lot of people who have followed the stuff that I have done over the last 30 years. And I get quite a lot of nice pats on the back when I go to festivals and concerts. And I’m very happy getting concerts, as I have been doing. I’m getting a reasonable amount of work. And I’m learning also that I can teach. Which is something that I wasn’t aware of until Ewan MacColl died. Since then I’ve been teaching songwriting and been talking about the position of women in Anglo-American folksongs. And been giving seminars on ballad-singing and on what makes folks songs so powerful, and all these kinds of things.

Is that why you’re living in North Carolina [in 1996]?
Seeger: Oh, I just picked that out of a hat. Because I wanted a place that was in the South, that was in the mountains, that had good music and warm weather. And that wasn’t too near the rest of my family. Because I just wanted to see what would happen if I landed in a place by myself, without any connections.

If people want to get your cassettes or CDs, where would they go about getting them?
Seeger: My web page is open now—you might find it of interest. The best place…just go into a record store.

One of my records I like best is really hard to get. And you can really, I suppose, only get that from me. Which is one called Almost Commercially Viable. I made that with my friend Irene, when we were “No Spring Chickens.” Made it in England and never managed to get it sold to anybody over here yet. Mind you, I haven’t pushed hard. That’s one that I really like. Probably Internet, Worldwide Web.

In terms of the future. What’s your sense? What’s going to be happening in the United States and in England?
Seeger: England I can’t say very much about. Because I haven’t really been in contact with what’s been happening in England since ’89. I took a couple of years out to write a couple of books and I hardly sang at all in England.

What books?
Seeger: I finished a book of my own songs—140 of them. And a book of Ewan MacColl’s songs—200 of those.

Some readers might not have heard much of Ewan MacColl for some of the reasons you indicated, like blacklisting. From an artistic point of view, what is going to be his place in history?
Seeger: Well, in England he is regarded as one of the architects of the British Folk Revival. There was Alan Lomax, Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: who were largely responsible for starting the English revival as we know it. And he was one of the main singers and theorists, teachers, and critics in that. He was a superb unaccompanied singer. And he was a person who opened up the English and Scottish repertoire of songs. I would say he probably has recorded about 100 albums. And many of them were songs that he just literally revived out of books. Because if they died, nobody knew them anymore.

He was a theorist of the revival, in that he worked out ways by which singers who were, say, brought up in different musical traditions, could approach singing of folk songs without ruining them. He also kind of kept the British Revival’s nose to the grindstone, as far as understanding the relationship between folk song and the working-class.

So he was like a Woody Guthrie, right, for Britain?
Seeger: Kind of.

But what are the differences?
Seeger: He came from the same kind of background as Woody Guthrie did: a working-class man. He was also uneducated, like Woody Guthrie. I would say he was probably a more skilled songwriter than Woody Guthrie. Ewan didn’t write—now this is my personal opinion: I don’t think he wrote any bad songs. And I think Woody Guthrie did. And I think Woody Guthrie wrote some absolutely superb ones. But he also wrote some stinkers. And if Ewan wrote stinkers, he kept them quiet. He was lucky enough to keep them quiet.

Ewan was also in theatre, which Woody wasn’t. He was responsible with his first wife, Joan Littlewood, for forming Britain’s best recognized revolutionary theatre: Theatre Workshop—which in the late 1940s and right through the Fifties was regarded as a pacesetter for activist theatre. He left that to stir-up the folk revival, which he did. And made a lot of enemies.

If you were in England and were in the folk revival and spoke of Ewan MacColl, anybody would have heard of him. He also is known for writing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” And for writing a number of songs which many people in the folk revival over here think are folk songs. Like “Dirty Old Town.”

Is there an autobiography or biography of him [as of 1996]?
Seeger: There’s an autobiography of him. But it was published in England and then taken out of publication. I’m trying to get it done again. It was never released here. And I’m trying to get it released over here. I will get it done. It’s called Journeyman. And I think it’s a wonderful book. An excellent book.

He wrote plays. And then the two books that I’ve done are kind of historical surveys, telling what was happening at the time when the song was written, making comments about the songs. With discographies and prefaces. Oh, you know, the whole thing. They’re huge books.

Getting back to your own performances. What do you hope to achieve when you perform before a live audience?
Seeger: Oh, I want to entertain them and make them think. I firmly believe that I have a great deal to learn from any audience that I sing for. And the folk revival generally gets an awful lot of really thinking people to it. I would like to, if possible, move them on from where they are and to draw on their experience to move me on. I’m very much invigorated by most of the people that I meet at the concerts that I give.

I suppose you might say I probably appeal more to their thinking faculties then I do to their emotional ones. But I try to make a good combination.

Technically, you’re considered quite skillful compared to most musicians. How did you get so good?
Seeger: Well, I’m not as good as I used to be. Because I have arthritis in my left wrist, which is hampering me rather a lot.

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 2

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 2 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

Your artistic work seems to have reflected movements and cultural trends more than the stuff we hear on the radio more frequently. In what ways do you think your artistic work has been influenced by the movements of the last 30 years and the cultural trends—your songwriting, presentations, concerns?
Peggy Seeger: I think folk music has always reflected a very large spectrum of human activity. Chiefly, because the folk songs themselves are about so many different things. Popular songs have generally been about love and love lost, for the most part. I mean the really popular songs. The high-selling stuff. I’m not talking about music hall and background popular songs. I mean the stuff that really gets the main attention. It’s usually been sad love songs or things like that.

But folk music, right throughout its history—because it has come not as a commodity music, but as a music which has been produced purely and simply because people felt that they just had to make it—has been about so many different things that it has reflected what has been happening in the so-called “lower-strata” of society. And that is the industrial struggles and many of the subjects which aren’t mentioned at all in popular music: like violence against women, like child-beating. And like orphans and nagging wives, violent husbands. And happy love songs, too, I suppose. Folk music is very versatile in what it chooses to reflect. And I think many of the songwriters now, because they’re writing about things that are happening now, they choose an idiom which is already there—which is folk music. And there are some wonderful songs being written on the folk circuit.

You mentioned your drift away from old left kind of labor stuff, more turning towards a feminist orientation, green concerns. When did that start and to what degree has that reflected shifts in the world or your own personal shifts?
Seeger: Well, it definitely reflects shifts in the world. I began to get interested in it in the mid-Eighties. I began writing feminist songs—well, my first one was 1970, when I wrote “Gonna Be An Engineer.” And I wrote that for a stage play that we were doing. And it just rolled-out of me, although I’ve had a relatively easy life as far as gender-discrimination was concerned. I just literally produced that in an evening, which surprised me. Then I found that because of it I was being asked to sing at women’s functions. When I went along to sing at these functions I found that I didn’t have any songs that dealt with the issues that they were talking about: like abortion, like rape, like strife between mothers and daughters, women’s position in unions, contraception. Things like that.

So I started to write songs consciously about these issues. And that was in the mid-to-late Seventies.

So I guess that would answer the question why you started writing your own songs?
Seeger: Yeah. Now I ran this side-by-side with the left-wing politics at the time. Because I was a socialist-feminist. I’m moving over quite quickly to radical feminist and to feeling that the way politics are organized, what we recognize as politics, is something that is determined by the patriarchal structure that we have. And that many of the politics are really meant to bolster up the System that we have, which is a patriarchal one: heavily centralized, heavily industrialized, highly competitive and aggressive. And many of these are principles that feminists feel are not part of what women want to be part of or what women want to be like.

This patriarchy, and the industrial complex that goes with it, is what is responsible for the rape of the Earth. And so that is why I’m moving around to a different kind of politics and to a different activist sphere. It seems that many women and many men are also moving around to this.

A kind of drift towards eco-feminism?
Seeger: Yes.

Peggy Seeger: A 1996 Interview--Part 1

Since the 1950s, Peggy Seeger has been performing before audiences in the United States and Britain. During this period she has recorded over 14 solo albums and many joint albums. After living in England between 1959 and 1994, Seeger moved back to the USA and lived in Asheville, North Carolina until early 2006. Following is part 1 of a 1996 interview with Seeger.

I was in the bookstore looking at the magazine section, and I noticed a lot of glossy magazines featuring people who were singing folk music in the 1960s and 1950s. You know, an article like “Generation X and Joan Baez.” Also books. Like When We Were Good: The Folk Revival. What’s your explanation?
Peggy Seeger: Who was that by?

Robert Cartwell. So it seems like every decade there’s a revival of interest in the folksingers of the 1950s and 1960s and in folk music in general. How do you explain the cross-generational appeal?
Seeger: When you say “cross-generational appeal,” do you mean “why is it appealing now to younger people?”

Yeah.
Seeger: Are you sure that it is?

That’s what these articles are saying. In the early Nineties—no. But now, in the last few years—yes.
Seeger: Well, then the young people now are getting romantic about the Sixties. They’re not listening particularly to folk music now. You go to the festivals now and there aren’t all that many. Probably at festivals there are younger people. But at the concerts there are more older people, generally speaking. Although I went to a Joan Baez concert down in Asheville and there were a terrific number of women there—young and older women.

So maybe that’s where it’s centered? Among women.
Seeger: I think we’re hungering for a more innocent period, to be quite honest. I think many people feel that folk music has an innocence about it. That the music that we’re being presented with now, as pop music, doesn’t. It’s interesting that there wasn’t a folk music revival back in the Thirties and the Twenties when there was a lot of really innocent, quite joyful, music.

So many movements seem to run almost in pendulum-like form. Look at the way the working-class movement and the union movement spurs up every now and then. And look at the way feminism is spurred up every now and then. The ecological movement as well. Although I hope the pendulum is going to stay where it is and move even further over.

But I think, certainly, as far as the Fifties and the Sixties are concerned, it was a kind of glowing period. People kind of look on it as—even though it included things like the Vietnam War—if we still had a kind of innocence about us then.

You lived in both the United States and in Britain during the Fifties and Sixties?
Seeger: I lived in England for most of that. I was abroad for most of that time. From 1955 onward I was abroad.

You’ve been back in the States in the Nineties. Is it much of a culture shock?
Seeger: Yes. Although I had been back several times before then. I was blacklisted in early days, even though I hadn’t done very much. Or at least, if not blacklisted, it was very difficult to get in. You had to hire a civil liberties lawyer to kind of plead your case. And you had to get work permits and special visas and all those kind of things

But coming back now, despite the fact that I have come back about eight or ten times between 1960 and 1990, yes—quite a culture shock. But not as much as if I had been a foreigner. I’m quite comfortable with American people. Always have been. Not all. The ones that are the kind of people that I meet I’m quite comfortable with.

Why would you be blacklisted as a musician? I thought that was only political people. I thought artists weren’t blacklisted?
Seeger: No. No, no, no. My brother, Pete [Seeger], wasn’t allowed to leave the country for a long time in the Fifties. Or early Sixties. And to be a folk musician, was to be regarded as quite “left-wing” and “red,” in the Fifties and Sixties. Definitely.

In the 1990s, what have you been up to artistically?
Seeger: I performed by myself up to 1958 or ’59. And then I joined with Ewan MacColl and sang with him for over 30 years. And when he died in 1989, I swung immediately to singing with my old comrade, Irene Scott. We formed a duo called “No Spring Chickens.” And we sang together for 4 years. And then she decided she didn’t like touring life. And I decided to come back over here.

And so I have been learning to sing by myself again. And it was extremely interesting. Because working with Ewan MacColl it was very, very serious. And fairly static onstage. Working with Irene, she wanted to bring humor onto the stage. So I started using a reasonable amount of humor and being lighter onstage, in terms of presentation. Although not necessarily in terms of the kinds of songs being sung. And, of course, the big difference now is that I’m swinging over to ecological and feminism politics, rather than the old left-wing politics of the jobs and the unions.

This is not to say that I don’t find them important. Because they are. But I believe that the major push, the most important push now, is ecology. And feminism goes hand-in-hand with that, because so many of the feminist principles are ones that mesh in perfectly with ecological action.