Pete Seeger condemns Stalin...

Jahaza — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:13:48 -0800

The pleasant but hagiographical Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (production company website w/ trailer) is playing in New York and Los Angeles. The movie is entirely uncritical... prompting this response by Ron Radosh who is interviewed in the film, but whose critical comments were left out. But most interesting is this followup article by Radosh describing Seeger's response and a new song against Stalin. The filmmaker comes out worst in Radosh's account... The closest the movie comes to criticism is when George Pataki (interviewed about RiverKeeper) says something about who he and Seeger didn't always agree politically. The film could at least have talked about the folk song "movement" critically in the way Tom Lehrer did:

One type of song that has come into increasing prominence in recent months is the folk-song of protest. You have to admire people who sing these songs. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee-house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on. The nicest thing about a protest song is that it makes you feel so good.

The New York times has a more skeptical take than Radosh, reporting on earlier apologies by Seeger, but missing the point by emphasizing Seeger's writings rather than his music... which is of course Seeger's art, and not being clear that the NY Sun articles didn't say Seeger had never repudiated Stalin. Since seeing the movie I've had "Bring em Home" stuck in my head. Watch Seeger sing it on youtube. And Bruce Springsteen reinterpret it. I wasn't able to find a link to the new celebrity version (including among others Ani DeFranco) used in the movie's credits.

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Pete Seeger condemns Stalin...