If I may, I’d like to put in a plug here on the advantages of getting out into the countryside and among the people. East, west, south, north—away from the city of New York and its satellites, away out where the folks don’t think very often about New York and when they do, not much.
You sure can learn a lot. Round about a year ago I first took it into my head to try to learn to play the five string banjo. I couldn’t find anybody in this part of the country who knew how to play one, so I listened to phonograph records. It wasn’t enough, though. The music went too fast, and traced too intricate a pattern. I really didn’t really get the hang of the instrument till I left the city and started knocking around, mainly down south, watching other folks play, and playing along with them.
If you play an instrument why don’t you try this and start traveling yourself someday? Take along your music box and start off by the thumb route—hitch-hiking. Or you can ride the side-door Pullman, or you can, if you care, ride in style behind the wheel of an automobile. Sing and swap songs wherever you go. If you know the right kind of songs to sing, sing in churches, or saloons, or union halls, or gas stations, juke joints, or just along the sidewalk on Saturday nights. Maybe some hot evening you will be walking down a dusty road, cursing under your breath, and some fellow on his porch will hollor out like this:
“Hey you! What kind of a git-fiddle you carryin’ there? Stop and play us a tune!”
Well, maybe after a little coaxing you sit down for a while and perhaps after a little bit he’ll allow as he has a guitar himself in the house, and how about playing a tune together? So maybe after a little you’ve both learned some new songs, and maybe he asks you to stay over-night and for breakfast, too. (Free meals don’t always come this easy.)
SOURCE Promenade I, no. 10 (January 1941).
I was loafing one day last October outside a W.P.A. warehouse in Jasper, Alabama, where they were handing out surplus commodities to reliefers. Strumming a few tunes, and generally wasting time, I noticed one old fellow’s hands twitching as he watched me, so I asked him if he could pick a banjo.
“Hell, no, Sonny,” says he, “I can’t even pick cotton ’nough to make a living at it.”
But I figured he was just modest, which is the correct way to be, so I started playing worse and worse myself, and finally I persuaded him to take over. He said, “Lord, I haven’t touched one of these things in nigh on ten years.” Well, I’m telling you, he could play. Didn’t know very many tunes, but knew those well, and I learned a lot from him.
As people in the cities become increasingly conscious of the wealth of American folk music—and dancing too—I think one of the most important things is to see that they get a true picture of it. Long-hair musicians, for example, for the most part think of folk music as something esoteric, quaint, picturesque—an isolated phenomenon which they can’t connect with the main cultural pattern of our country.
Therefore one of the swellest things about the American Square Dance Group is the way the members have gone out to country dances wherever they can, in New York State, Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, and so on, and have copied down the calls and figures to bring back with them.
Trusting you will keep up the good work, Yours, Peter Seeger