Pete Seeger and Rev. Fred Kirkpatrick, cover of Broadside #110, November/December 1970. Cohen collection.
In early 1965 a fascinating, highly critical review of Pete’s musical life appeared in Sing Out!, ostensibly written by Toshi. It turned out, however, that Pete himself was the author of this overview, which was particularly scathing about his recordings. While Pete appears to be most serious, this piece indicates his wicked sense of humor. About the same time Pete presented a survey of folk music in the International Musician, a magazine designed for professional musicians, in which he explored its creative, stimulating role in American history: “There are many definitions of folk music, but the one that makes the most sense to me is the one that says it is not simply a group of old songs. Rather, it is a process that has been going on for thousands of years, in which ordinary people continually re-create the old music, changing it a little here and there as their lives change. Now that our lives are changing so rapidly, obviously there will be lots of new songs.”* Ralph Gleason (1917–1975), the astute music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, praised Pete in his article in mid-1965. Although he begins by stating, “Definitions of folk music Pete Seeger leaves to the musicologists,” Pete often presented his own views on the subject, as in his International Musician piece.
Pete Seeger and Rev. Fred Kirkpatrick, cover of Broadside #110, November/December 1970. Cohen collection.
In the fall of 1965, “Toshi and I toured six central Asian Soviet republics,” Pete would recall. “On the corner newsstands one could see magazines and books in two languages: Russian and the local language …. In Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, I spent an hour talking with a local musician, an expert performer on a type of Uzbek lute …. I found he also taught at the Tashkent institute of traditional music—such institutes are maintained throughout the Soviet Union. But in the big cities young people here also tended to think of folk music as representing the past. When they look forward, many of them seem more interested in jazz and cabaret music.”*
In Moscow on October 25 a reporter from Soviet Life interviewed Pete at some length; the interview was published in the magazine’s April 1966 edition. While Pete was continually criticized for his defense of the Soviet Union, as the Cold War rolled on and even after, he did not hesitate to express his views, mostly favorable. Pete always stuck to his principles, a deft mixture of traditional values and progressive impulses. But there always seemed to be complications. A New York Times correspondent heard him sing to students in Moscow the song “King Henry,” which included critical comments about the war in Vietnam, and the paper initially ran the story under the headline “Seeger Song in Moscow Is Anti-US.” Immediately protesters once again appeared in Beacon.†