Banjoista8N - Posted - 01/29/2014:  05:19:32

Eric

What do you think about a  Pete Seeger contest to honor all he did to promote the 5 string?

JanetB - Posted - 01/29/2014:  05:32:41

Sounds fun!   The video challenges motivate me to strive and get my best efforts recorded.

bornold - Posted - 01/29/2014:  07:09:25

I'm all for this

etparadox - Posted - 01/29/2014:  07:18:56

Great idea! I'd be a lovely way to bring the community together to honor his memory. Tech willing, I'm in.

Fathand - Posted - 01/29/2014:  10:05:36

How would you define a "Pete Seeger tune". Anything from his book? Anything he recorded or anything he wrote?

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 01/29/2014:  10:37:19

How about "anything that isn't from a fascist song book."

banjered - Posted - 01/29/2014:  18:57:06

Great idea. His heart sure was in the right place. Took him a while to figure out the fascists "over there" were as bad or worse than the ones over here but he came around. I absolutely love his bold stand on the FIRST amendment during the McCarthy era when everyone else was cowering behind the fifth.

Tomorrow at my weekly gig at the Irish pub I think I'll do all Pete Seeger songs. I looked at a list of his songs and there were 700 of them , more than enough for me to extrtact a set out of. Pete, we love you, we owe so much to you - God Speed! Banjered

cbuedel - Posted - 02/21/2014:  18:27:16

quote: I am sure over in Ireland they all know who Pete was and I am sure they do some of his songs.

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Originally posted by banjered

Great idea. His heart sure was in the right place. Took him a while to figure out the fascists "over there" were as bad or worse than the ones over here but he came around. I absolutely love his bold stand on the FIRST amendment during the McCarthy era when everyone else was cowering behind the fifth.



Tomorrow at my weekly gig at the Irish pub I think I'll do all Pete Seeger songs. I looked at a list of his songs and there were 700 of them , more than enough for me to extrtact a set out of. Pete, we love you, we owe so much to you - God Speed! Banjered

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cbcarlisle - Posted - 02/21/2014:  22:14:28

I'm all for a Pete Seeger Tribute or a Pete Seeger Festival but what the heck would be a Pete Seeger Contest? Lookalike? Soundalike? Preachalike?

whyteman - Posted - 02/26/2014:  14:07:29

Some excellent banjo players have responded to this thread, however the lack of interest bears out what I've mentioned before. That is, Pete's public social persona will reverberate for decades. However, his influence on the banjo-playing public began waning decades ago, and in a decade he will be as obscure as Fred van Epps. That is, to say, a footnote.

Jim Yates - Posted - 02/26/2014:  16:53:31

Pete revived a long lost method of notating banjo music; tablature.  Had Pete not done this, all banjo books would look very different.

He also invented a couple of terms that are used not only by banjo players, but by almost all fretted instrument players: "hammer on" and "pull off". 

Even if he didn't play himself, these contributions should make him more than a footnote to the banjo-playing public.

whyteman - Posted - 02/26/2014:  19:53:32

Interesting points, Jim. I do wonder though how well How To Play the 5-String Banjo has sold over the past 25 years. I wonder if it will remain in print.

banjobrewer - Posted - 02/27/2014:  05:00:31

I am 38 years old and Pete is probably the main influence for me starting to play. That was before I found the hangout, before all the books and youtube. I just loved his sound.

I do agree that I am on the younger side of people who have discovered and loved his music and his passion. And most younger than me probably never heard of him.

I hope he lives on as more than a footnote, but the generation he really touched are older and not as active in spreading the word. You maybe right.

Jim Yates - Posted - 02/27/2014:  07:12:08

My sons are also 38 years old and two of their favourite stories when they were kids were Abiyoyo and The Foolish Frog. 

raharris - Posted - 02/27/2014:  08:09:36

I came to music through Joan Baez, but she quickly led me to Pete Seeger, who led me to Big Bill Broonzey, and the show was over!  One of the wonderful things about Pete was that he was open to everything -- music from around the world.  A Chinese marching song, South America, Africa, everywhere.  One idea for a Pete Fest would be: It's a Great Big World - Sing out! and would stress the great big wonderful influence of the banjo and the importance of embracing the world.

Joe Connor - Posted - 02/27/2014:  11:26:06

Pete was a very good old-timey player but he was never really about virtuosity.(In fact, I remember reading something he wrote where he said that excessive virtuosity is what killed the tenor banjo in the '20s). If you listen to tapes of Pete from the '40s and early '50s, he could really tear it up on the banjo. Check out this tape: youtube.com/watch?v=Hr9FP93o8Ro  His "Around the World" duet with Fred Hellerman on the Weavers at Carnegie Hall LP contained some amazing picking. However, Pete was always about the song itself. He never let his skill on the banjo intrude on the song and never really showed off his skill on the banjo. That may have been based partly on political principle, too. If folk music is the music of the people, you can't play it in a way that only virtuosos can duplicate. 

As for Pete's book, it was the only instruction manual around for a long time. However, it's really more of a sampler of various styles than a real instruction manual. It was designed to get you started and your job was to take it from there, preferably by listening to other players either in person or on record. Now, we have a ton of instruction resources, from youtube tapes, to manuals, to DVDs, to webpages. What's most impressive is that banjo players still talk about that book more than 50 years after it was published.