[I wrote the following back in December, and just discovered I never posted it. So here it is. What I say about children around the world who don't have it so good as many American children has special meaning now, with the recent disaster in Haiti having left so many children, who were already living in poverty, homeless and orphaned.]
A little over a year ago I was revisiting some of the music Peter, Paul and Mary had produced over the years, after having listened to one of their CDs earlier in the day (Note of Sept. 28, 2008). Last night the "begging" show Maine PBS was giving us was the special PP&M did several years ago. There were clips of many of their past perform-ances -- at a Greenwich Village club when they were first starting out, singing Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" at the 1963 March on Washington, John Denver's "Leavin' on a Jet Plane," at their 1986 "Reunion" concert, and many more. In all of them there was that wonderful harmonizing, the marvelous arrangements, Mary Travers' beauty and passion as she sang, and the great songs themselves. These people and their music played a big part in my coming of age years -- along with Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan and the Kingston Trio -- and it was nice to be reminded of how important they were not just to me, but to millions of other people as well.
What really got me were the numbers done at a PBS children's concert, where PP&M had the kids (and their parents) singing along to "Puff the Magic Dragon," "If I had a Hammer," "We Shall Overcome," grinning with delight and nodding their heads at the silliness of "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." Watching all those young, eager, innocent faces, as they delightedly sang along, made my heart ache. Millions of children around the world who will never be able to sit in a comfortable studio with their parents arms wrapped around them singing exuberant and gentle songs. All the world's horrors -- war, poverty, not enough food, drought, floods, and other natural disasters, man's general inhumanity to man -- they all impact children the most. And it breaks my heart.
But what was really special about Peter, Paul and Mary (and it is now a matter of 'was,' since Mary Travers died in September of leukemia) was that they didn't just sing their music. Like the activist/folk singer Pete Seeger they lived it. They marched for civil rights and against the Viet Nam war; they visited El Salvador and wrote and performed songs protesting America's support of the military-backed government there. Over all their years together the ideas of peace and justice in the world were of paramount importance to them, and they endeavored to "keep the faith" in their work. You can only admire people like that, if you haven't the talent or faith or perseverance to emulate them.
And the really great thing is, they produced all these wonderful songs, that people love to sing along to.
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2 comments:
Recently I watched a PBS "American Masters" program about Joan Baez and enjoyed it very much. There was a lot about her early days as a folksinger and her political activism. There were scenes of her and David Harris reminiscing in her Woodside garden (just a few miles from here). I also finally found, on EBay, a copy of the "Girls say yes to boys who say no" poster, something I've been looking for for years.
Fae - I also saw and enjoyed the program on Joan Baez. I really loved her singing in my teens and early 20s; like many young women of the day, I wanted to be Joan Baez. But a few years ago I read autobiographical books by both her and Judy Collins, and found I both liked and identified with Collins more than Baez, who never really seemed to have to struggle that much.
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