I hear that singer songwriter and erstwhile Communist Pete Seeger has died. He was 94. May God be merciful to him and to all who pass to their eternal judgment, each and everyone.
Once upon a time here on this blog I had the occasion to post a variation of one of his songs performed by the eclectic artist in residence Zuhlio. You may remember it:
From 2012… long time agoooo…..
___________
The Official Parodohymnodist of Fr. Z’s Blog has inspired – I don’t know how he does it – has inspired – or even why he does it – has inspired to emerge from retirement
ZUHLIO!
Yes, after the triumphant reemergence from retirement last time to produce his hit song “Lady Tambourine Priest“, after his even bigger hit song “Aging Hippie Paradise“, the urban rapper Zuhlio is back, experimenting with yet another genre.
Zuhlio inexplicably seems to be going back in time in exploring musical styles. Well… what can we say?
We present, in honor of liberal, less and less remembered dissident nuns everywhere,
Where Have All the Sisters Gone? (in the style of the Kingston Trio)
As the Parodohymnodist himself quipped: “Get out your guitars and autoharps.”
[display_podcast]
Where have all the Sisters gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the Sisters gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the Sisters gone?
All dissenters, ‘cept for some.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?Where have all dissenters gone?
Long time passing
Where have all dissenters gone?
Long time ago
Where have all dissenters gone?
Call to Action conventions.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?Where has all the action gone?
Long time passing
Where has all the action gone?
Long time ago
Where has all the action gone?
Lifeless ‘cause of contraception
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?Where have contraceptors gone?
Long time passing
Where have contraceptors gone?
Long time ago
Where have contraceptors gone?
Hopeless rest homes, or passed on.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?Where then has our hope all gone?
Long time passing
Where then has our hope all gone?
Long time ago
Where then has our hope all gone?
Young nuns who put habits on.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
___________
Fr. Z says:
¡Vaya lío!
UPDATE:
Meanwhile, MSW on behalf of the Fishwrap (aka National Schismatic Reporter) pays musical tribute to Pete Seeger by posting videos of Seeger’s translation/version of the “Internationale”, the global Communist anthem.
I promise… I am not making this up.
What is the “Internationale”? HERE for history and variations of the lyrics. Some of them are right up NSR’s alley! The official anthem of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of China.
Here is the original French version’s 2nd stanza, literally rendered:
There are no supreme saviours
Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.
Producers, let us save ourselves,
Decree the common salvation.
So that the thief expires,
So that the spirit be pulled from its prison,
Let us fan our forge ourselves
Strike the iron while it is hot.
CHORUS: This is the final struggle
Let us group together, and tomorrow
The Internationale
Will be the human race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BIvqbyku5g&feature=player_embedded
No wonder MSW hates the Acton Institute so much!
To honor the passing of Pete Seeger you might consider buying a copy or two of Gregg’s books.
Even just to annoy the Fishwrappers. It’s worth it.
Samuel Gregg’s Tea Party Catholic: The Catholic Case for Limited Government, a Free Economy, and Human Flourishing which, remarkably, has very little to do with the Tea Party as such.
Click me.Also, take a look at the other book MSW mentioned: Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future.
Comrades! Unite! Throw of their liberal oppression and make a donation here!
BTW… did you know that Acton Institute was recently ranked as one of the best think tanks in the world? HERE
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Posts, indeed blogs, like this are a proof of why liberals, in their smug, humorless morally superior condescension shall never win.
Seeger. Some great songs over the years. RIP.
And here I am and I can’t find my Zippo!!!
Rock on Father, rock on!!
Bob Seger I know… Peter Seger never heard uv….
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, my husband says Seeger was a big apologist for the Soviet Union, for a long time. On the other hand, a piece of my childhood dies with him. I can remember listening to his records in my room. It was the only non-classical music we had, along with Peter Paul and Mary.
Oh, you know him. You just don’t KNOW you know him! His song is played in N.O. parishes across the land on July 4th, including, sadly, the one I attend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt9jWoXmrLw
I would post a link to his song that Zuhlio covered above (“Where Have all the Flowers Gone”), but why bother? Zuhlio’s version is much better. Spiffing, even!!
Pete Seeger did alot of good, and like all of us, some not so good. But sometimes the good was very good, and for that I give thanks to God for his life.
Outstanding – thanks for the post – it made my day!
OrthodoxChick, “This Land is Your Land” was actually written by Seeger’s old pal Woody Guthrie. Of course, Seeger must have sung it hundreds of times. :-)
I have always loved Pete Seeger’s music, with the Weavers especially. His was a great, great talent. He supported some things I don’t believe in, but he was a man of integrity. Also married to the same woman for 70 years. May he rest in peace.
Lori Pieper,
I really don’t know that much about him, but of course I pray that the Lord has mercy on his soul and that he rests in peace. There’s nothing wrong with his music if you’re into folk. I’m not into it. Either way, I don’t think that folk music belongs at Mass. I probably have a chip on my shoulder though where folk tunes masquerading as hymns are concerned. In that regard, it’s still 1972 at the majority of N.O. parishes where I live. Since being introduced to Gregorian Chant here and at the Latin Masses that I attend when able, my tolerance for folk tune Masses dwindles more and more each week. I’m at the point now where I refuse to sing them. I open up my 1956 missal and pray the black while the Peter, Paul, and Mary group strum their guitars and shake their tambourines. Yes, in the Diocese of Worcester – just this past Sunday.
If you miss me at the back of the church
you can’t find me nowhere
come on over to the front of the church
I’ll be praying up there.
If you miss me at the folk Novus Ordo
you can’t find me nowhere
come on over to the FSSP
I’ll be kneeling over there.
If you miss me at the LCWR
you can’t find me nowhere
come on over to the CMSWR
I’ll be a postulant right there.
If you miss me in the cemetery chapel
you can’t find me nowhere
come on over to the bishop’s cathedral
EF is happening right there.
If you miss me at the NSR
you can’t find me nowhere
come on over to Fr. Z’s blog
I’ll be commenting over there.
If you miss me at the coffee shop
you can’t find me nowhere
buy Mystic Monk and help Father Z
I’ll be imbibing my share.
Rest in peace, Pete. One could disagree with his politics and still respect the intellectual challenge some of his songs presented. I thought Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, etc. were both poetic and thought-provoking in so many of their compositions.
On a happier note and keeping to all things musical I see that, unlike Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s 1972 release “On the Cover of Rolling”, Pope Francis has just got himself on The Rolling Stone cover in a very gentle article about his papacy:
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/pope-francis-gentle-revolution-inside-rolling-stones-new-issue-20140128
Rock on.
Sorry for the typo. The Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show 1972 song title is ” “On the Cover of Rolling Stone”.
Seeger’s support of Stalinism was contemptible. He turned around on a dime as an opponent of war against Nazi Germany into a hawk once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. He ruthlessly followed the CPUSA line from the 30s until the early 50s. According to historian Ronald Radosh he never renounced the crimes of Stalin until the 1990s, finally renouncing his support of the one of the most bloodthirsty regimes of the 2oth century. I find it very difficult to see past all of this enabling of bloodthirsty communism during the 20th century but I will try and pray for his soul.
Bosco,
Your typo wasn’t bad. It could’ve been much, much worse. At least you didn’t type, “Papa was a rolling stone”!!!
OrthodoxChick,
Though I love folk music, I don’t have that much fondness for it at Mass either, though I suppose I did when I was younger. Everything depends on where you live, I guess. I haven’t heard any Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger that I recall at Mass for about 20 years. Here in the Archd. of New York, it’s mainly Hispanic and Italian parishes, and they sing very different stuff. Also the Vietnamese Mass that I attend on occasion. Beautiful music, all sung in the native language, particularly the most soulful Marian hymns I’ve ever heard – wish I could understand the words.
Here is a song Pete Seeger did write, based on Ecclesiastes — a very moving performance, just over a year ago, when he was 93:
http://youtu.be/q7pzic4mf7o
I love his wonderful talent for getting the audience to sing along. And here they carry him. . .
@OrthodoxChick,
LOL! “Wherever he lay his hat was his home. And when he died all he left us was alone”.
Now that was a good song…with a message too. Saw the Temps live and up close in a little ‘teen club’, The Raven, outside Harrisburg, PA in ’66. “Pappa” wasn’t in their repertoire that early though.
As a political theorist Seeger was an outstanding banjo player. He struck me a a guy who was genuinely interested in getting people to stop tormenting each other – plus he was the best yodeler ever.
There is a 4 year old piece on First Things today about the old communist Pete and the rest of the cabal.
“De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.”
It’s Almighty God’s call now not ours (nor was it ever ours to make).
Giving a little more detail to MichaelBoston’s comment, I see Jonathan S. Tobin writes, “It should be understood that his youthful infatuation with Stalinism was neither superficial nor a passing fancy. To his shame, he toured the country singing protest songs from 1939 to 1941. But he was not protesting the Nazis nor did he support those fighting them. Rather, he was part of the CP campaign conducted at Moscow’s behest that sought to combat any effort to involve the United States in World War Two. The Hitler-Stalin Pact had made the Soviets Germany’s ally until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union brought them into the war. Seeger remained a party member until the 1950s and even long after he abandoned it, he continued to refer to himself as a communist with a small “c” rather than an upper-case one.”
He also says, “As Radosh wrote [in 2007], Seeger admitted that he was wrong never to have protested Stalin’s tyranny and atoned in part by belatedly writing a song denouncing the gulag.” He concludes, “His legacy is far messier than most of the tributes will admit. But to listen to his vintage recordings or those of the groundbreaking folk group ‘The Weavers’ to which he lent his tenor voice and banjo is to hear a great artist and a genuine voice of American culture. It is that Pete Seeger, and the not the sanitized liberal icon or the Stalinist front man, who will be remembered.” Prayer is (of course) beyond aesthetic and historical conclusions, and even moral-aesthetic ones.
Pete Seeger was poisonous to my young and stupid brain. I must gave played his 1964 LP record In Concert hundreds of times. That is the way the Communist poison spreads through the Culture. Fortunately I learned, and today did not listen to Baracka Hussein Obama. Hope I will not meet Pete Seeger where he is now.
You guys are all crazy. I love the song “against the wind.” It’s a stark contrast to the heathen undertones of “night moves”, but still the line “woke last night to the sound of thunder, how far off I sat and wondered…” Is beautifully reflective in an awe inspired way.
;) ;) ;)
That clip of the ‘Internationale’ brought back memories of my childhood twiddling with my shortwave radio in the evenings back in Boston, and Radio Moscow booming in from its Cuban relay station, as they used it during their sign-on. Back then the broadcasts seemed almost comical, even more so the strident ones from Radio Peking, when you could pick it up, with its talk of imperialist paper tigers and so forth.
It was an innocent time when you knew who the bad guys were and you felt you could still believe what your own government and mainstream media told you, although even back then I remember my Dad having his misgivings about what we were being told about Vietnam and other issues.
Back then I did not have the solid grounding that the Catholic Church now provides and now need even more, since it is even less clear who the “bad guys” are anymore, when Russia seems to be more faithful to Christian teachings than our own country.
Lori Pieper says: Everything depends on where you live, I guess.
But she was talking about musical preference, which is paradigmatically de gustibus, something that cannot be disputed by rational principles. But other things, at least (perhaps even most of what might be said regarding music and musical taste) are rationally disputable. Not everything depends on where or when you live. Some truths are eternal or universal. It is helpful for this distinction to be maintained.
And as for the apparently unprepossessing “I guess”, let me quote the inimitable Ernest Tucker from Rex McGee’s “Pure Country”.
You GUESS? NEVER guess. I mean, you gotta KNOW what you’re doing! Otherwise, you leave yourself wide open to suggestion. And that, to my mind is the problem with this whole damn country. [strikes the table] Everybody’s open to suggestion!
Zuhlio is the bomb. Seriously, a CD needs recorded. Please?
Pete Seeger did not write that version of The Internationale, that was all Billy Bragg.
Might one say that while Pete Seeger had the sense and heart to come to deplore at least Stalinist Soviet tyranny, he sadly seems to have been cheerfully content to go on following, and commending, the road to serfdom and the Servile State?
Pete Seeger left the Party after the XXth Party Congress in 1953. That means he had his change of heart long before Msgr. Ratzinger or Pastor Neuhaus had theirs, not to mention ex-Communists such as Whittaker Chambers, Jay Lovenstone, Leszek Ko?akowski, Max Eastman, Sidney Hook, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Louis Budenz, Elizabeth Bentley, and Fr.Ignace Lepp,.
Of course among ex-Marxists is also Dorothy Day.
Katherine,
Msgr. Ratzinger was a Marxist?! Fascinating – tell me more! I do not have the biographies of the other dozen mentioned, at my finger tips, either. Did the ones old enough object to America opposing Hitler before they became formal Communist Party members, like Pete Seeger did? Did each and every one of them, having forsworn formal Communist Party membership, go on to support other mass-murderous Marxist dictators, like Pete Seeger did? His change of Party membership is not so clearly a “change of heart”: can that be said equally of the other dozen?