Pete Seeger,
the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an
American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as
both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died on Monday
in Manhattan. He was 94.
His death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was confirmed by his grandson Kitama Cahill Jackson.
Mr.
Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top
10, from college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction
for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities
Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.
For
Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and
where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action.
In
his hearty tenor, Mr. Seeger, a beanpole of a man who most often played
12-string guitar or five-string banjo, sang topical songs and
children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, always encouraging
listeners to join in. His agenda paralleled the concerns of the
American left: He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s,
for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and
for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. “We Shall
Overcome,” which Mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil
rights anthem. More
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