CHAPTER 14 | THE RISE OF URBAN FOLK MUSIC 357
PETE SEEGER AND THE BIRTH OF THE URBAN
FOLK REVIVALIt was during his stay in Washington that Woody Guthrie became the musical
mentor of Pete Seeger, a young musician who, like Alan Lomax, came to folk
music through inclination rather than birthright, and who was also working
at the Archive of American Folk Song. Born to the musicologist Charles Seeger
and his fi rst wife, a concert violinist, Pete Seeger was introduced to folk music
in the mid-1930s by his father and stepmother Ruth, who were then living in
Wash ing ton.
Ruth Crawford Seeger had by this time virtually stopped composing the
ultramodernist music that had led her to Charles Seeger (see chapter 13). Instead,
she was balancing household duties with transcribing melodies that the Lomaxes
had recorded for the archive. From this time until her death in 1953, she would
produce several volumes of folk song transcriptions, either independently or
with the Lomaxes or other collectors. She also promoted the use of folk songs in
elementary music education. Meanwhile, Pete, who had imbibed radical poli-
tics in his own family circle, dropped out of college after two years, learned the
fi ve-string banjo, and moved to Washington. He arrived there at a time when a
young man with his background, talent, work habits, and politics could make an
impact as a folk musician, a career that until then had not existed.
The New York “Grapes of Wrath” evening in 1940 gave Pete Seeger his fi rst
chance to see Woody Guthrie in action and to experience the power of political
folk music in a concert setting. Alan Lomax later said that from that night forward,
“Pete knew it was his kind of music, and he began working to make it everybody’s
kind of music.” To Seeger, folk styles were perfectly suited to the political messagesK Ruth Crawford Seeger
(playing a lap dulcimer),
with her husband, Charles
Seeger, and their children
Michael and Peggy, pictured
in Washington around 1937.
Both Michael and Peggy
would grow up to become
infl uential folk musicians, as
would Pete Seeger, one of
Charles’s sons from his fi rst
marriage.172028_14_332-360_r3_ko.indd 357 23/01/13 8:38 PM