"Guantanamera" (Spanish: "from Guantánamo [feminine]", thus "woman from Guantánamo") is perhaps the best known Cuban song and that country's most noted patriotic song.

History[link]

Music[link]

The music for the song is sometimes attributed to José Fernández Diaz, known as Joseíto Fernández,^[1] who claimed to have written it at various dates (consensus puts 1929 as its year of origin), and who used it regularly in one of his radio programs. Some^[who?] claim that the song's structure actually came from Herminio "El Diablo" García Wilson, who could be credited as a co-composer. García's heirs took the matter to court decades later but lost the case: the Supreme Court of Cuba credited Fernández as the sole composer of the music in 1993. Regardless of either claim, Fernández can safely be claimed as being the first public promoter of the song, through his radio programs.^[2]

Lyrics[link]

Original lyrics and José Fernandez[link]

Perhaps as written by José Fernández, the lyrics to the song relate to a woman from Guantánamo, with whom he had a romantic relationship, and who eventually left him. The alleged real story behind these lyrics (or at least one of many versions of the song's origin that Fernández suggested during his lifetime) is that she did not have a romantic interest in him, but merely a platonic one. If the details are to be believed, she had brought him a steak sandwich one day as a present to the radio station where he worked. He stared at some other woman (and attempted to flirt with her) while eating the sandwich, and his friend yanked it out of his hands in disgust, cursed him and left. He never saw her again. These words are rarely sung today.^{[citation needed]}

Another history behind the chorus and its lyrics ("Guantanamera … / Guajira Guantanamera …") is similar: García claimed he was at a street corner with a group of friends and made a courteous pass (a polite pick-up line, like "your mother made you good" or "you came from a star", piropo in Spanish) to a woman (who also happened to be from Guantánamo) who walked by the group. She answered back rather harshly, offended by the pass. Stunned, he could not take his mind off her reaction while his friends made fun of him; later that day, sitting at a piano with his friends near him, he wrote the song's main refrain.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Adaptation from the Versos Sencillos by José Martí

The better known "official" lyrics are based on selections from the poetry collection Versos Sencillos (Simple Verses) by Cuban poet and independence hero José Martí, as adapted by Julián Orbón. Given Martí's significance to the Cuban people, the use of his poem in the song virtually elevated it to unofficial anthem status in the country. The four verses of the song were adapted from four stanzas of Versos sencillos, each from a different poem. They are presented here in the original Spanish (poem:stanza).

Spanish Wikisource has original text related to this article: Versos sencillos

Use as social "newspaper"[link]

Given the song's musical structure, which fits A-B-A-B (sometimes A-B-B-A) octosyllabic verses, "Guantanamera" lent itself from the beginning to impromptu verses, improvised on the spot, similar to what happens with the Mexican folk classic "La Bamba". Fernández's first use of the song was precisely this; he would comment on daily events on his radio program by adapting them to the song's melody, and then using the song as a show closer. Through this use, "Guantanamera" became a popular vehicle for romantic, patriotic, humorous, or social commentary lyrics, in Cuba and elsewhere in the Spanish speaking world.

Cover versions[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2011)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Aspectos de La Guantanamera (in Spanish).
• José Martí's poem Versos Sencillos, from which the verses of Guantanamera were taken.

See also[link]

Cuba portal

Julio Iglesias
Julio Iglesias in November 2007.
Background information
Birth name	Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva
Born	(1943-09-23) September 23, 1943 (age 68) Madrid, Spain
Genres	Latin American music, Latin, Latin pop, Dance and Classical
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Years active	1968–present
Labels	Columbia Records and Sony Music Entertainment
Website	www.julioiglesias.com

Julio Iglesias (born Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva; September 23, 1943) is a Spanish singer and songwriter whose romantic image, magnetic stage presence, and expressive music made him one of the best-selling artists of all time. By the early 21st century he had sold hundreds of millions of albums in more than a dozen languages.^[1] He has sold over 300 million records worldwide in 14 languages and released 77 albums.^[2] According to Sony Music Entertainment, he is one of the top 15 best-selling music artists in history.^[3] While Iglesias rose to international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as a performer of romantic ballads, his success has continued on as he entered new musical endeavors.^[4] He is the father of singer Enrique Iglesias.

Early life[link]

Iglesias was born in Madrid, the eldest son of Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat. Iglesias' father's family was from Galicia, and Iglesias' mother an Andalusian.

In the 1960s, he studied law in Madrid and was a goalkeeper for one of Real Madrid's^[5] football teams. On September 22, 1963, he was involved in a car crash, resulting in an injury to his spinal cord.^[6] He said, "I had a car accident; [a] very, very strange car accident...I lost control of the car and rolled it, resulting in what they call 'paraparexia,' which is not paraplegia. It's a compression in the [spinal] cord, in the sense of the neck...my spinal cord; and I was very, very ill for three years."  His doctors thought he would never walk again; indeed, his legs were left permanently weakened, and they continued to require therapy as of late October 2010. However, slowly, he began recovering his health. To develop and increase the dexterity of his hands, he began playing guitar.^[6] When he recovered from his accident, he resumed academic studies and traveled to the United Kingdom to study the English language, first in Ramsgate, then at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge.

In 1971, he married Spanish Filipino^[7] journalist Isabel Preysler and had three children, Chabeli Iglesias, Julio Iglesias, Jr. and Enrique Iglesias. Their marriage was annulled in 1979. In 1981 his father, Julio Iglesias Puga, Sr, was kidnapped by Basque terrorists but found alive two weeks later, prompting Julio Iglesias to move his children to Miami, Florida.^[8]

On August 24, 2010, Julio Iglesias and Miranda Rijnsburger got married after a 20-year relationship. The religious ceremony was celebrated in the Parish of the Virgen del Carmen of Marbella, and was followed by a Mass of thanksgiving in the chapel on the property the couple owns in the same city.^[9] The couple has three sons and twin daughters: Miguel (born September 7, 1997), Rodrigo (born April 3, 1999), Victoria and Cristina (born May 1, 2001) and Guillermo (born May 5, 2007).^[10] After Iglesias was 60 years old, his 89 year old father produced more children: half-brother Jaime born May 18, 2004; and half sister Ruth born July 26, 2006. Julio's half siblings were a product of Dr. Iglesias Puga's second marriage, to Ronna Keitt.^[11]

Career[link]

In 1968, he won the Benidorm International Song Festival, a songwriter's event in Spain, with the song "La vida sigue igual" (meaning "Life Continues Just The Same") which was used in the film La vida sigue igual, about his own life. After his events he signed a deal with Discos Columbia, the Spanish branch of the Columbia Records company. He represented Spain in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, earning fourth place, after Northern Irish singer Dana and the Welsh singer Mary Hopkin. His entry was the song "Gwendolyne." Shortly after he had a number one hit in many European countries with "Un Canto A Galicia." That single sold 1 million copies in Germany. In 1975 he found success in the Italian market by recording a song exclusively in Italian called "Se mi lasci non vale" ("If You Leave Me, It Can't Be"). Notable albums from this decade are A Flor de Piel (1974, with the European hit "Manuela"), "El Amor" (1975), and "Soy" (1978). He also sang in French. One of his popular songs is "Je n'ai pas changé".

Following the annulment of his marriage to Preysler in 1979, he moved to Miami, Florida, in the United States and signed a deal with CBS International, and started singing in different languages such as English, French, Portuguese, German and other languages to his music. Iglesias released the album De Niña a Mujer (1981), dedicated to his daughter (that divided the cover photo with him), from it came the first English-language hit, a Spanish cover of "Begin the Beguine" which became number 1 in the United Kingdom, he also released a collection, Julio (1983). In 1984, he released 1100 Bel Air Place, the hit album which gave him publicity in the English-speaking entertainment industry. It sold four million albums in the United States, with the first single "To All the Girls I've Loved Before", a duet with Willie Nelson, earning a fifth place spot in the Billboard Hot 100; it also featured "All of You", with Diana Ross.

Julio Iglesias made a cameo appearance as himself on The Golden Girls as Sophia Petrillo's date on St. Valentine's Day. In 1984 he recorded the duets with Diana Ross and Willie Nelson previously mentioned. Iglesias won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album in the 1988 Grammy Awards for the album Un Hombre Solo (A Man Alone). He recorded a duet with Stevie Wonder on "My Love", in his Non Stop album, a crossover success in 1988. In the 1990s, Iglesias returned to his original Spanish melody in Tango (1996), nominated for Best Latin Pop Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards, losing to the Romances album by Mexican singer, Luis Miguel.^[12] Also that year, his youngest son from his first marriage, Enrique Iglesias, also was nominated for the Vivir album.

Julio Iglesias went on to win the World Music Award for Tango in Monaco later that year where he was up against singer Luis Miguel and son Enrique for the second time. Julio performed two "Tangos" to the delight of the audience. In 1995, he appeared as a guest star in the videoclip of Thalía's song "Amandote"; she had starred in the video clip of Iglesias's hit "Baila Morena". Iglesias returned to the headlines in October 2003, when he went to Argentina and kissed show host Susana Giménez three times during a live telecast of her show.

In 2003, he released his album Divorcio (Divorce). In its first day of sales, Divorcio sold a record 350,000 albums in Spain, and reached the number 1 spot on the charts in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Russia. In 2003 and 2004, he was featured on a ten month world tour; which took Iglesias, aided by the success his album Divorcio and toured from Europe and Asia to North America, South America and Africa. More than half the shows on the tour sold out within days of going on sale. In December 2004, his Dutch girlfriend Miranda Rijnsburger and Iglesias himself recorded a duet of the Christmas song "Silent Night". The song, which was not officially released, also included a voice message from Iglesias, Rijnsburger and their 4 young children. The song was released online through the singer's official website and a CD was included on their Christmas card as a holiday gift from the Iglesias family to their friends and fans around the world.

In 2008, Iglesias recorded another song as a gift to his fans. The family recorded "The Little Drummer Boy" in Spanish and English and included it in the family's Christmas card. Iglesias also made investments in the Dominican Republic's eastern town of Punta Cana, a major tourist destination, where he spends most of the year when he is not on tour. Iglesias's south Florida mansion on the exclusive private Indian Creek Island property was placed on the market in 2006 for a quoted $28 million, making it one of "Ten Most Expensive Homes in the South" in 2006 according to Forbes Magazine.^[13]

In September 2006, a new English album titled Romantic Classics was released. "I've chosen songs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that I believe will come to be regarded as the new standards", Iglesias stated in the album's sleeve notes. The album features the hits "I Want to Know What Love Is", "Careless Whisper", and "Right Here Waiting". Romantic Classics was Iglesias's highest debut on the Billboard charts, entering at number 31 in the United States, 21 in Canada, 10 in Australia, and top spots across Europe and Asia. He returned to the studio to record songs in Filipino and Indonesian for his Asian releases of Romantic Classics which helped propel record sales in the Asian entertainment industry. Iglesias promoted Romantic Classics in 2006 and was seen all over the world on television shows. For example, in the United States, he appeared on Dancing With The Stars (where he sang his hit "I Want To Know What Love Is"), Good Morning America, The View, Fox and Friends, and Martha Stewart.

In 2008, Iglesias promoted his Romantic Classics album worldwide and in 2009-2010, he planned a world tour as a celebration of forty years in the music industry.^{[citation needed]} After his house in Indian Creek did not sell he razed his house to the ground in 2008 and said he planned to build another.^[14]

In 2010, Iglesias continued to travel around the world with his "Starry Night World Tour" to promote his 42 years of career. Julio Iglesias is currently learning Tunisian Sephardic cuisine for which he has developed an incredible passion, the Mloukhia being his best recipe. According to his close friend, Emilio Lopez, Julio is also learning Orthodox Judaism to become a rabbi in Los Angeles and teach French-speaking kids how to pray with a Latino twist.

Julio is frequently seen at the Tunisian restaurant in Paris called Douieb where he orders the Tunisian sandwich.

According to his official site, he has sold over 300 million albums worldwide as of 1 November 2010 (2010 -11-01)^[update].

In March 2011, the artist launched a new studio album called Numero 1.

Iglesias' performance of the song La Mer ("The Sea") is featured in the soundtrack of the 2011 film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The performance comes from a live album, currently out-of-print, recorded live at the Olympia theater in Paris in 1976. At the beginning and the end of the recording, Iglesias introduces the song, and his backing musicians, in fluent French.

Discography[link]

Studio, live, remastered and compilation main albums

• 2011: Numero 1
• 2010: The Essential: Julio Iglesias
• 2010: Original album classic
• 2010: Nathalie-The best of Julio Iglesias
• 2007: Quelque Chose De France
• 2006: Romantic Classics (US:#41)
• 2006: Remastered+Bonus Track
• 2006: Remastered (US:#81)
• 2005: L'homme Que Je Suis
• 2003: Divorcio
• 2001: Ao meu Brasil
• 2000: Noche De Cuatro Lunas
• 1996: Tango
• 1995: La Carretera
• 1994: Crazy (US:#30)
• 1992: Calor (US:#186)
• 1990: Starry Night (US:#37)
• 1989: Raíces
• 1988: Non Stop (US:#52)
• 1987: Un Hombre Solo
• 1987: Tutto l'amore che ti manca
• 1985: Libra (US.#92), (US Latin:#1)
• 1984: 1100 Bel Air Place (US:#6) [Singles: "All Of You" US:#19, US R&B:#38, "Moonlight Lady" Adult Contemporary #17, "To All The Girls I've Loved Before" US:#5, US Country:#1]
• 1983: En Concierto
• 1982: Momentos
• 1982: Momenti
• 1982: Et l'amour crea la femme
• 1981: De niña a mujer
• 1981: Fidèle
• 1981: Minhas canções preferidas
• 1981: Zartlichkeiten
• 1980: Hey!
• 1980: Amanti
• 1980: Sentimental
• 1979: A vous les femmes
• 1979: Innamorarsi alla mia eta
• 1979: Emociones
• 1978: Aimer La Vie
• 1978: As Vezes Tu, As Vezes Eu
• 1978: Da "Manuela" A "Pensami"
• 1978: "Quiero" Album (El Amor)
• 1977: A mis 33 años
• 1976: America
• 1976: Ein Weihnachtsabend Mit Julio Iglesias
• 1976: En El Olympia
• 1975: A Mexico
• 1975: El Amor
• 1974: A Flor de Piel
• 1974: Viens M'embrasser
• 1973: Soy
• 1972: Un Canto a Galicia
• 1972: Por una mujer
• 1969: Yo Canto

References[link]

External links[link]

• Interview with Julio Iglesias
• Julio Iglesias at the Internet Movie Database

Pete Seeger
Seeger at the Clearwater Festival, 2007
Background information
Birth name	Peter Seeger
Born	(1919-05-03) May 3, 1919 (age 93) Manhattan, New York, United States
Genres	Protest music, Americana, American folk music
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, activist, television host
Instruments	Banjo, guitar, recorder, mandolin, piano, ukulele
Years active	1939–present
Labels	Folkways, Columbia, CBS, Vanguard, Sony Kids’, SME
Associated acts	The Weavers, The Almanac Singers, Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, Leadbelly
Notable instruments
Martin JSO Sing Out 60th Pete Seeger Guitar, Martin J12SO Sing Out 60th Pete Seeger Guitar

Peter "Pete" Seeger (born May 3, 1919) is an American folk singer and an iconic figure in the mid-20th-century American folk music revival.^[1] A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950.^[2] Members of The Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, and environmental causes.

As a song writer, he is best known as the author or co-author of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", (composed with Lee Hays of The Weavers), and "Turn, Turn, Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement and are still sung throughout the world. "Flowers" was a hit recording for The Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). "If I Had a Hammer" was a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963), while The Byrds popularized "Turn, Turn, Turn!" in the mid-1960s, as did Judy Collins in 1964, and The Seekers in 1966. Seeger was one of the folksingers most responsible for popularizing the spiritual "We Shall Overcome" (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS "American Masters" episode Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, Seeger states it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional "We will overcome" to the more singable "We shall overcome".

Family and personal life[link]

Pete Seeger, 88 years old, photographed in March 2008 with his friend, the writer and musician, Ed Renehan (left)

Seeger was born in French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan^{[citation needed]}. His Yankee-Protestant family, which Seeger called "enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition",^[3] traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a physician from Wurtemburg, Germany, had emigrated to America in revolutionary times and married into an old New England family in the 1780s.^[4] His namesake, Pete's father, Harvard-trained composer and musicologist Charles Louis Seeger, Jr., established the first musicology curriculum in the U.S. at the University of California in 1913; helped found the American Musicological Society; and was a key founder of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology. Pete's mother, Constance de Clyver Edson, raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music, was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the Juilliard School.^[5]

In 1912 Charles Seeger was hired to establish the music department at the University of California at Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspoken Pacifism during World War I.^[6] Charles and Constance moved back east, making Charles' parents' estate in Patterson, New York, northeast of New York City, their base of operations. When baby Pete was eighteen months old, they set out with him and his two older brothers in a home-made trailer, on a quixotic mission to bring musical uplift to the working people in the American South.^[7] On their return, Constance taught violin and Charles composition at the New York Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), whose president, family friend Frank Damrosch, was Constance's adoptive "uncle". Charles also taught part time at the New School for Social Research. Career and money tensions led to quarrels and reconciliations, but when Charles discovered Constance had opened a secret bank account in her own name, they separated, and Charles took custody of their three sons.^[8] Beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal government's Farm Resettlement program, the WPA's Federal Music Project (1938–1940), and the wartime Pan American Union. After World War II, he taught ethnomusicology at the University of California and Yale University.^[9][10]

Charles and Constance Seeger divorced when Pete Seeger was seven, and in 1932 Charles married his composition student and assistant, Ruth Crawford Seeger, now considered by many one of the most important modernist composers of the 20th century.^[11] Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements to Carl Sandburg's extremely influential folk song anthology the American Songbag (1927) and later created significant original settings to eight of Sandburg's poems.^[12] Pete's eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the Dalton School in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 at Fieldston Lower School in the Bronx.^[13] Pete's uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted poet ("I Have a Rendezvous with Death"), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in First World War. All four of Pete's half siblings from his father's second marriage – Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny) – became folk singers. Peggy Seeger, a well-known performer in her own right, was married for many years to British folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Seeger was a founder of the New Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, married Pete's half-sister Penny (herself a talented singer who died young); Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folks songs for children.

In 1943, Pete married Toshi-Aline Ōta, whom he credits with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months while Pete was deployed overseas. Pete never saw him.^[14] They went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker); Mika (Potter and muralist); and Tinya Seeger (Potter) – and grandchildren Tao (musician); Cassie Seeger (Artist); Kitama Cahill-Jackson (filmmaker); Moraya; Penny; and Isabelle. Tao is a folk musician in his own right, singing and playing guitar, banjo and harmonica with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was associate producer of the PBS documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.

Seeger lives in Beacon, New York. He remains very engaged politically and maintains an active lifestyle in the Hudson Valley Region of New York, especially in the nearby City of Beacon, New York. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves.^[15]

Musical career[link]

Early work[link]

At four, Seeger was sent away to boarding school, but came home two years later, when his parents learned the school had failed to inform them he had contracted scarlet fever.^[16] He attended first and second grades in Nyack, New York, where his mother lived, before entering boarding school in Ridgefield, Connecticut.^[17] Despite being classical musicians, his parents did not press him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to the ukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it, while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen, Seeger entered prep school at the Avon Old Farms boarding school in Connecticut, where he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer leadership program. During the summer of 1936, while traveling with his father and stepmother, Pete heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in western North Carolina near Asheville, organized by local folklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom Charles Seeger had hired for Farm Resettlement music projects.^[18] The festival took place in a covered baseball field. There the Seegers

watched square-dance teams from Bear Wallow, Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, and Soco Gap; heard the five-string banjo player Samantha Bumgarner; and family string bands, including a group of Indians from the Cherokee reservation who played string instruments and sang ballads. They wandered among the crowds who camped out at the edge of the field, hearing music being make there as well. As Lunsford’s daughter would later recall, those country people "held the riches that Dad had discovered. They could sing, fiddle, pick the banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and style found nowhere else but deep in the mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies drift over the ball park."^[19]

For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music firsthand was a "conversion experience". Pete was deeply affected and, after learning basic strokes from Lunsford, spent much of the next four years trying to master the five-string banjo.^[20] The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings in at the Greenwich Village loft of painter and art teacher Thomas Hart Benton and his wife Rita. Benton, a lover of Americana, played "Cindy" and "Old Joe Clark" with his students Charlie and Jackson Pollock; friends from the "hillbilly" recording industry; as well as avant-garde composers Carl Ruggles and Henry Cowell. It was at one of Benton's parties that Pete heard "John Henry" for the first time.^[21]

Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but as he became increasingly involved with politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938.^[22] He dreamed of a career in journalism and also took courses in art. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during summer stint of touring New York State with The Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling puppet theater "inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico".^[23] One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An article in the October 2, 1939, Daily Worker reported on the Puppeteers' six-week tour this way:

During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm women would bring "suppers" and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.

"They fed us too well," the girls reported. "And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the offers to spend a week on the farm."

In the farmers' homes they talked about politics and the farmers’ problems, about antisemitism and Unionism, about war and peace and social security—"and always," the puppeteers report, "the farmers wanted to know what can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers. They felt the need of this more strongly than ever before, and the support of the CIO in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the part of city organizations—unions, consumers’ bodies, the American Labor Party and similar groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for progress.^[24]

That fall Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., assisting Alan Lomax, a friend of his father's, at the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seeger's job was to help Lomax sift through commercial "race" and "hillbilly" music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division of the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–53).^[25] Lomax also encouraged Seeger's folk singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray's weekly Columbia Broadcasting show Back Where I Come From (1940–41) alongside of Josh White, Burl Ives, Leadbelly, and Woody Guthrie (whom he had first met at Will Geer's Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for migrant workers on March 3, 1940). Back Where I Come From was unique in having a racially integrated cast, which made news when it performed in March 1941 at a command performance at the White House organized by Eleanor Roosevelt called "An Evening of Songs for American Soldiers,"^[26] before an audience that included the Secretaries of War, Treasury, and the Navy, among other notables. The show was a success but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast. During the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.

Pete Seeger entertaining Eleanor Roosevelt (center), honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine's Day party marking the opening of a Canteen of the United Federal Labor, CIO, in then-segregated Washington, D.C. Photographed by Joseph Horne for the Office of War Information, 1944.^[27]

Group recordings[link]

As a self-described "split tenor" (between an alto and a tenor),^[28] Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: The Almanac Singers and The Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement,^[29] racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Baldwin "Butch" Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, and Sam Gary. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under the stage name "Pete Bowers" to avoid compromising his father's government career.

In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as The Weavers, named after the title of a 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann about a workers' strike (which contained the lines, "We'll stand it no more, come what may!"). Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman (later, Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling and Bernie Krause serially took the place of Seeger). In the atmosphere of the 1950s red scare, the Weavers' repertoire had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its progressive message was couched in indirect language—arguably rendering it even more powerful. The Weavers even on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers refused to let them perform at political venues. Because of this, the somewhat hokey string orchestra and chorus arrangements on their hit records with Decca Records, and, no doubt also because of their considerable, if temporary, financial success, the Weavers incurred criticism from some progressives for supposedly compromising their political integrity. It was a tricky dilemma, but Seeger and the other Weavers felt that the imperative of getting their music and their message out to the widest possible audience amply justified these measures. The Weavers' string of major hits began with "On Top of Old Smokey" and an arrangement of Leadbelly's signature waltz, "Goodnight, Irene," which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950 and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of "Irene" was the Israeli song "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena." Other Weaver hits included Dusty Old Dust" ("So Long It's Been Good to Know You") (by Woody Guthrie), "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly), the South African Zulu song, "Wimoweh" (about "the lion," warrior chief Shaka Zulu), to name a few.

The Weavers' performing career was abruptly derailed in 1953 at the peak of their popularity when blacklisting prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced a hit version of Merle Travis's "Sixteen Tons" as well as LPs of their concert performances. "Kumbaya," a Gullah black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.

In the late 1950s, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latter's repertoire, though with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial, and mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits and in its turn spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.

In the documentary film Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers when the three other band members agreed to perform a jingle for a cigarette commercial.

Banjo and 12-string guitar[link]

In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic How to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the Long Neck or Seeger banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, is slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region, the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger's championing of and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in David King Dunaway's biography, "by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth string", Pete Seeger "gentrified" the more percussive traditional Appalachian "frailing" style, "with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head."^[30] Although what Dunaway's informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality associated with the style.

From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that had been associated with Lead Belly, who had styled himself "the King of the 12-String Guitar". Seeger's distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28") and capo-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.^[31]

Introduction of the "Steel Pan" to U.S. Audiences[link]

In 1956, then "Peter" Seeger (see film credits) and his wife, Toshi, traveled to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to seek out information on the steel pan, steel drum or "Ping-Pong" as it was sometimes called. The two searched out a local panyard and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then new, national instrument of Trinidad-Tobago.

Recent work[link]

Obama Inaugural Celebration[link]

On January 18, 2009, Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen, grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, and the crowd in singing the Woody Guthrie song "This Land Is Your Land" in the finale of Barack Obama's Inaugural concert in Washington, D.C.^[32][33] The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion of two verses not often included in the song, one about a "private property" sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a passing reference to a Depression-era relief office.^[32][34]

90th Birthday Celebration[link]

On May 3, 2009, at The Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at Madison Square Garden to celebrate Seeger's 90th birthday (which was later televised on PBS during the summer),^[35] ranging from Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Ani DiFranco and Roger McGuinn to Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Tom Paxton, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Arlo Guthrie. Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez was also invited to appear but his visa was not approved in time by the US government. Consistent with Seeger's long-time advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the event benefited the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater,^[36] a non-profit organization founded by Seeger in 1966, to defend and restore the Hudson River. Seeger's 90th Birthday was also celebrated at The College of Staten Island on May 4.^[37]

Other appearances (2000s)[link]

On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister Peggy, his brothers Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the American Folklife Center in honor of the Seeger family, held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.,^[38] where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.

On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, singing "Take It From Dr. King". In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released At 89, Seeger's first studio album in 12 years. On September 19, Pete Seeger made his first appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, particularly notable because the Festival does not normally feature folk artists.

On April 18, 2009, Pete Seeger performed in front of a small group of Earth Day celebrants at Teachers College in New York City. Among the songs he performed were "This Land is Your Land", "Take it From Dr. King", and "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain".

2010s[link]

In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote and performed the song "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You" with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.^[39]

On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street to Columbus Circle in New York City. [2] The march began with Seeger and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Space (95th and Broadway), where they had performed as part of a benefit for Seeger's Clearwater organization. Thousands of people crowded Pete Seeger by the time they reached Columbus Circle. Pete Seeger performed with his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, and other celebrated musicians.^[40] The event, promoted under the name #OccupyTheCircle, was LiveStreamed, and dubbed by some as "The Pete Seeger March". [3]

He contributed a spoken version of Forever Young to the 2012 album Chimes of Freedom: Songs of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years of Amnesty International.

On April 26, 2012, tens of thousands of Norwegians gathered in a show of unity at a rally in Oslo to sing Pete Seeger's song "My Rainbow Race" which a mass murderer had ridiculed as an example of "Marxist" brainwashing. The shooter was on trial for killing 77 people on July 22, 2011, insisting that his victims, who included 69 children, were traitors.^[41] The song, which Seeger wrote in 1971 to protest the war in Vietnam, has long been a popular children's song in Norway. Its lyrics include the lines: "Some want to take the easy way / Poisons, bombs! They think we need 'em. / Don't they know you can't kill all the unbelievers. / There's no shortcut to freedom." Folksinger Lillebjørn Nilsen, author of the Norwegian version, led a crowd of over 40,000 in singing in both Norwegian and English. "I grew up with this song and have sung it to my child," said Lill Hjønnevåg, one of the organizers of the demonstration." Another organizer, blogger Bagnhild Holmås, said that although song might be Utopian, "the message is far from cheesy. [The killer] thinks we're brainwashed anyway, but it's important to show our distance. . . ." Culture ministers from Sweden, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland joined in the singing.^[42]. From the U.S. Pete Seeger voiced his support of the event.

Activism[link]

1930s and 1940s[link]

In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its popularity and influence. In 1942 he became a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself. He eventually "drifted away" (his words) from the Party in the late 1940s and 1950s.^[43]

In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), the Talking Union, and an album each of sea chanteys and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, "It wouldn't be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil," that were sharply critical of Roosevelt's unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was "phony" and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time—as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL's members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill's arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake^[44]), and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in Time magazine, which under its owner, Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs' John Doe, accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called "the mendacious Moscow tune" that "Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war." Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album "in bad taste," though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser on domestic propaganda to the US military. In a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly, entitled "The Poison in Our System," he pronounced Songs for John Doe "...strictly subversive and illegal," "...whether Communist or Nazi financed," and "a matter for the attorney general," observing further that "mere" legal "suppression" would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist poison,^[45] the poison being folk music, and the ease with which it could be spread.^[46]

At that point, the U.S. had not yet entered the war but was energetically re-arming. African Americans were barred from working in defense plants, a situation that greatly angered both African Americans and white progressives. Black union leaders A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste began planning a huge march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries and to urge desegregation of the armed forces. The march, which many regard as the first manifestation of the Civil Rights Movement, was canceled after President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) of June 25, 1941, barring discrimination in hiring by companies holding federal contracts for defense work. This Presidential act defused black anger considerably, although the US army still refused to desegregate, declining to participate in what it called "social engineering."

Roosevelt's order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union. The Communist Party now immediately directed its members to get behind the draft, and it also forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war (angering some leftists). Copies of Songs for John Doe were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors.^[47] The Almanac Singers' Talking Union album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year the Almanacs issued Dear Mr. President, an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, "Dear Mr. President," was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his life-long credo:

Now, Mr. President, / We haven't always agreed in the past, I know, / But that ain't at all important now. / What is important is what we got to do, / We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do, / Other things can wait.//

Now, as I think of our great land . . . / I know it ain't perfect, but it will be someday, / Just give us a little time. // This is the reason that I want to fight, / Not 'cause everything's perfect, or everything's right. / No, it's just the opposite: I'm fightin' because / I want a better America, and better laws, / And better homes, and jobs, and schools, / And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like / "You can't ride on this train 'cause you're a Negro," / "You can't live here 'cause you're a Jew,"/ "You can't work here 'cause you're a union man."//

So, Mr. President, / We got this one big job to do / That's lick Mr. Hitler and when we're through, / Let no one else ever take his place / To trample down the human race. / So what I want is you to give me a gun / So we can hurry up and get the job done.

Seeger's critics, however, have continued to bring up the Almanacs' repudiated Songs for John Doe. In 1942, a year after the John Doe album's brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York World Telegram (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich's 1941 article "The Poison in Our System" was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce's right hand man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President of Time magazine, had founded "...to combat all the nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist..." antiwar groups in the United States).^[48] and was shown to the Almanac's employers in order to keep them off the air. Coincidentally, defamatory reviews and gossip items appeared in New York newspapers whenever they performed in public, and ultimately the Almanacs had to disband.^[49]

Seeger served in the US Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. Later, when people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered "I strummed my banjo." After returning from service, Seeger and others established People's Songs, conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts and designed to "Create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People"^[50] With Pete Seeger as its director, People's Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt's former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a third-party candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however, Wallace won only in New York City, and, in the red-baiting frenzy that followed, he was excoriated (as Roosevelt had not been) for accepting the help in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers such as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.^[51]

Spanish Civil War songs[link]

Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with Tom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called Songs of the Lincoln Battalion on Moe Asch's Stinson label. This included such songs as "There's a Valley in Spain called Jarama," and "Viva la Quinta Brigada." In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary Six Songs for Democracy (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch and a chorus of members of the Thälmann Battalion, made up of refugees from Nazi Germany. The songs were: "Moorsoldaten" ("Peat Bog Soldiers", composed by political prisoners of German concentration camps), "Die Thaelmann-Kolonne," "Hans Beimler," "Das Lied Von Der Einheitsfront" ("Song of The United Front" by Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), "Der Internationalen Brigaden" ("Song Of The International Brigades"), and "Los cuatro generales" ("The Four Generals," known in English as "The Four Insurgent Generals").

1950s and early 1960s[link]

Pete Seeger in 1955

In the 1950s and, indeed, consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace campaign) and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. With the ever-growing revelations of Joseph Stalin's atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Communism. In his PBS biography, Seeger said he "drifted away" from the CPUSA beginning in 1949 but remained friends with some who did not leave it, though he argued with them about it.^[52][53]

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self incriminating) and instead (as the Hollywood Ten had done) refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."^[54] Seeger's refusal to testify led to a March 26, 1957, indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to 10 years in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.^[55][56]

In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the government. Seeger refused, and the American Civil Liberties Union obtained an injunction against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. In February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of their predecessors.^[57]

Vietnam War era[link]

A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the Vietnam War, Seeger satirically attacked then-President Lyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album Dangerous Songs!?, of Len Chandler's children's song, "Beans in My Ears". Beyond Chandler's lyrics, Seeger said that "Mrs. Jay's little son Alby" had "beans in his ears," which, as the lyrics imply,^[58] ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the Vietnam War, the phrase implied that "Alby Jay" was a loose pronunciation of Johnson's nickname "LBJ," and sarcastically suggested "that must explain why he doesn't respond to the protests against his war policies."^{[citation needed]}

Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", about a captain—referred to in the lyrics as "the big fool"—who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song's political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were "Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the "big fool" and the Vietnam War as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show,^[59] after wide publicity^[60] it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers' Brothers show in the following January.^[61]

Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled "This machine kills fascists",^photo Seeger's banjo was emblazoned with the motto "This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender."^photo

In the documentary film The Power of Song, Seeger mentions that he and his family visited North Vietnam in 1972.^[62]

Environmentalism[link]

Seeger is involved in the environmental organization Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which he co-founded in 1966. This organization has worked since then to highlight pollution in the Hudson River and worked to clean it. As part of that effort, the sloop Clearwater was launched in 1969 with its inaugural sail down from Maine to South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, and thence to the Hudson River.^[63] Amongst the inaugural crew was Don McLean, who co-edited the book Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew, with sketches by Thomas B. Allen for which Seeger wrote the foreword.^[64] Seeger and McLean sang "Shenandoah" on the 1974 Clearwater album. The sloop regularly sails the river with volunteer and professional crew members, primarily conducting environmental education programs for school groups. The Great Hudson River Revival (aka Clearwater Festival) is an annual two-day music festival held on the banks of the Hudson at Croton Point Park. This festival grew out of early fundraising concerts arranged by Seeger and friends to raise money to pay for Clearwater's construction.

Seeger wrote and performed "That Lonesome Valley" about the then-polluted Hudson River in 1969, and his band members also wrote and performed songs commemorating the Clearwater.

Seeger was inspired to clean the Hudson because he believed the river is a beautiful part of nature, and that if it were taken care of, it could be a place to bring people together. The Hudson was filled with oil pollution, sewage, and toxic chemicals that were killing off any life in it. Pete Seeger had a goal to change this, and took action to accomplish that goal.

The 106-foot-long sailboat, Clearwater, was built to conduct science-based environmental education aboard the sailing ship. Not only has this project allowed for the clean-up of the river, but also for many people to experience a first-hand look into water chemistry, and the river's ecosystem. Clearwater has education programs with many colleges and institutions, including SUNY New Paltz, and Pace University. The sail ship has become widely recognized for its key role in the environmental movement. Every summer, the Clearwater Festival brings Hudson Valley residents together to enjoy music, their cultural heritage, and support a good cause.^[65]

Solo career and the folk song revival[link]

To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger had gigs as a music teacher in schools and summer camps and traveled the college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as five albums a year for Moe Asch's Folkways Records label. As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger's anti-war songs, such as, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (co-written with Joe Hickerson), "Turn, Turn, Turn", adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and "The Bells of Rhymney" by the Welsh poet Idris Davies^[66] (1957), gained wide currency. Seeger also was closely associated with the 1960s Civil Rights movement and in 1963 helped organize a landmark Carnegie Hall Concert, featuring the youthful Freedom Singers, as a benefit for the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. This event and Martin Luther King's March on Washington in August of that year, in which Seeger and other folk singers participated, brought the Civil Rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" to wide audiences. A version of this song, submitted by Zilphia Horton of Highlander, had been published in Seeger's People's Songs Bulletin as early as in 1947.

By this time Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as a longtime columnist in Sing Out!, the successor to the People's Songs Bulletin, and as a founder of the topical Broadside magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase "Woody's children", alluding to his associate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. This urban folk-revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the 1930s and 1940s and of People's Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies' Little Red Song Book, compiled by Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill (1879–1915). (The Little Red Song Book had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie's, who was known to carry it around.)

Pete Seeger toured Australia in 1963. His single "Little Boxes", written by Malvina Reynolds, was number one in the nation's Top 40s. That tour sparked a folk boom throughout the country at a a time when post Kennedy assassination popular musical tastes competed between folk, the surfing craze and the British rock boom which gave the world The Beatles, The Rolling Stones among others. Folk clubs sprung up all over the nation, folk performers were accepted in established venues and Australian performers singing Australian folk songs many of their own composing, emerged in concert and festivals, on television and on recordings and overseas performers were encouraged to tour Australia. In 1993 the Australian singer/playwright Maurie Mulheron assembled a musical biography of Seeger's, and friends', work in a stage production One Word ... WE!. It enjoyed a long and sold-out season at the New Theatre in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. It was reprised in 2000 and most recently at the Tom Mann Theatre, a Trade Union-owned and operated theatre in Surry Hills, also in inner Sydney, on 12, 13 and 14 June 2009. 2009, and the company has also taken the show on tour to folk festivals at Maleny and Woodford in Queensland, and Port Fairy in Victoria. Mulheron was its Musical Director and it was directed by Frank Barnes.

A DVD of Seeger's 1963 Melbourne Town Hall concert has been released by The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It is an historical document in black and white and is well worth owning. The Sydney-based instrumental and vocal ensemble Loosely Woven based at Humph Hall on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, showcased Seeger's work and times in one of its 2009 seasons, to celebrate the Pete Seeger ninetieth birthday. Loosely Woven's Artistic Director Wayne Richmond and his new wife Gial, attended the 2011 Clearwater Festival and met Pete Seeger..

The long television blacklist of Seeger began to end in the mid-1960s when he hosted a regionally broadcast, educational folk-music television show, Rainbow Quest. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, The Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick Sky, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Donovan, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mamou Cajun Band, Bernice Johnson Reagon, The Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb, Malvina Reynolds, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine^[52] hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU's Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The Smothers Brothers ended Seeger's national blacklisting by broadcasting him singing "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on their CBS variety show on February 25, 1968, after his similar performance in September 1967 was censored by CBS.^[67]

In November 1976 Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs" about then death-row inmate Delbert Tibbs, who was later exonerated. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs. [4]

Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan[link]

Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers of Bob Dylan and was responsible for urging John Hammond to produce Dylan's first LP on Columbia and for inviting him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, of which Seeger was a board member.^[68] There was a widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the extremely loud amplified sound that Dylan, backed by members of the Butterfield Blues Band, brought into the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that he threatened to disconnect the equipment. There are multiple versions of what went on, some fanciful. What is certain is that tensions had been running high between Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman and Festival Board members (who besides Seeger also included Theodore Bikel, Bruce Jackson, Alan Lomax, festival MC Peter Yarrow, and George Wein) over the scheduling of performers and other matters. Two days earlier there had been a scuffle and brief exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax; and the Board, in an emergency session, had voted to ban Grossman from the grounds, but had backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular draws Odetta and Peter, Paul, and Mary.^[69] Seeger has been portrayed as a folk "purist" who was one of the main opponents to Dylan's "going electric".^[70] but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his "objections" to the electric style, he said:

I couldn't understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, "Maggie's Farm," and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, "Fix the sound so you can hear the words." He hollered back, "This is the way they want it." I said "Damn it, if I had an axe, I'd cut the cable right now." But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, "you didn't boo Howlin' Wolf yesterday. He was electric!" Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.^[71]

Repudiation of Stalin[link]

In 1982 Seeger performed at a benefit concert for Poland's Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer David Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger's decades-long personal dislike of communism in its Soviet form.^[72] In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that "the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time."^[72] In his autobiography Where Have All the Flowers Gone (1993 and 1997 reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, "Should I apologize for all this? I think so." He went on to put his thinking in context:

How could Hitler have been stopped? Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to the League of Nations in '36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times check out pacifist Dave Dellinger's book, From Yale to Jail....^[73] At any rate, today I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a "hard driver" and not a "supremely cruel misleader." I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza, of Southern White Democrats, of Franco Spain, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She's part African, part European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part Native American. Let's look ahead.^[74][75]

In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it."^[76] In recent years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his life-long activism, he also found himself attacked once again for his opinions and associations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, David Boaz—Voice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato Institute—wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled "Stalin's Songbird" in which he excoriated The New Yorker and The New York Times for lauding Seeger. He characterized Seeger as "someone with a longtime habit of following the party line" who had only "eventually" parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he quoted lines from the Almanac Singers' May 1941 Songs for John Doe, contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from Dear Mr. President, issued in 1942, after the USA and the USSR had entered the war.^[77][78]

In 2007, in response to criticism from a former banjo student—historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative National Review—Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, "Big Joe Blues":^[79] "I'm singing about old Joe, cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. /He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race. / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast. / I got the Big Joe Blues. / Do this job, no questions asked. / I got the Big Joe Blues."^[80] The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, "I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965]."^[75]

Thursday, April 26, 2012, Pete Seeger's song "My Rainbow Race" were sung by 40 000 people in Oslo, Norway. The Norwegian version, "Barn av regnbuen", translated by Lillebjørn Nielsen, 1973. The occasion was the ongoing trial against the fascist Anders Behring Breivik, who shot and killed 69 youths on Utøya, July 22, 2011, and wounded many more.

Selected discography[link]

Tribute albums[link]

In 1998 Appleseed Records issued a double-CD tribute album: Where Have All the Flowers Gone: the Songs of Pete Seeger, which included readings by Studs Terkel and songs by Billy Bragg, Jackson Browne, Eliza Carthy, Judy Collins, Bruce Cockburn, Donovan, Ani DiFranco, Dick Gaughan, Nanci Griffith, Richie Havens, Indigo Girls, Roger McGuinn, Holly Near, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Bonnie Raitt, Martin Simpson, and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

In 2001, Appleseed release "If I Had a Song: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2." In 2003, it issued the double-CD Seeds: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Volume 3, the final set in its trilogy of releases celebrating Seeger's music.

In April 2006 Bruce Springsteen released a collection of folk songs associated with Seeger's repertoire, titled, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (which some reviewers^[who?] noted that, oddly, contained no songs actually composed by Seeger). Springsteen and his band also toured to sellout crowds in a series of concerts based on those sessions. He had previously performed the Seeger staple, "We Shall Overcome", on Where Have All the Flowers Gone.

In the 1970s Harry Chapin released a song dedicated to Seeger called "Old Folkie".

Awards[link]

Seeger has been the recipient of many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including :

• The Mid Hudson Civic Center Hall of Fame (2008)
  • Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the first public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York not-for-profit family entertainment venue, close to Seeger's home, in 1976.^[81] Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.
• The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993)
• The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994)
• Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Honor (1994)
• The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)
• "The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal" (1996)
• Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996)
• Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 for his record "Pete" (1997)
• The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba's highest honor for "his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism" (1999)
• The Schneider Family Book Award for his children's picture book "The Deaf Musicians." (2007)
• The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award (1986)
• The Eugene V. Debs Award (1979)
• Grammy Award for best traditional album of 2008 for his record "At 89" (2008)
• A proposal to name the Walkway Over the Hudson in his honor.^[82]
• The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)
• The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2009)

Quotes[link]

This section is a candidate to be copied to Wikiquote using the Transwiki process.

From Seeger[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pete Seeger

• "Some may find them [songs] merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I."^[83]
• "I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other."^[84]
• "Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first."^[85]
• "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail."^[76]
• "I certainly should apologize for saying that Stalin was a hard driver rather than a very cruel leader. I don't speak out about a lot of things. I don't talk about slavery. A lot of white people in America could apologize for stealing land from the Indians and enslaving Africans. Europe could apologize for worldwide conquest. Mongolia could apologize for Genghis Khan. But I think the thing to do is look ahead."^[75]
• "There is hope for the world." – in Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.
• "We sang about Alabama 1955, / But since 9-11, we wonder, will this world survive? / The world learned a lesson from Dr. King: / We can survive, we can, we will, and so we sing – // Don’t say it can’t be done, / The battle's just begun. / Take it from Dr. King, / You too can learn to sing, / So drop the gun."^[86]
• "I believe God is everywhere."^[87]
• "Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life." – Seeger, October 17, 2009, at community concert in Beacon, New York
• "I usually quote Plato, who said: It is very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music in the republic." 0:45 @^[88]

From others[link]

Jim Musselman (founder of Appleseed Recordings), longtime friend and record producer for Pete Seeger:

He was one of the few people who invoked the First Amendment in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). Everyone else had said the Fifth Amendment, the right against self-incrimination, and then they were dismissed. What Pete did, and what some other very powerful people who had the guts and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the committee and say, "I'm gonna invoke the First Amendment, the right of freedom of association...."

...I was actually in law school when I read the case of United States v. Seeger, and it really changed my life, because I saw the courage of what he had done and what some other people had done by invoking the First Amendment, saying, "We're all Americans. We can associate with whoever we want to, and it doesn't matter who we associate with." That's what the founding fathers set up democracy to be. So I just really feel it's an important part of history that people need to remember."^[85]

Raffi on his concert video "Raffi on Broadway" during the introduction of May There Always Be Sunshine:

"And this song is the one that I first heard Pete Seeger singing. And he tells me that it was written by a four-year-old boy in Russia. And it's just got four lines and it's been translated into a number of languages."

See also[link]

• Seeger family
• Tao Rodríguez-Seeger – grandson
• Tom Winslow – Clearwater singer and songwriter

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Dunaway, David K. How Can I Keep from Singing: The Ballad of Pete Seeger. [McGraw Hill (1981), DaCapo (1990)] Revised Edition. New York: Villard Trade Paperback, 2008 ISBN 0-07-018150-0, ISBN 0-07-018151-9, ISBN 0-306-80399-2, ISBN 0-345-50608-1. Audio Version
• Forbes, Linda C. "Pete Seeger on Environmental Advocacy, Organizing, and Education in the Hudson River Valley: An Interview with the Folk Music Legend, Author and Storyteller, Political and Environmental Activist, and Grassroots Organizer." Organization & Environment, 17, No. 4, 2004: pp. 513–522.
• Gardner, Elysa. "Seeger: A 'Power' in music, politics." USA Today, February 27, 2008. p. 8D.
• Seeger, Pete. How to Play the Five-String Banjo, New York : People’s Songs, 1948. 3rd edition, New York: Music Sales Corporation, 1969. ISBN 0-8256-0024-3.
• Tick, Judith. Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music. Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Wilkinson, Alec. "The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger and American folk music," The New Yorker, April 17, 2006, pp. 44–53.
• Wilkinson, Alec. The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger. New York: Knopf, 2009.
• Winkler, Allan M. (2009). To everything there is a season: Pete Seeger and the power of song. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. 
• Zollo, Paul (January 7, 2005). "Pete Seeger Reflects On His Legendary Songs". GRAMMY Magazine. http://www.grammy.com/features/2005/0107_seeger.aspx. 

Further reading[link]

• Seeger, Pete, (Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz), The Incompleat Folksinger, New York : Simon and Schuster, 1972. ISBN 0-671-20954-X (excerpts) Also, reprinted in a Bison Book edition, Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8032-9216-3

"The Music Man." (profile and interview) In Something to Say: Thoughts on Art and Politics in America, text by Richard Klin, photos by Lily Prince (Leapfrog Press, 2011).

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (November 2010)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pete Seeger

• PBS's American Masters site for "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song"
• Pete Seeger Appreciation Page, a site originally created by Jim Capaldi
• "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" documentary filmmaker Jim Brown interview on The Alcove with Mark Molaro, 2007
• The short film "To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The short film "Music from Oil Drums (1956)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• Discography for Pete Seeger on Folkways
• "Pete Seeger: How Can I Keep From Singing?" Website by Seeger biographer David Dunaway
• How Can I Keep From Singing?: A Seeger Family Tribute, Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. Online presentation of the March 2007 symposium and concert. All events are available as webcasts via the site. Retrieved August 25, 2009.
• "We Shall Overcome: An Hour With Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger" on Democracy Now!, September 2006 (video, audio, and print transcript)
• "Legendary Folk Singer & Activist Pete Seeger Turns 90, Thousands Turn Out for All-Star Tribute Featuring Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Dozens More" on Democracy Now!, May 2009 (video, audio, and print transcript)
• On Point Radio: "The World According to Pete Seeger"
• "Pete Seeger Is 86", Studs Terkel, The Nation, May 16, 2005
• Folk Legend Pete Seeger Looks Back - National Public Radio interview, July 2, 2005
• Peter Seeger interviewed by Australian composer Andrew Ford (MP3 of interview first broadcast in 1999)
• Pete Seeger, Folk Singer and Song Writer by Thomas Blair. Part of a series of Notable American Unitarians
• 1-hour Internet radio interview- Seeger discusses the music industry, the world in general, and more (August 2007).
• Works by or about Pete Seeger in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Matthews, Scott (2008-08-06). "John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival". Southern Spaces. http://southernspaces.org/2008/john-cohen-eastern-kentucky-documentary-expression-and-image-roscoe-halcomb-during-folk-revival. 
• Pete Seeger 90th birthday celebrations in Australia
• Pete Seeger 90th birthday cake cutting at the Beacon Sloop Club.

• Pete Seeger discography at Discogs

Wyclef Jean
Wyclef Jean in 2008
Background information
Birth name	Wyclef Jeanelle Jean
Also known as	Wyclef, Nel, Clef
Born	(1969-10-17) October 17, 1969 (age 42) Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti
Genres	Hip hop, dancehall, R&B, reggae, pop rap
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, piano, drums
Years active	1992–present
Labels	Ruffhouse, Columbia, Clef Recording
Associated acts	Fugees, Akon, Lil Wayne, R. Kelly, Niia, The Rock, Mary J Blige, Doug E. Fresh, Flo Rida, Shakira
Website	wyclef.com

Wyclef Jeanelle Jean (/ˈwaɪklɪf ˈʒɑːn/; Haitian Creole pronunciation: [wajklɛf ʒã]; born October 17, 1969)^[1] is a Haitian American musician, record producer, and politician. At age nine, Jean moved to the United States with his family and has spent much of his life in the country. He first received fame as a member of the acclaimed New Jersey hip hop group the Fugees.

On August 5, 2010, Jean filed for candidacy in the 2010 Haitian presidential election,^[2] although the Electoral Commission subsequently ruled him ineligible to stand as he had not met the requirement to have been resident in Haiti for five years.^[1][3]

Early life[link]

Although his birth date was widely given as October 17, 1972, papers filed for his run as a candidate for the presidency of Haiti, disclosed that he was, in fact, born in 1969.^[1] Born in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, the son of a Nazarene pastor,^[4] Wyclef moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York, when he was nine^[5] before moving again to northern New Jersey. Jean has cited reggae artist Bigga Haitian as one of his early influences, as well as neighborhood heroes MC Tiger Paw Raw and producer Lobster v. Crab.^[6] Jean graduated from Vailsburg High School in Newark, briefly attended Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts, and finished one semester at Five Towns College in New York.^[7][8] Jean has been a resident of Saddle River, South Orange, and North Caldwell, New Jersey.^[9][10] In 2009, Jean enrolled in the Berklee College of Music.^[11]

Music career[link]

Fugees era[link]

Jean's musical breakthrough was as part of The Refugee Camp (The Fugees), a three-member group that included Lauryn Hill and Prakazrel "Pras" Michel. Jean is Pras's cousin and a fellow Haitian immigrant. The Fugees signed to Ruffhouse Records, which released the group's debut album, Blunted on Reality. It sold fairly well, peaking at #49 on the U.S. Hot 100 and selling over 2 million copies worldwide. The follow-up album – The Score – sold over 18 million copies worldwide, eventually becoming a multi-platinum, Grammy-winning album.

Jean announced plans to begin a solo career with 1997's Wyclef Jean Presents the Carnival Featuring the Refugee All-Stars (generally called The Carnival). The album's guests included Lauryn Hill and Pras along with Jean's siblings' group Melky Sedeck;^[12] the I Threes (back-up vocals for Bob Marley); The Neville Brothers and Celia Cruz. The album was a hit, as were two singles: "We Trying to Stay Alive" (adapted from The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive") and "Gone Till November" (recorded with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra).

Solo career[link]

Released in 2000, Jean's second solo album The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book was recorded with guests including Youssou N'Dour; Earth, Wind & Fire; Kenny Rogers; The Rock; and Mary J. Blige. With Blige he released "911" as a single. He was nominated for Best Hip-Hop Act at the 2000 MTV Europe Music Awards.^[13][14]

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Jean participated in the benefit concert America: A Tribute to Heroes contributing a cover of the Bob Marley song "Redemption Song". Jean has produced hits and been featured in hit simgles for Destiny's Child, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige to name a few.

Jean's third album, Masquerade, was released in 2002. His fourth album, The Preacher's Son, was released in November 2003 as the follow-up to his first solo album, The Carnival.

In 2004, he released his fifth album, entitled Sak Pasé Presents: Welcome to Haïti (Creole 101) (released in the United States by Koch Records). Most of its songs are in his native language of Haitian Creole like "Fanm Kreyol" with the French Caribbean Admiral T. He also figured on the album Mozaik Kreyol of this one in the song "Secret Lover". Then he covered Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Fortunate Son" for the soundtrack of the 2004 film remake of The Manchurian Candidate and wrote the song "Million Voices" for the film Hotel Rwanda.

Jean also produced and wrote songs for the soundtrack to Jonathan Demme's 2003 documentary The Agronomist, about the Haitian activist and radio personality Jean Dominique. With Jerry 'Wonder' Duplessis, Jean also composed the score of the documentary Ghosts of Cité Soleil,^[15] He also helped produce the film and he appears briefly onscreen speaking by telephone in 2004 to a "chimere" gang-leader and aspiring rapper, Winston "2Pac" Jean.^[16]

Wyclef Jean performing at a UNAIDS concert in 2006

During a period between 2004 and 2006 and fueled by a reunion performance in Dave Chappelle's "Block Party", it appeared that the Fugees were on track to record a new album, however Fugees member Pras claimed to Billboard, "To put it nicely, it's dead." He said the root of this animosity was the third member of the group, Lauryn Hill, and was quoted in Billboard as saying; "Me and Clef, we on the same page, but Lauryn Hill is in her zone, and I'm fed up with that shit. Here she is, blessed with a gift, with the opportunity to rock and give and she's running on some bulls**t? I'm a fan of Lauryn's but I can't respect that."^[17]

In 2006, Jean was featured in Shakira's smash hit Hips Don't Lie. The song went on to become the highest selling single of the 21st century, in addition to reaching number one in over fifty-five countries. Jean and Shakira went on to perform the song at the 2006 Grammys and the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards.

Jean released an album in September 2007 that he recorded in Atlanta, Georgia, with the help of T.I., who also collaborated with Jean on the songs "You Know What it is" and "My Swag" on T.I.'s 2007 album, T.I. vs. T.I.P. Recently, Wyclef released a new song called "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" featuring Lil' Wayne, Niia and Akon, which references the song "C.R.E.A.M." by the Wu-Tang Clan. The album also features a single, "Fast Car", whose video was made with the assistance of video game Burnout Paradise. During this period, he was featured in a mix version of the Cartel song "Wasted" that was released with their self-titled album. In November 2008, an upbeat single 'Let Me Touch Your Button' featuring will.i.am (of The Black Eyed Peas) was released in the UK in conjunction with Wyclef's invovlement with UK MOTOROKRSTAR (which sees Motorola UK on the search to discover British talent).^[18]. Jean released a song with Serj Tankian "Riot".

In 2009, he featured in a song called "Spanish Fly" with Ludacris and Bachata group Aventura in Aventura's upcoming album "The Last" which came out in June.

On June 17, 2009, Wyclef announced via Twitter that his new album will be called wyclefjean and is to be released sometime in February 2010.^{[citation needed]} The first single off of wyclefjean is to be titled "Seventeen" and will feature Lil' Wayne.^[19]

In November 2009, a track titled "Suicide Love" featuring rapper Eve leaked online prior to the release of his EP.

Wyclef Jean's EP named From the Hut, to the Projects, to the Mansion was released on November 10, 2009. It includes 17 tracks, featuring Cyndi Lauper, Timbaland, Eve, and Lil' Kim.^[20] In this album, Wyclef uses the alias Toussaint St. Jean, his alter ego, when he raps.^[21]

Wyclef Jean's upcoming self-entitled studio album was due to be released in 2011, has still yet to be released. "Hold On," the lead single from the project, will feature Dancehall artist Mavado.^[20]

Personal life[link]

In 1994, he married Fusha designer Marie Claudinette.^[22] In 2005, they adopted their daughter, Angelina Claudinelle Jean. The couple renewed their vows in August 2009.^[23]

His uncle – political activist, journalist and diplomat Raymond Alcide Joseph – has been the Haitian ambassador to the United States since 2005, and came to prominence as a spokesman for his country after the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake. Together with Wyclef, he issued an appeal for international aid.^[24][25][26]

On March 19, 2011, Jean claimed that he was shot in the palm of his right hand in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The police reported otherwise saying that Wyclef was not wounded by a bullet but was cut by glass. Police Chief Vanel Lacroix said "we met with the doctor who saw him and he confirmed Wyclef was cut by glass."^[27][28]

Yéle Haiti[link]

In 2005, Jean established the Yéle Haiti Foundation. In its first year of operation, the foundation, with funding by Comcel, provided scholarships to 3,600 children in Gonaïves, Haiti, after the devastation by Hurricane Jeanne. In its second year of operation, it is almost doubling the amount of the scholarships and spreading them throughout Haiti, providing tuition in 5 regions. The foundation aims to provide 6,800 scholarships to children in Port-au-Prince, Gonaïves, Les Cayes, Port-de-Paix, and Cap-Haïtien.^{[citation needed]}

After the earthquake on January 12, 2010 in Haiti, Jean called on others to donate to his foundation's Yéle Haiti Earthquake Fund, imploring "We must act now."^[29][30]

Jean has been active in his support of his native country and created the foundation Yéle Haiti^[31] to provide humanitarian aid and assistance to Haiti. He describes Yéle as a non-political organization intended to empower the people of Haiti and the Haitian diaspora to rebuild their nation, saying, "The objective of Yéle Haiti is to restore pride and a reason to hope, and for the whole country to regain the deep spirit and strength that is part of our heritage".^{[citation needed]}. Yéle Haiti was created in October 2004 with Wyclef's cousin Jerry 'Wonder' Duplessis. Projects were launched in January 2005. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were present for the first anniversary of the launch in 2006.^[32][33]

In January 2007, Jean became a roving ambassador for Haiti, to help improve its image abroad.^[34]

May 20, 2008 – Yéle Haiti partnered with WFP (World Food Programme) of the United Nations to launch www.togetherforhaiti.org

September, 2008 – Wyclef in conjunction with Yéle Haiti Charity delivered food to Hurricane Ike victims in Haiti. Matt Damon provided assistance in the food lines serving food.

Oct 23, 2008 – Wyclef Jean performed on stage with Carlos Santana in San Francisco on behalf of Yéle Haiti, OneXOne, and WaterPartners International to raise funds for clean water, education, health, environment, and community development in the USA and in the developing world.

In 2009, Wyclef Jean and The Timberland Company joined forces to help raise environmental awareness in Haiti. This duo "will be a multi-platform effort incorporating Timberland products, digital and social media, service events, music, and concerts that will promote environmental awareness." The campaign will push to support and educate the country as well as helping to improve health care and the environment, and the community. Wyclef Jean also plans to spread information about the joint efforts through social media outlets such as "Twitter, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, imeem, and Social Vibe."^[35] He also aims to use social networking websites to help raise money to build the Yéle Center.^[20]

In January 2010, along with his uncle Raymond Joseph, Haitian ambassador to the US, Wyclef issued an appeal for international aid following the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Today, Yele's mission, headed by CEO Derek Johnson, is to provide aid and assistance to the communities in Haiti in greatest need, where severe poverty, widespread unemployment, rampant malnutrition and crippling illiteracy are most pervasive. In doing so, we strive to balance emergency relief with support for long term sustainable initiatives that together are giving both hope and practical assistance to the people of Haiti. Yele's programs focus on emergency relief, employment, youth development and education, and tree planting and agriculture.

In a November 27, 2011 New York Post article entitled "Questions Dog Wyclef's Haiti Fund", the Post asserted that less than one third of the over $16 million raised after the Haiti earthquake in January 2010 has been spent effectively for the victims of the catastrophe. The Post does not allege any dishonest embezzlement of funds on Wyclef's part, but rather asserts that there was gross mismanagement and negligence with regards to the distribution of the funds the charity raised. Required Federal tax returns were not filed, and $1 million was given to a Florida firm that does not seem to exist. Wyclef and most of the board left the charity in the summer of 2010. It is now under new management. Wyclef stated, "It's a clean slate now." Due to the controversial nature of Jean's former charity, he has kept a relatively low profile.

Politics[link]

Although Wyclef Jean has only been active in Haitan politics, he told Womens Wear Daily in 2011 that quote "I am a huge fan of Sarah Palin" ^[36].

2010 Haitian presidential campaign[link]

Wikinews has related news: Wyclef Jean considering standing for president of Haiti

On August 5, 2010, Wyclef confirmed the rumors that he was running for office by telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he was running, though Blitzer had questions about Jean's actual citizenship and passport. In an article written by Exclaim! Magazine it was mentioned that Jean will be stepping down as the chairman of Yéle Haiti. On August 5, Jean formally filed papers as a candidate for the 2010 Haitian presidential election, following media speculation that he would make his announcement that evening on Larry King Live.^{[37][38][39][40]} Wyclef would have run as a candidate for the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) political party.^[41] On the topic of his candidacy, Jean has stated, "I am being drafted to serve my country."^{[citation needed]}

Besides opposition from Sean Penn in regards to Jean's Haitian presidential plans, Arcade Fire's Win Butler stated in a radio interview:

"Technically, [Wyclef Jean] shouldn't be eligible because he hasn't been a resident of Haiti. And I think him not speaking French and not being fluent in Creole would be a really major issue in trying to run a really complex government, like the government in Haiti. It would kind of be like Arnold Schwarzenegger only speaking Austrian German and being elected president of the United States after New York City and LA had burned to the ground... I think he is a great musician and he really passionately cares about Haiti. I really hope he throws his support behind someone who is really competent and really eligible."^[42]

On August 20, 2010, his bid for candidacy was rejected by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council. He was turned down because he did not meet the residency requirement of having lived in Haiti for five years before the November 28 election.^[3][43] Afterwards, Wyclef stated:

Appearances in television and film[link]

Jean at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival

• On a 2004 episode of Chappelle's Show, he appeared as the musical guest.
• He starred in Virgin Mobile commercials as himself.^[45]
• In 2005, he appeared in the film One Last Thing.... His character is a cab driver named Emmett Ducasse. It is implied he is an angel due to being in the main character's "Heaven". Wyclef also has an original track that is the closing credits first song. The song is "Heaven's in New York".
• Also in 2005, Wyclef appeared in 4 episodes of the hit NBC prime time television drama "Third Watch" as the recurring character, Marcel Hollis, a gang leader responsible for blowing up the police precinct house in the final episode of the series.
• In December 2007, starred in the four-part MTV exclusive online short-film Americlef^[46]
• May 20, 2008: At the Gansevoort Hotel, Wyclef Jean in partnership with the WFP and PADF launched "Together for Haiti" to address the hunger crisis in Haiti^[47] members of the American and international television and print media were invited to cover the news.

• October 17, 2011: The Apprentice (U.S. season 12) Episode 1: Hero Worship

Discography[link]

• 1997: The Carnival (Columbia)
• 2000: The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book (Columbia)
• 2002: Masquerade (Columbia)
• 2003: Greatest Hits (Columbia)
• 2003: The Preacher's Son (J)
• 2004: Welcome to Haiti: Creole 101 (Koch)
• 2006: Ghosts of Cité Soleil^[48]
• 2007: Carnival Vol. II: Memoirs of an Immigrant (Columbia)
• 2009: From the Hut, To the Projects, To the Mansion (Columbia)
• 2010: If I Were President: The Haitian Experience (Columbia)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wyclef Jean

• Official website
• Wyclef Jean at the Internet Movie Database
• Yéle Haiti Foundation
• Sak Pasé Records (a record label founded by Wyclef)
• Haiti: Working Together at Last by Wyclef Jean, September 23, 2010
• New York Post article on mismanagement at Yéle Haiti Foundation
• Wyclef talking about Nation19.com / APDTA