Music & politics: Pete Seeger & Lorre Wyatt

As political campaigns unfold in the United States and elsewhere across the world, rhetoric seems more common than inspiration, highlighting division more common than considering cooperation. That’s natural in a season of politics, I suppose, as highlighting differences is one of the objects of such activities. That encourages the emphasis to fall more readily on division rather than vision.


Into that fray at this political season come Pete Seeger and Lorre Wyatt with their album of songs called A More Perfect Union.

The two men, long time musicians and long time friends, have seen more than a few seasons of change in their lives: in 1996 Wyatt had a stroke and it seemed he would never play or sing again, and Seeger has seen ninety three winters and summers pass. So they have perspective from which to sing.

God’s Counting on Me, God’s Counting on You opens the set of sixteen songs they offer on A More Perfect Union. With its reminders of personal responsibility and responsibility to care and act for others, it’s a rallying song in which liberal and conservative could find points of common ground -- though not without out a barb or two for the more conservative folk. Crossing generations, The Rivertown Kids join in on the song, as does Bruce Springsteen. Musically and in idea, it makes a fine opening track fro an album that celebrates connection, humor, and good faith in ways that are real, realistic, musical, and quite needed in a season of politics.

Backed only by the beat of percussion from Jeff Haynes, Wyatt gives a spare and memorable look at what is happening in parts of the world beyond the borders of the United States in These Days In Zimbabwe, while This Old Man Revisited is a mordant and gritty take on the foolishness of war, with Steve Earle and Dar Williams adding their voices.

Wyatt and Seeger know that as important as politics and causes may be, they are only one aspect of lives lived through humor and connection and love. Somos el Barco/We Are the Boat, perhaps the best known song Lorre Wyatt has written, could be heard as a love song, or a political one, or both if you choose. Howling for Our Supper finds the men’s sense of fun in full force, as they channel the voices of their four legged friends who are waiting to be fed as the musicians keep on composing songs. Bountiful River evokes and celebrates the beauty of life in the Hudson River Valley.

One strength of the album is that you could choose almost any song as a centerpiece for the ideas, from the title track to that one about the cats and dogs to songs called Fields of Harmony to Wonderful Friends. Keep the Flame Alive, could be, on the one hand, about preparing a home for winter, or the other, it could be about ideas and community, or, as with so many of the ideas here, it could fit both those ways, and others.

The last song Lorre Wyatt and Pete Seeger recorded for this album is one called Old Apples Still Can Make Good Sauce. It could be about aging, about wisdom, about poking fun, or a batch of other things -- you choose. What comes clear is that these old friends can still make good songs, too.

In that they are supported by many musicians who live in New York’s Hudson Valley, including The Rivertown Kids, Dave Eggar on cello, Sara Milonovich on violin, and Jeff Haynes on percussion. Seeger plays banjo, Wyatt adds guitar. Springsteen, Williams, Earle, and Emmylou Harris lend their voices, too, adding to the feeling of community anchored by the words and ideas of Pete Seeger and Lorre Wyatt, two wise old friends.

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Song for Election Day
listening through the changes

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Ireland, north and south

News of violence in the North of Ireland comes in these recent days. Things are in a better situation, politically, now than in the past, but killing and loss and grief are no ways to build a lasting peace. Tommy Sands, who is from Rostrevor in Down, wrote There Were Roses, which Cara Dillon, who is from Dungiven in Derry, sings in this video. They both got it right.



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story about recent events in NI, from the Scotsman
a more hopeful story, from the Belfast Telegraph

Song for Election Day

Whichever way you choose to vote, and who ever wins in the US elections, please give some thought to the ideas in this song. The song is called If Not Now, by Carrie Newcomer.

More than half of the readers here at Music Road come from outside the US, but the ideas here have significance beyond politics and borders, and there's lots of room for you to hear them in ways that work for you, where ever you live.



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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Listening through the changes

The other night, I decided to listen to music rather than watch the US presidential debates, or the news. I know the importance of politics, and of being aware and connected. When the challenges and changes posed by current economic conditions are as difficult as they have been this last while, both for me and for many I care about, I find the wisdom and compassion in music helpful to me in getting centered and sorting things out. With all respect to Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Joe Biden, that’s where I need to be looking during this time of crisis and change. There’s more space to reflect, and to get clear on what to do, than in any newscast, debate, or focus group.

The songs below have in varied ways to do with understanding and living through change. They are good ones to know, just now. I’d also recommend other music by these artists, and by the other people we speak about here along the music road. It’s a bit of a rough road just now, but it is my conviction that we’re all walking this road together, and that music helps us to connect, to understand, and to live through the changes.


Carrie Newcomer: Throw Me a Line

Cathie Ryan:Be Like the Sea

Cathie Ryan: What's Closest to the Heart

Jeff Talmadge: Wrong Train

Carrie Newcomer: Leaves Don't Drop (They Just Let Go)

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now playing: Terri Allard

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Now playing: Eliza Gilkyson: beautiful world

Beautiful World


Political events, and opinions about them, occur in the midst of other parts of life, death, falling in love, stopping by the grocery store, seeing old friends -- and so it is, in a sense, with the songs on Eliza Gilkyson’s latest album. Great Correction was the first song Gilkyson wrote, inspired in part community conversation she hosted each weekend in Austin, Texas, with minister Jim Rigby and Professor Robert Jensen. “We wanted to provide a place to discuss, grieve, and mull over our future without having need for an immediate solution other that the comfort of each other’s presence,” Gilkyson says. Through her musical career, Gilkyson has explored the tensions and the gifts that exist when poetry and politic meet, and here she offers some of her best lyrics and most adventurous melodies yet. Not to mention, she’s a top class singer. The snazzy, jazzy almost tongue in cheek Unsustainable , the raw look behind what the world may see in someone and who that person really is in Dream Lover, love, joy and celebration of nature in Wildewood Spring -- this is perhaps a gentler Gilkyson that has been apparent in her more recent albums, one who’s drawn by passion and commitment more than fueled by anger. No less outspoken, though, and still deeply poetic and musical.

Down at the corner of ruin and grace
I’m growing weary of the human race
Hold my lamp up to everyone’s face
Looking for an honest man...

are the opening lines of The Great Correction.

Chris Maresh, Elana James, Cisco Ryder, Cindy Cashdollar, and Glenn Fukanaga are among those who back up Gilkyson on the recording.

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Music Road: now playing: Jeff Talmadge : At Least That Much Was True

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remembering Mrs. Johnson

Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird) Johnson died yesterday, at the age of 94. A woman who listened and observed with attention and grace, and who loved wildflowers.

Cathie Ryan has a fine version of John Spillane's song Wildflowers on her album The Farthest Wave. Tish Hinojosa has written a very different but equally fine song also called Wildflowers, which she has recorded on her album called Sign of Truth.

now playing: horn of the hunter

A series of songs and stories about fox hunting in contemporary England doesn't at first seem as though it'd really hold much of interest outside the dedicated worlds of hunting, animal rights, and ethnomusicology. And maybe British history.

As one listens to this recording, though, which is part of the BBC2 Radio Ballads series, it slowly becomes apparent that there's a broader possibility here. Horn of the Hunter is a way of looking at people facing the unsettling nature of change, of facing many viewpoints on one subject, all of which make some sort of sense, depending on where you stand, and what you understand.

Martin Simpson, Jez Lowe, John Tams, and Bob Fox are among the musicians involved in this episode of the series. There'll be more on other aspects of the series here later, and there's a bit about one of the other programs below in a post about Northern Ireland, as well.

Radio Ballads: Northern Ireland

Radio Ballads: Thirty Years of Conflict

Songs arise from conversation, connection, reflection, imagination -- and all of these applied and worked out in the course of real events. For the last thirty years and more, the real events in the six counties of Ireland's north, and along the borders with the republic as well, have included verbal and physical conflict, and the loss of more than 3000 lives. This recording is part of a six part series by the BBC honoring and challenging that idea of songs coming out of the intersection of lives and history. With this one on Northern Ireland, it is especially to the point, as both musicians those who tell their stories of events often say, directly and indirectly, that music reaches across borders, and always has. A powerful project, and especially on point with the ongoing process of devolution in Northern Ireland.

Songwriters and singers here include Cara Dillon, Jez Lowe, Julie Matthews, Sam Lakeman, and Tommy Sands.

photographs [©Kerry Dexter]: standing in the republic, looking toward the north, and along the Falls Road, Belfast

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Irish history on the web

Irish Diaspora Net


a rather quick note about this, which appears a useful research site site from University of Bradford in Yorkshire

Creative practice: composing about politics

All political action is both local and global; sometimes the rhetoric is too, and songs, hymns and anthems have certainly been fellow travelers in more ways than one along those routes. There’s also the idea, a good one I think, that you can find a love song in the midst of a song about war and history. Try it.

to be continued...

welcome your thoughts.

and speaking of politics, more from Radio Ballads:
a set of songs on living with HIV

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Scotland: United Kingdom?

Scotland is -- for now -- part of the United Kingdom. Anyone who has spent time there, from the western edge of the Hebrides to the busy streets of Glasgow to the quiet border hills, knows that Scotland is, however, an entirely different country from its neighbor, Britain. At the three hundredth anniversary of the signing of the act of union which joined the two nations, there’s a simmering, not to say boiling, debate over whether Scotland should stay connected to the other parts of the UK, or become politically again what it is in thought and culture, another nation.

Opinion is divided, on both sides of the border. Though most Scots -- eighty percent in a recent poll by Edinburgh’s Scotsman newspaper -- think Scotland will be best off on its own, many are wary of trading British connections for entanglement in other European Union issues, and there are matters of defense and public policy as well as social concerns, environmental actions, and relations with the United States and other countries fueling discussion, both public and private.

This simmering debate on Scotland’s future does not seem to be getting much press in America. An interesting way to keep up with what’s going on and what’s being thought is the nationhood blog, at the Scotsman’s website.

A reminder of what’s so individual about the character of Scotland, new music from Borders fiddler Shona Mooney, and a look at the history of shipbuilding along the Clyde through song on one the Radio Ballads series of CDs, Big Ships.