Folk Music

Our PBS TV station is fund raising and therefore rolling out shows that attract older viewers who have money to donate.  Last Wednesday they broadcast a program about Peter Paul & Mary.  I watched part of it yesterday and part today (I recorded it on my computer)  and really enjoyed it.

Now I don’t usually like seeing the old singers out there still singing their old hits when they clearly have lost their voices.  It bothers me and sometimes seems pathetic.  PP&M are different.

For you youngsters who missed the folk song era I’ll explain. During the 60’s society was in turmoil.  The civil rights movement with marches and riots in the cities, the Cold War and the war in Viet Nam left my generation angry and determined to do better.  A good deal of the message for change in society and to end the war came from folk music which became very popular on college campuses and even spawned TV shows like Hootenanny .(Google it if you don’t know what one is. )

PP&M were on the top of the folk heap and I was in that time of life 16-21 where the words in the music could touch deeply and even help form opinions and beliefs.  What makes PP&M interesting (and most of the real folk singers,too) is that they are committed to getting a message out and not in making money.  PP&M started with songs sung by The Weavers and took off after they recorded their arrangement of “Lemon Tree”.

Their arrangement of “If I had a Hammer” a radical (for its time) anti-war song clearly showed the power this group had and the Government  wasn’t able to silence them as they did the Weavers.(Joe McCarthy era)

The high point for PP&M came with their singing “Blowin in the Wind” at the civil rights march on Washington – the same platform where Martin Luther King gave his dream speech.

PP&M had a special sound and their message changed with the times.  Songs addressed war, freedom. love, and just basic folk music.  They broke up for 7 years but reunited when Paul wrote a song about the goings on in El Salvador (again Google it if you are not aware of our CIA’s activities at that time) and called Peter and Mary telling them they had to sing this song. They stayed together after that.

They gave John Denver’s career a boost when they made “Leaving on a Jet Plane”  a huge hit.  And everybody knows “Puff the Magic Dragon”.

Besides the nostalgia of the program I was happy to see Mary singing “For Baby” to her granddaughter – my favorite song to sing to K&C and now Sophie and Lucy.

The bottom line—they can still sing and they love singing together.  They still have a message of humanity, hope and activism