Farewell to a Righteous Banjo Picker
- By Aaron Hellem
Over the years, you’ll find the magic made by the right song at the right place at the right time.
-- Pete Seeger
Anyone who finds themselves discovering the banjo in any way, be it as participant or observer, knows the name of Pete Seeger, the righteous banjo picker who practiced his own form of protest and pacificism through his own style of playing, a blend of two- and three-finger picking style varied with a clawhammer flair. Long legged with his long-necked banjo he played stages for years, preaching through his music love and peace and justice. Armed only with his banjo, he made the world a better place and, especially for us banjo players, left behind a legacy and a lasting repertoire.
When I was first learning how to play the banjo, one of the first instructional manuals I picked up was Pete Seeger’s How to Play the Five String Banjo. I was bewildered. I still couldn’t hear the bum ditty and couldn’t hear the notes for the song, but he promised me I would if I kept plunking. Keep plunking and you’ll eventually start picking. One of the first songs I learned was Pete’s version of “Worried Man’s Blues.” (And, after seeing old footage of Pete playing the Newport Folk Festival, I’ve always secretly dreamed I’d play a banjo on stage in front of hundreds of folks.) At the same time I was learning other songs to build a song list, songs like “Jesus on the Mainland,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “Always Pick Him Up”—hopeful songs about a world where we recognize each other as brothers and sisters, fellow passengers to the same grave, rather than strangers, far-flung on divergent paths. Pete Seeger preached an ideology the banjo embodies: a conduit connecting everyone to each other by virtue of what we share, the interconnectivity of harmonics. Pete Seeger believed music and songs could change the world. In his introduction to Rise Up and Sing, Pete wrote, “And when strangers meet and find they like the same song, then there is one more connection made for the future world network. And when eventually we have a world of peace and justice, the songs and those who sing them will be some of the millions of reasons why. Is such a world an impossibility? The alternative is no world at all. . . A singing movement is a winning movement. We’re putting a world together before it blows itself apart.”
When we remember it was a banjo that connected continents, then maybe it’s not impossible to believe Pete’s prescience that “musicians can teach the politicians.” How much more effective or at least entertaining would the State of the Union be if Obama strode into the House of Representatives with his own Gold Tone or Hartford Special, picking and singing “I’m Sticking with the Union”? Pete Seeger said, “Let the people sing.” He dedicated his entire existence to the belief we could all love each other if we just sang the same song. This world will miss your spirit, Pete, and I will miss your pickin’.
