While I've got a
hammer, and I've got a bell
And I've got a song to
sing all over this land
It's a hammer of
justice, it's a bell of freedom
It's a song about love
between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land
(lyrics by Pete Seeger)
Like so many folk songs of the mid-20th
Century (Turn, Turn, Turn and
Where Have All the Flowers Gone come
to mind) If I had a Hammer
has resided in my musical memory for as long as I can remember. And
all three of those were written by (but made famous when recorded by
other people) Pete Seeger, who died just a couple of days before I
sat down to write this.
Over the last
couple of days I have read many articles about Seeger. One of the
things that stands out is that while some people might have suggested
that a singer-songwriter made a poor activist Seeger totally
disagreed. His banjo had an inscription which stated “This machine
surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” (apparently following
from Woody Guthrie whose guitar said “this machine kills
fascists”). Pete Seeger (and arguably others such as Peter Paul
and Mary and Bob Dylan) not only believed but KNEW that music could
make a difference in society.
Try to
imagine the Civil Rights movement without We Shall
Overcome. Or the anti-Vietnam
movement without Give Peace a Chance.
Or the Union movement without Solidarity Forever. Is
the music just the soundtrack or is it part of the story?
Given the emotive
power music has, the way it can stir our emotions as well as – or
even better than – an orator like Martin Luther King, the way it
brings people together – how many of those old film clips were
people singing with the leadership, not people standing and listening
– it seems that music is most definitively part of the story.
So what story shall
we sing? Many of us were introduced to the songs of the folk scene
through the church in some way. I learned If I Had a Hammer
in Junior Choir. I learned Blowin' in the Wind at church
camp. Where Have All the Flowers Gone and This Land is
Your Land show up in a couple of church-based songbooks in my
drawer at home. I have used (not nearly as often as I have been
tempted to) Peter, Paul, and Mary music in worship. Why?
There was something
about those songs that spoke to the church. Maybe not officially,
but that music touched the souls of church-folk (and yes annoyed the
heck out some other church folk). I think it is because people of my
parent's generation, and those of us who have come after, heard in
those songs God's prophetic voice. We hear a vision of how the world
could be. We join our voices in song about the world as we wish it
was.
What story, what
vision, what songs shall we sing? As the world mourns and lionizes
Pete Seeger I encourage us to look at what he stood for (something he
was never shy about proclaiming). As we sing the “campfire songs”
of the folk era I urge us to look at those words, then look at the
world, and ask which picture we like better.
Songs CAN surround
hate and force it to surrender, music CAN change the world. We are
the singers, we choose the song, shall we sing out loud?
