Interview with Peggy Seeger.

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In record time

PEGGY SEEGER Interview

Common Fence Music

BY LISA UTMAN RANDALL

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Asha Bhosle, queen of Bollywood musical voiceovers, as having recorded more songs than any other person in the world. She weighs in at about 25,000, but I'm willing to bet that Peggy Seeger, the longtime folk singer and songwriter, is not that far behind.

At 70, Seeger has been a major force in the folk music scene for long enough that her prolific output adds up to a lot of recordings. In fact, the math equation looks like this, 50 years of concerts, 20 plus solo albums, 100 joint recordings with other singers and more than 200 original songs. Amazingly, she seems to be picking up speed - she is currently hell bent on recording a CD every 18 months or so; there's a lot bubbling up that she feels is important to get out.

Some of these recordings are part of a homemade series she calls the "Timely Series." In these recordings, she focuses on getting out a message or a commentary on current political and social issues and events. What she is not so concerned with in this series are fantastic arrangements; it's about getting the song out there because the ideas are important now. This is a sped-up version of the essence of folk music.

" It's important to be a folk singer," she insisted. "That's what folk singers did in the past, they brought social inequalities to the fore." She continues to record traditional songs as well, and is two deep into a trilogy of albums that focus not only on her beautiful, almost haunting sometimes hillbilly voice but also on masterful sound production.

Seeger was born into a family with a rich history of music and folk traditions. Her mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger is generally considered to be the most significant female composer of modernist music of the 20th century. She also put a great deal of effort into transcribing American roots music that would otherwise have been lost to us all. Pete Seeger, the man we think of as the father of the American folk-revival, is her half brother, and Peggy's brother Mike is a virtuoso on several dozen instruments. Peggy herself was classically trained and plays the five-string banjo, guitar, Appalachian dulcimer, autoharp, English concertina and the piano. Her eventual marriage to Ewan MacColl was a widening of this already expansive circle of musicians. Together they had three children, collaborated on untold records, and co-authored two books of gypsy folklore and song among other creative projects. One of the most enduring legacies of their relationship is her late husband's song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." Peggy Seeger is that face.

Her two sons. Neill and Calum, are also musicians and Seeger refers to them as the arbiters of the "Home Trilogy" she currently is working on. "I'll record a song and they'll say, 'You kind of got tired on the second verse,'" she confided. "And of course they're nearly always right. I did have to override them once and that time I was right!"

Someday she would love to record a song with her daughter Kitty, who she says has a sweet, wistful voice. It seemed natural that Seeger started out her career performing traditional folk songs but before long she became aware of the onslaught of negative images of women that were embedded in many of these songs. Women were property, nags and schemers. She was thoughtful enough however to not turn her back on the traditional songs but instead began writing her own to address her concerns, songs filled with more positive images of women. One of her best-known songs, "Gonna Be an Engineer," surprised her by becoming one of the anthems of the women's movement soon after she wrote it in 1970. She has compiled her thoughts into lectures that she calls "A Feminist View of the Image of Women in Anglo-American Traditional Song."

These lectures begin with Seeger singing and talking about folk music and the role it has played in shaping the way women have been perceived. Seeger then turns to contemporary songs written by both men and women that challenge these stereotypes. I was curious how her idea that many of the traditional folk songs that have had a role in conditioning us to accept and pass on the status quo relates to the outcry against a lot of the more negative rap lyrics.

" I know that women are trashed in an awful lot of the songs. I don't listen to them for that reason," she quickly answered.

Seeger who grew up in America but spent 35 years living in England believes that her European perspective on American culture and politics is very important. She incorporates these views into her songs; a method she is adept at utilizing to bring power to her words. As she describes this process over the phone to me, she suddenly breaks out into song.

It's a new one about a marine back from a stint in Iraq whom Seeger interviewed, then set his words to music. Her voice is mesmerizing, lilting and lonely.

" I don't think it is safe to have a world run by men," she sings, adding, "those are his words."