Plan for improvisation: an interview with Pete Seeger

Whole Earth Review, Winter, 1994 by Gaetano Kazuo Maida

I think that during the next few decades all around the world -- all around the world, barring no one -- every country is going to learn something of the riches of African music. They have many kinds of instruments. harps, drums, flutes, such a variety of instruments it's astonishing. Now many people say, "but they don't have the harmony that Europe has." Well that's true, the harmony is usually rather simple compared to a symphony orchestra, but on the other hand, the rhythm is ten times as complicated as the rhythm of the symphony orchestra [he hums Beethoven!. This is kindergarten stuff, rhythmically. Most African music is full of subtleties which of course are now being picked up in this country and Latin America -- Brazil, for example, and other parts of the world. Of course it's not easy. Sometimes you pick up something and you only half learn it; I often urge musicians: you can try mixing things up, but don't be under the illusion that you can learn it in a few weeks or a few months. Sometimes you have to live. Like this man who has just finished singing let the Clearwater Hudson River Revival!. I mean he's lived with the blues for probably sixty or seventy years, and it would be very difficult for any young person to do what that man just did.

G: If you were giving advice to young people today, what would you urge them to do?

P: I urge people to travel a little while they're young and can afford to do it, because later on you get a family and it's a lot more difficult. But then, sooner or later: settle down. Most Americans are a little too mobile. We need some traveling salesmen, and I suppose diplomats, musicians and actors and so on tend to travel, but I think all too many people travel just because they think the grass is greener in some other city.

I also think that one of the dangers in modern life is that scientists and technologists have all these goodies and we don't know how to handle it. We eat more food than we should eat, we often try to learn more things than we can learn, rather than consummating a few things, and it's taken me a long while to discipline myself not to try to do quite so many things as I used to do. Some people say, "Well, what we need is discipline." Well, that's true, but I think it's self-discipline we need.

G: When you talk about discipline, it sounds a lot like a description of peoples who live in what is called the Third World, that have perhaps not been conquered by consumerism and technology yet . . .

P: Course, most of them wish that they were conquered by technology . . .

G: Exactly, there's that irony to it.

P: When I was in China in 1972, I saw millions of bicycles, and the streets were quiet and the air was clean, and I said to my interpreter, "You know someday I hope America can have as many bicycles in our streets, on the streets of New York, as you have here in Shanghai." He looked at me in consternation -- he thought I was out of my mind!

G: Are you frustrated, as some of us have been, about the rather homogeneous nature of the audiences?