biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1919– )
|
| biography:
| Folksinger and songwriter, born in New York City, New York, USA. As a son of Charles Seeger, the musicologist, and stepson of Ruth Crawford-Seeger, the composer, he was raised in a home devoted to American folk music. He studied sociology at Harvard (1936–8) but left to pursue his interest in singing and painting. Influenced by Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, he formed (with Guthrie) the Almanac Singers (1941), one of the first such groups to give voice to social issues. In 1949 he joined the Weavers, the first commercially successful folk music group; although it had formally separated by c.1960, it occasionally regrouped for special concerts. He performed for the civil-rights and anti-war movements of the 1950s and 1960s (and at one point fell foul of the US government for his anti-war actions). His best-known original is ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ (1961). By the 1980s he was lending his voice and reputation to the environmental movement. In addition to performing he wrote scholarly articles on folk music. |
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