Comments on: Pete Seeger has a stamp

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 15:21:22 +0000

According to Shostakovich, Khatchaturian was a Party tool.

By: Artfldgr

Artfldgr — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 15:15:23 +0000

The world is better off without his ability to spread communism with a happy face

By: om

om — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 22:18:40 +0000

Here is the song for Pete Seeger:

“Progress”

https://youtu.be/LMEECbKOH7Q

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/07/23/country-music-superstar-john-rich-blisters-the-woke-with-patriotic-1-hit-takes-out-biden-in-the-process-n600387

By: Cicero

Cicero — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 19:17:47 +0000

Re Khatchaturian: Listen to his cello concerto. Technically very challenging, but also musical.
Wonder how he and Shostakovich made it in Stalin’s era without being sent to Kolyma.

By: neo

neo — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 18:42:23 +0000

M Smith: Indeed. See this.

By: M Smith

M Smith — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 18:08:48 +0000

Seeger certainly had a unique and easily recognizable voice, but he always seemed like one of those dorky school teachers or camp counselors who always wanted to sing and who the kids made fun of. His anger at Bob Dylan going electric — supposedly Pete had an axe and was ready to chop the electric cables — was what you’d expect from the teacher who wanted to be “cool” and down with the kids, but who was an authoritarian at heart.

The Seeger family was ahead of the curve. Harvard in the Thirties wasn’t a noticeably left-wing place, or not so much as it is now. There was always a wealthy radical fringe, but they didn’t yet run the place. Pete’s uncle was the poet Alan Seeger, killed in the Great War.

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Springs brings back blue days and fair.

Flanders and Swan were cute. Harmless little comic or satirical songs, often about animals. Plus “The English are Best.” They weren’t folk singers or leftists, but Flanders’ wife was related to Britain’s leftwing Cockburn dynasty. Hence his daughter, Laura Flanders, who is a left-wing broadcaster in the states. She would be better off if she were more of her father and less of her mother.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 17:08:25 +0000

Paul in Boston….”He used to sing a song by Malvena Renolds called “Little Boxes”

It has struck me that that song (circa 1963, I believe) marked the transition from a Left which *favored* higher living standards for average people (or at least said they did) and the present-day Left, much of which thinks average people live too darn well.

See the remark by Fabian socialist Sidney Webb, in praise of what he called The Machine Age:

“It is, indeed, to the so-called unskilled workers of London and Berlin and Paris, badly off in many respects as they still are and notably to their wives and children that the Machine Age has incidentally brought the greatest advance in freedom and in civilization.”

Longer excerpt from Webb in comments here:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/60956.html

By: om

om — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 11:48:18 +0000

Oh, the early 60’s when the rage was decolonization of Africa and Communist backed liberation of the oppressed black masses. Funny how that equally oppressive solution (Communism) “worked.” BLM still working that con but Pete is now gone to his reward. May he be stamped.

By: Wendy Laubach

Wendy Laubach — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 08:19:29 +0000

I attended a Seeger concert in Houston when I was a kid. He had the audience divide itself up into parts to sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” along with him. I don’t remember ever having more fun in my life.

By: huxley

huxley — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 05:48:50 +0000

Got to say I watched that Khachaturian piano concerto performance and it was one of the most enthralling experiences of classical music I’ve ever had.

The French pianist, JY Thibaudet, is something special. According to wiki:
________________________

Thibaudet’s virtuosity is such that he even impressed the great Vladimir Horowitz, who called a performance he heard on the radio of Thibaudet playing Liszt “amazing”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Yves_Thibaudet
________________________

The performance was well-shot with many lingering sections on Thibaudet’s brilliant play.

He went open collar, no tie, with a large black, jeweled medallion at the notch of his throat. Wiki says his concert outfit was designed by Vivienne Westwood, whom even I’ve heard of.

I’ll have to listen to more Thibaudet.

I was disappointed, however, that the performance did not include the musical saw, which Khachaturian wrote a part for in the concerto. I’ve heard the saw in a few recordings and it adds an eerie tremolo on top of the violins. But I’ve never seen it.

http://www.singende-saege.com/khachaturian-piano-concerto.html