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Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

Pete Seeger

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Pete Seeger
Age: 94 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 3
Died: 2014
Died: January 27
Banjoist
Guitarist
Mandolinist
Musicologist
Peace Activist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Street Artist
New York City
New York
Peter Seeger
Father
Folk
Music
Definition
Something
Contemporary
Definitions
Changing
Folks
Ancient
Alan
Started
Anonymous

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Sometimes you find an old tune so good you can use it several times for different purposes.
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And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.
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Throughout history the leaders of the countries have been very particular about what songs should be sung. We know the power of songs.
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Now somebody will ask me, Pete, how can you prove these songs really make a difference? And I have to confess I can't prove a darn thing, except that the people in power must think they do something, because they keep the songs off the air.
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The world would never amount to a hill of beans if people didn't use their imaginations to think of the impossible.
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I was working for Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress folk song archive, and starting to realize what a wealth of different kinds of music there was in this country that you never heard on the radio.
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I believe that all technological societies tend to self-destruct. The reason is that the very things that make us a successful technological society, such as our curiosity, our ambition and determination, will also cause us to fall.
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The real meaning of courage was the personal sacrifice of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
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I'd really rather put songs on people's lips than in their ears.
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If you love this land of the free, bring them home, bring them home, Bring them back from overseas.
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I don't think of God as an old white man with no belly button, nor even an old black woman with no belly button. But I agree that God is something eternal. Something cannot come out of nothing. I believe God is Everything. And I believe in infinity.
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