Legendary folk

The Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank was packed out on Sunday as legendary folk performers from both Britain and the US gathered to celebrate the 70th birthday of legendary folk singer-songwriter Peggy Seeger.

Coming from a US family of musicologists, but spending most of her performing career in Britain, Seeger provides a clear link with the politically progressive folk tradition on both sides of the Atlantic.

Welcoming the audience, Mike Harding sets the scene by pointing out how, with the famous Radio Ballards of the 1950s, Seeger and her late partner Ewan MacColl gave expression to the experiences of working-class people in song.

Both through her collaboration with MacColl and through her own compositions, Seeger has combined her singing career with support for left-wing causes, embracing women's liberation, nuclear disarmament, anti-apartheid and trade union struggles.

This political commitment is much in evidence at the concert.

At different points during the first set, Seeger is joined by guest artists such as Billy Bragg, Martin Carthy, Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy, as well as partner Irene Scott and children Neill, Calum and Kitty MacColl.

And, for the first time ever on a British stage, she is joined in the second set by both of her brothers from the US - Mike Seeger, who is known for his distinct interpretation of bluegrass and traditional mountain music, and Pete Seeger, a contemporary of Woody Guthrie and a mentor to 1960s US protest singers such as Tom Paxton, Judy Collins and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Using a combination of banjo, dulcimer and piano, Seeger performs some traditional songs taken from her new CD Heading For Home as well as older love songs, including MacColl's song for her The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, which is totally different in style to the Roberta Flack version that most people are familiar with.

In keeping with the pattern that she and MacColl always had at folk concerts, the traditional songs are interspersed with political songs about war, trade unions and women's rights.

Now living back in the US, her song The Caveman is an indictment of US foreign policy and details the countries that have been bombed by the US over the years.

On finishing, she explains to the audience that she never wants applause after singing the song as it doesn't seem appropriate.

This, however, is the only occasion when the audience doesn't applaud.

It was a particularly emotionally charged moment when a rousing rendition of MacColl and Seeger's Song for Che Guevara is performed with help from the Waterson-Carthy family.

Then the atmosphere reaches boiling point when Pete Seeger's appears in the second set.
The composer of songs like Turn, Turn,Turn and the anti-McCarthyite If I Had a Hammer is quickly able to dispel any worries that, at the age of 86, he may have lost some of his singing ability or political passion.

With his legendary skills in encouraging audience participation, he soon has everybody singing along to the humorous English is Cuh-Ra-Zee, then to a recent composition about Martin Luther King and, finally, to his own classic anti-war song Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

But by that time there is hardly a dry eye in the house.

Towards the end of the concert, Peggy Seeger sings her most famous feminist song I'm Gonna Be An Engineer and all the artists gather on stage for a rendition of Sing About These Hard Times, a song of hope for working people.

Uniting the best of the progressive folk-singing community in both Britain and the US, this birthday concert truly was an inspirational musical and political experience.