 |
View source |
 |
|
|
# 2022-03-08 - Folk Disobedience |
|
|
|
In the 1970s, Pete Seeger was invited to sing in Barcelona, Spain. |
|
Francisco Franco's fascist government, the last of the dictatorships |
|
that started World War II, was still in power but declining. A |
|
pro-democracy movement was gaining strength and to prove it, they |
|
invited America's best-known freedom singer to Spain. More that a |
|
hundred thousand people were in the stadium, where rock bands had |
|
played all day. But the crowd had come for Seeger. |
|
|
|
As Pete prepared to go on, government officials handed him a list of |
|
songs he was not allowed to sing. Pete studied it mournfully, saying |
|
it looked an awful lot like his set list. But they insisted: he must |
|
not sing any of these songs. |
|
|
|
Pete took the government's list of banned songs and strolled on |
|
stage. He held up the paper and said, "I've been told that I'm not |
|
allowed to sing these songs." He grinned at the crowd and said, "So |
|
I'll just play the chords; maybe you know the words. They didn't say |
|
anything about *you* singing them." |
|
|
|
He strummed his banjo to one song after another, and they all sang. |
|
A hundred thousand defiant freedom singers breaking the law with Pete |
|
Seeger, filling the stadium with words their government did not want |
|
them to hear, words they all knew and had sung together, in secret |
|
circles, for years. What could the government do? Arrest a hundred |
|
thousand singers? It had been beaten by a few banjo chords and the |
|
fame of a man whose songs were on the lips of the whole world. |
|
|
 |
Original source |
|
|
|
tags: article,censorship,history,inspiration |
|
|
|
# Tags |
|
|
 |
article |
|
censorship |
|
history |
|
inspiration |
