May 3, 2024:
One hundred and five years ago, today, Pete Seeger was born. He is credited by nyhistory.org as a “pioneer of American folk music.” He has been described as an activist. I knew him to be a lover of humanity and a wisdom catcher.
Today, being Pete’s birthday and having just shared a five-part series on “The Secret Mission of the Folk Musician,” I would like to discuss the title of one of Pete’s final compositions, co-written with Lorre Wyatt, and how it became a motto of mine:
KEEP THE FLAME ALIVE!
Pete’s final full-length music album, “A More Perfect Union,” was released in 2012, just a year and a half before he passed. I immediately fell in love with the recording. (In fact, I sang on some of the songs.) One of the treasures of the album is “Keep the Flame Alive.” I quickly learned it and added it to my repertoire. Since then, the term has grown more and more important to me. That’s because, over time, I realized that depending on what you take the “flame” to represent, it beautifully sums up much of what I strive to achieve.
I would like to share three layers of what the term means to me.
KEEP ALIVE THE TRADITION OF FOLK MUSIC
The first layer is an understanding of how we can keep alive the tradition of folk music - and by extension, other traditions. It starts with my story “How I Met Pete Seeger – Part 2.” In it, I recount Pete’s and my very first conversation in 2003. It spanned less than thirty seconds and consisted of only five sentences. But it revealed a big chunk of who Pete Seeger was and what he was about.
A short version of the conversation is that Pete asked me, “Do you know what Founders Disease is?” He said, “Founders Disease is when the same people who founded an organization thirty years ago are still running it today.”
Like a deer frozen in a car’s headlights, I was bowled over without a clue why Pete chose to tell me this. I had an overwhelming sense that there was deep meaning to this encounter. And within a few years, the first layer of understanding became clear. One of Pete’s missions was to conquer Founders Disease. And he was inviting all kinds of people to help him do so.
Conquering Founders Disease
Pete was dedicated to making room for younger people. After all, the future lives in our young brothers and sisters. Countless times, I saw Pete go out of his way to start conversations with younger folks.
Like a school child listening to a teacher, Pete listened to young people intently. He approached each new person he met with the assumption that they were inherently worthy of respect – aware that some young ones might share valuable perspectives that were new to him.
It’s important to mention that I never saw Pete defer to young people or assume they were right simply because they were young. He advised me, for instance, as someone decades younger than himself to:
“learn the old songs;
learn the different ways they were sung by different groups;
but change the words to keep them up to date;
write new verses about the world we live in today and
write new songs that everybody can sing.”
RESPECT FOR THE PAST - A PATH TO THE FUTURE
This approach incorporates respect for those who have gone before us and created frameworks for many of the wonders we enjoy today. It also shows how we can further shape these wonders, add our own voices, and steer things in a new direction. This can happen while supporting a continuity that allows organizations and traditions to grow, adapt, and remain relevant. I imagine this advice could also fit many other fields - carpentry, child-rearing, and sports, to name a few.
I agreed with Pete when he lamented that too many important organizations neglect their responsibility to shepherd greener members. All too often, they either lock younger folks out or cede unfettered leadership to them. I don’t know if it’s because of laziness or just that it’s easier in the short run, but as a result, instead of learning from elders how things can work, if anything is learned at all it is more often what doesn’t work.
In summary, when I first heard the words, “Keep the Flame Alive,” I understood them to mean let’s conquer Founders Disease. To do this requires developing a symbiotic relationship between the past and future.
KEEP ALIVE THE TOOLS OF DEMOCRACY
A second layer of meaning of “Keep the Flame Alive” is to keep alive the tools we have to maintain a free and healthy society. This is a big part of what I believe Pete’s music and work were about. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on this and a yet deeper meaning in my next article.
Until then,
Happy Birthday, Pete!
Keep the Flame Alive!