Today, Pete Seeger turns 90 years old. He is an American treasure, Whitmanesque to the core, keeping alive a tradition of song that might just be lost with the ever-quickening urbanization and cultural destruction wrought by the ubiquity of satellite television. Here he is singing a great song by Malvina Reynolds, "Little Boxes". Such a simple song, but nails the kind of deathly social conformity that was bleeding America dry after the Second World War.
Here he is this past January at Pres. Obama's inauguration, along with Bruce Springsteen, leading the crowd in Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land". This song always makes me get a little teary; a much more fitting national anthem, as far as I'm concerned.
