Mike Seeger, Musician Folklorist
by Michael Parrish

Musician-folklorist Mike Seeger is central to any discussion of the popular revival of traditional North American music. In a career spanning nearly four decades, Seeger has been tireless in his pursuit of traditional music, whether as a performer, advocate of other performers such as Elizabeth Cotten and the Dickens Family, or as a field recordist and music collector.

Seeger was born in 1933, the son of Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger. His birth nearly coincided with the beginning of his parents’ deep interest in traditional music. “My folks were just beginning to discover traditional music about the time I was born. My mother was an avant-garde composer, and had composed the pieces she’s now best known for on a Guggenheim in 1930-32. As a matter of fact, a Deutsche Grammophon recording of hers will be coming out in March, devoted to her music. My father wanted to be a conductor and a composer, but due to deafness, he became more of a music philosopher. That’s where they were in the early 1930s. Because of changes in the political and musical climates, they decided to go into folk music, because they felt their stuff was kind of irrelevant. In 1935 or so, he went to work for a branch of the WPA, the Resettlement Administration. Their idea was to take folk music back — to give people pride in their culture — and that’s when they got very involved in field programs and field recordings. They met John and Alan Lomax about that same time and got involved with them. There were no field recordings before about 1934, because recording machines didn’t exist before then that could be taken out into the field.”

Read the full story about Mike Seeger and his music in Dirty Linen Magazine #69.