Seeger Tribute Home About the Family Symposium Program Abstracts/Biographies Selected Resources AFC Collections Experience the Event Webcasts Photo Album Concert Log

March 15-16, 2007, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

The Library of Congress paid tribute to one of America's most enduring musical legacies in a two-day celebration entitled How Can I Keep From Singing? A Seeger Family Tribute, from March 15-16, 2007. Events included a special screening of archival films, a symposium and a two hour concert, over the course of the two days.

(Left to right) Peggy, Mike, and Pete Seeger in concert at the Library of Conbress, March 16, 2007. Photo by Robert Corwin.

This site provides a document of this historic event. All of the symposium panels and the keynote address are available as webcasts, as is the two hour concert featuring Pete, Mike, and Peggy Seeger along with other family members and friends. Only the film screening, held the evening of March 15, is not represented here. It presented footage of folk music from around the world, documented in the 1960s by Pete Seeger, his wife Toshi and their children. Additional resources and materials put together for this event, such as biographical information about the Seeger family and collections related to the Seegers in the American Folklife Center's archive are available on this site. Links to materials created by the Folklife Center and available after the event, such as the articles in Folklife Center News, are also available.

The Library's American Folklife Center and the Music Division are home to multiple collections documenting the family's extraordinary musical accomplishments: those of composer-musicologist Charles Seeger; his wife Ruth Crawford Seeger, a pathbreaking modernist composer; their children, Mike (both a collector and a celebrated performer of old-time music) and Peggy (a singer-songwriter important to the genre of women's music); and Charles's son, Pete, one of the central figures in the American folksong revival.

The film screening, held the evening of March 15, is not represented here. It is mentioned in the symposium. It presented rarely-seen footage of folk music from around the world, documented in the 1960s by Pete Seeger, his wife Toshi and their children.

The Symposium, available here as a set of webcasts, brought together leading scholars, cultural figures, and musicians who have been carrying the legacy of the Seegers forward in both performance and scholarship. It included ethnomusicologist Tony Seeger, grandson of Charles Seeger and nephew to Pete, Mike and Peggy. The symposium is an initiative of the American Folklife Center and the Music Division of the Library of Congress. The Symposium abstracts and biographical sketches of participants are available on this site.

The March 16 evening concert featured Pete, Mike and Peggy, along with the Short Sisters (Fay Baird, Kate Seeger, and Kim Wallach), Sonja Cohen Cramer, and other family members and friends. It it is available as a two hour streaming video with a log providing time indicators to assist in finding individual performers and performances.

Additional Resources

Folklife Center News articles related to this event:

"How Can I keep from Singing: A Seeger Family Tribute at the Library of Congress," by James Hardin, Folklife Center News Volume 28, #4 [Fall 2006], pp 3-10 [2.34 MB / 16 pp. PDF].

"Family Values Seeger Style," by Neil Rosenberg, Folklife Center NewsVolume 29, #1 [Winter 2007], pp. 3-11 [2.52 MB / 24 pp. PDF].