The Zulus were chanting, “Uyimbube, uyimbube,” but to Pete it sounded like, awimboowee or maybe awimoweh, so that’s how he wrote it down. “Golly,” he said, “I can sing that.” So he got out pen and paper and started transcribing the song, but he couldn’t catch the words through all the hissing on the disk. Later he taught “Wimoweh” to the rest of … the Weavers, and it became, he says, “just about my favorite song to sing for the next forty years.” To Pete it sounded like, awimboowee or maybe awimoweh, so that’s how he wrote it down. He was fascinated – there was something catchy about the underlying chant, and that wild, skirling falsetto was amazing. Pete put it on his old Victrola and sat back. They were about to be thrown away when Lomax intervened, thinking, “God, Pete’s the man for these.”Īnd here they were: ten shellac 78s, one of which said “Mbube” on its label. Alan was presently working for Decca, where he’d just rescued a package of 78s sent from Africa by a record company in the vain hope that someone might want to release them in America. Alan and his dad, John, were already famous for their song-collecting forays into the parallel universe of rural black America, where they’d discovered giants like Muddy Waters and Leadbelly. It wasn’t particularly glorious, the money was rotten, and on top of that, he was sick in bed with a bad cold.Ĭame a knock on the door, and, lo, there stood his friend Alan Lomax, later to be hailed as the father of world music. Discharged in ’45, he returned to New York and got a gig of sorts in the public school system, teaching toddlers to warble the half-forgotten folk songs of their American heritage. After that it was into uniform and off to the front, where Pete played the banjo for bored GIs. Scenting a capitalist plot to destroy the brave Soviet socialist experiment, Pete and Woody turned gung-ho overnight and started writing anti-Nazi war songs, an episode that made them briefly famous. The Weavers introduced many folk revival standards to new audiences.He was also a pacifist, at least until Hitler invaded Russia. Because of this, some folk song fans criticized them for watering down their beliefs and commercializing their singing style.Įncouraging sing-alongs in their concerts, sometimes Seeger would shout out the lyrics in advance of each line. The Weavers first big hit was in 1950 with Lead Belly‘s “ Goodnight, Irene“, backed with the 1941 song “ Tzena, Tzena, Tzena“, which also became a best-seller.ĭuring the Great Red Scare of the early 1950s, their manager advised the group not to sing their most explicitly political songs and to avoid performing at “progressive” venues and events. The Weavers were formed in 1948 by Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Pete Seeger. The group took its name from Die Weber a play written by Gerhart Hauptmann in 1892 that depicted the uprising of the Silesian weavers in 1844. Their style inspired the commercial folk music boom that followed them in the 1950s and 1960s. The Weavers were an American folk quartet from Greenwich Village in New York City who sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children’s songs, labor songs, and American ballads.
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