American folk singer Pete Seeger dies at 94

United States folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, whose songs included Turn! Turn! Turn! and If I Had A Hammer, has died at the age of 94.


He died at a New York hospital after a short illness, his grandson said.

The BBC reports that Seeger gained fame in The Weavers, formed in 1948, and continued to perform in his own right in a career spanning six decades.


Renowned for his protest songs, Seeger was blacklisted by the US government in the 1950s for his leftist stance.
Denied broadcast exposure, Seeger toured US college campuses spreading his music and ethos, later calling this the “most important job of my career.”

He was quizzed by the Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 over whether he had sung for Communists, replying that he “greatly resented” the implication that his work made him any less American.

Seeger was charged with contempt of Congress, but the sentence was overturned on appeal.

He returned to TV in the late 1960s but had a protest song about the Vietnam War cut from broadcast.

The lofty, bearded banjo-playing musician became a standard bearer for political causes from nuclear disarmament to the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

In 2009, he was at a gala concert in the US capital ahead of Barack Obama’s inauguration as president.
Former president Bill Clinton hailed him as “an inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them.”
Other songs that he co-wrote included Where Have All The Flowers Gone, while he was credited with making We Shall Overcome an anthem of resistance.