After a five-month hiatus, I’m back in harness for my attempt to visit 100 museums in 2019. (That’s a ridiculously ambitious goal now, but hey, you never know.)
Last weekend I visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. I spent about three hours there, enjoyed every minute, and could easily have spent three more (another day!).
My favourite object on display, and the one I keep thinking about, is folk singer Pete Seeger‘s banjo head. Seeger was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 under the category of Early Influence.
The object’s caption says:
I was raised by an American woman with a collection of folk music LPs (33 1⁄3 rpm) that got a lot of play on the family’s 1960s portable turntable. Pete Seeger was a favourite, and so many of his songs are stuck in my head forever.
I remember my parents trying to explain to me the sociopolitical messages behind Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Little Boxes, etc. They had met and married in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s, and were in the thick of some serious times on the university campus, my mother as a librarian, and my father as a Canadian graduate student. I just thought the folk music was pleasant to sing along with on a Sunday afternoon, while I dangled my legs off my dad’s easy chair and spun around and around for fun until I felt dizzy.
Seeger’s story-song Abiyoyo, about a small boy who uses his ukeleke to conquer a fearsome and threatening giant, scared the pants off me.
When I returned home from my Cleveland trip, I read that Seeger had initially put his banjo head up for auction on eBay in early 2010 to raise money for environmental work in Haiti, but had withdrawn it to donate it the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (and would continue to raise money for Haiti).
Pete Seeger died in 2014 at the age of 94, and here’s a piece about his life from ABC News.
I’m reminded listening to his powerful music again that my own social conscience could use some exercising (see 14 Songs by Pete Seeger That are More Relevant Than Ever, Sadly).
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is museum no. 13 in my #100museums challenge (see 100 Museums Challenge).