Pete Seeger recalls that several years ago he was asked by a CRIMSON reporter whether he ever put propaganda into his performances. Seeger explained to the reporter then--as he loves to remind his audiences--that folksinging is propaganda. "You know," he said, "even love songs can be propaganda. Take a song like Careless Love, which is about unrequited love. That's propaganda for unrequition." The next day Seeger found himself in a CRIMSON headline, "Seeger Says He sings Propaganda Songs."

"It's hard to sing American folk songs without touching on politics," he says. "In the broadest sense, all folk songs are political."

This outspoken yet self-effacing attitude toward politics is precisely what his enemies of many degrees of sophistication find objectionable; it also illustrates the absurdity of permitting Seeger to appear "only as a musical performer." Seeger has never appeared only as a musical performer. His music has little meaning when drily abstracted from its "political" context.

Seeger's critics among intellectuals and the academic community maintain that his political views are naive and ultra-idealistic. Conceiving of themselves as realists, they assert that folkey good naturedness is no match for tough-minded political analysis.

Less sophisticated conservatives seize upon Seeger's style with just the opposite objection. They claim he garbs his wolfish political views in the sheep's clothing of naivete. They argue that Seeger--a former student at Exeter and Harvard--only poses as "one of the folk" to market his left wing views through folk songs, and that the appeal of seemingly innocent songs promotes the acceptance of dangerous anti-Americanism.

Perhaps as damaging to Seeger as the frontal attack by the HUAC has been the insidious effect of an uncritical press--a notable current example was the Boston Daily Record--which prints allegations as fact, or alternatively attempts to stay away from controversy by labelling him as "the controversial folk singer." As the University so ably demonstrated three weeks ago, "controversial" has become an evil word in America. It has become a facile way of saying, "Some powerful people say he's a Communist and I haven't got the guts to say otherwise."

It is true that Seeger gives cause to be thought of as playing the innocent on stage. As he remarked after he had been greeted at Sanders Theatre by a tumultuous standing ovation, "I don't deserve all that applause. After all, I'm just an ordinary sinful human being like anyone else." But it takes less faith in human nature than Seeger's to perceive that his personal warmth and sincrcity on stage is no pose.

It is perhaps this basic faith in people that represents the point of departure between Seeger and his critics. "Some people have asked me if I trust the Russians," he says. "I trust Americans too. Some people don't."

Pete Seeger is an admitted idealist. He also says that he is an "incorrigible optimist." These qualities won't win grades in Government courses, nor will they win victories in international relations, but Seeger provides a cogent reminder that politics are meaningless without purpose. Idealism is not the opposite of realism. It is an essential part of realism.

Seeger's political ideas--they are too simple and undeveloped to be called doctrine--derive from these ideals. He will quote a poignant phrase from Ghandi and then sing We Shall Overcome, which has become closely connected with the integration sit-in movement. Or he will read a poem of Frost about human dignity and play Banks of Marble, which wonders about social injustice: "I have seen the weary miner scrubbing coal-dust from his back, I have heard his children crying 'got no coal to heat our shacks.'" This is the heart of Seeger's politics, not views on the Republican Party or the Democratic Party--or the Communist Party either, for that matter.

Seeger makes no effort to hide his opinions. "Just come and listen to me sing any evening," he says. As frank as he is on stage, however, Seeger would not divulge his views to the HUAC. "I merely said that I have never supported any conspiratorial cause whatever, period. If they didn't believe me they should have indicted me for perjury."

"I feel this committee is hurting America more than any of us realize," Seeger said after the concert. "In countries across the ocean people are losing their faith in democracy. They are asking, 'are they really the land of the free?' What would we think if there were an un-English committee, or an un-Indian committee?"

Seeger could have taken the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer questions about his associations and beliefs, but he decided instead to challenge the right of the HUAC to ask those questions by standing on the First Amendment. It is hard to interpret the spontaneous and prolonged ovation at the beginning of the evening as anything but an affirmation that "We applaud your courage."

Seeger is even more concerned about the attempted censorship of his music. "I'll stand or fall by these songs," he said before he played the three songs excoriated by the HUAC. "And I've got a right to sing them for every kind of group." The three songs--Midnight Special, Hammer Song, and Wasn't That a Time--were about as American as the HUAC could ask for: a prison song collected by Leadbelly, a song about "the hammer of justice, bell of freedom, a song about love...," and a song about patriotism in times when America was threatened by tyranny.

Folk songs are too big to be tied down to one meaning. A striking example was Seeger's opening selection, a simple little banjo piece called Little Birdie, which he collected from Coon Creek, Kentucky:

Little birdle, little birdle, why do you fly so high? It's because I am a true little bird and I'm not afraid to die.

Little birdle, little birdle, why is your head so red? After all that I've been through it a wonder I ain't dead.