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Pete Seeger Centennial Birthday Concert

Join WAMC to celebrate Pete Seeger's 100th Birthday with a tribute concert with Happy Traum on May 3, 2019 at 7 p.m. Get one ticket for each $100 pledge. The event proceeds will support WAMC's June Locked Box.

"It’s hard to overstate the impact Pete Seeger has had on my life and musical career, starting from the first time I heard Pete in concert as a teenager in 1954. Through the years, I went from avid fan to friend, colleague and, at Pete’s request, publisher (through our company, Homespun Music Instruction) of Pete’s classic book, “How to Play the Five String Banjo.” He and I played together in concert on numerous occasions though the years, and many songs in my setlist were derived from Pete’s huge repertoire.

"To commemorate his 100th birthday, I will sing and play an evening’s worth of songs I learned from Pete, including traditional folk ballads, songs of love and protest, and some of Pete’s iconic compositions. As Pete would have wanted, many of the songs will include rousing sing-alongs with the audience. I will be playing 5-string banjo and six- and twelve-string guitars. The evening will be informal, folksy and rich in memories.” - Happy Traum

Pete and Happy at the Woodstock Playhouse ca. 1975

Happy Traum was smitten by American folk music as a teenager and began playing guitar and 5-string banjo. He was an active participant of the legendary Washington Square/Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1950s and ‘60s, and studied guitar with the famed blues master, Brownie McGhee. Over the past five decades he has performed extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan, both as a soloist and as a member of various groups. His avid interest in traditional and contemporary music has brought him recognition as a performer, writer, editor, session musician, folklorist, teacher and recording artist. 

Happy's first appearance in a recording studio was at a historic session in 1963 when a group of young folk musicians, including Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Peter LaFarge and The Freedom Singers gathered in Folkways Records' studio for an album called Broadsides. Happy with his group, the New World Singers, cut the first recorded version of "Blowin' In The Wind", and Happy sang a duet with Dylan on his anti-war song "Let Me Die in My Footsteps."(These tracks were re-released in August, 2000 by Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings as part of a boxed set, "The Best of Broadsides 1962 - 1988: Anthems from the American Underground."     

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