Culture
WOUB-HD Honors Folk Legends Monday, August 7
By: Emily Votaw
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In the late ’40s Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, Lee Hays, and Pete Seeger formed the Weavers in Greenwich Village — their name taken from the 1892 theatrical work Die Weber (translated to ‘The Weavers,’) by playwright Gerhart Hauptmann. The work depicts the uprising of Silesian weavers in 1844; something that went along nicely with the group’s politically progressive stances on labor, capitalism, and various social causes. Credited with being a part of the folk boom of the ’50s, the group eventually found themselves blacklisted by the United States government, with members Pete Seeger and Lee Hays identified by FBI informant Harvey Matusow as “communists.”
Although Matusow would go on to recant his identification of the musicians as communists, the group was banned from playing publicly in the United States. In 1955, legendary music manager Harold Leventhal (Irving Berlin, Benny Goodman,) managed to set up a performance by The Weavers in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, which subsequently sold out. Following the performance, which some link with the overall popularization of folk music that led to a number of popular musical trends, Pete Seeger and Arlo Gutherie performed at Carnegie Hall every Thanksgiving.
In 2003, Pete Seeger and Arlo Gutherie joined Peter, Paul, and Mary, and the remaining members of The Weavers for an iconic performance at Carnegie Hall. The performance will be broadcast for the first time on PBS this year, with WOUB-HD airing the concert, entitled Folk Legends: Isn’t This a Time on Monday, August 7 at 9 p.m.