Peter Yarrow: 50 Years of Social Justice… and Counting! – Part Two
In part one, Peter Yarrow spoke with REBEAT about his beginnings in folk music and with Peter, Paul and Mary, as well as the new retrospective book, Peter, Paul and Mary: 50 Years in Music and Life. In part two, he discusses the general character of folk music, then and now, and told me about the work that fuels his passion today, Operation Respect, a movement that uses music to teach children to respect themselves and those around them.
REBEAT: When you began your career, was folk music part of American popular culture?
PETER YARROW: Prior to the folk renaissance of the ’60s, pop music, the charted music, was very superficial. Albert Grossman, our first manager, deliberately kept us away from American television, because he always felt that folk music was considered a kind of a stepchild and [Americans] didn’t know what to think about it. It was so different from the pop music that had really been their diets on commercial television.
But I can say with great pride that Peter, Paul and Mary played a major role in terms of bridging the form that was very raw for most people to hear — traditional blues or country music, or traditional music from England [to American audiences]. We just sang the music that we loved, and that’s part of the folk process. We continued to record traditional songs, but the balance shifted so we did more songs that were being written within the spirit of the folk legacy — Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, as well as ourselves.
You’re continuing the tradition of using folk music to further social change with your organization, Operation Respect. Can you tell me about the program?
The premise of Operation Respect is really not unrelated to Peter, Paul and Mary. If you look at the movements of which we were a part, they were all about the presence or absence of respect. The Civil Rights movement was about respect for people of color, the women’s movement about respect for women, the environmental movement about respect for the environment and the next generation, and anti-Apartheid, you name it. But in first-person, grass roots terms, it’s very clear to me that some of the dilemmas that really confound the adult world are not going to be easily solved by adults.
We need to grow a next generation and educate them in such a way that they’re not bedazzled by wealth and not reaching for fame. That they are accepting each other for who they are. And the way to do that is through education. If they are educated in a school environment that’s caring, loving, respectful, and safe, they’re going to be more productive. Bullying — which is ubiquitous these days — and ridicule, humiliation, and ostracism are far less likely to exist.
A lot of people think of Operation Respect as an anti-bullying program called “Don’t Laugh at Me.” Although that’s true, the bullying is symptomatic of the breakdown of a society, both among parents and among children, that has inherited what I call “the black hole of empathy.” And that’s really characteristic of our times. And the way to restore that is to use social and emotional learning, experiential tools…and there’s also the music that opens the hearts. That heart is the emotional capacity of songs, like Operation Respect’s basic songs aside from the “Don’t Laugh at Me” song itself — “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Where have all the Flowers Gone?,” “We Shall Overcome,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Down by the Riverside.”
We’ve trained over 50,000 educators, and at this point, the “Don’t Laugh at Me” program is required curriculum for all new, incoming teachers in Israel. We’re in 22,000 schools that use it in some fashion. And we’ve been a part of really awakening this country, and other countries: Ukraine, Croatia, Jordan, Palestine, Hong Kong, and Bermuda, and now we’re going to Japan.
Operation Respect is only one of your recent activist efforts. Tell me about your work after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
It was pretty rugged, I have to say, doing that work. It became a television special called “Concert for Newtown.” The songs were interspersed with an interview that Bill Moyers did with me and Francine Wheeler — she and her husband David lost their son Ben, age six. It was an inconsolable thing.
Activism through music has become a Yarrow family tradition. Your daughter Bethany is a performer in her own right. Do the two of you work together?
Yes, we do. My daughter has also become an extraordinary organizer, so she was one of the main people in the grassroots effort to stop the fracking in New York State. I also sing with my son, Christopher. He’s an excellent musician but on a very odd instrument called the washtub bass. He’s in a number of bands.
Do you think there will be a time when folk music becomes part of a national movement again?
I think so. The other kind of music is being written, it’s out there, but it’s not going to happen through commercial channels. There are a hundred channels and ways to get music, whereas there was a centralized way for people to share music in those days. It would be impossible for a Bob Dylan to emerge today. I think we will ultimately find a coalescence on the ‘net, but it’s going to take time. Music is irreplaceable in terms of the way it can function to bind people’s hearts together, to work towards making a better world.
After all the 50-year commemorative projects this year, is anything more planned for Peter, Paul and Mary?
Nothing specific, no. I think it’s time to take a vacation. The work continues on many levels, but for me, Operation Respect is the 24/7 work to which I’m dedicated.
See more of REBEAT’s talk with Peter Yarrow in part one of this interview!
