In her prefatory remarks to American Folk Songs for Children, composer Ruth Crawford Seeger wrote, folk song “has crossed and recrossed many sorts of boundaries, and is still crossing and recrossing them. It can give [us] a glimpse of ways of life and thought different from [our] own.” Her assertion can be used as a framework within which to examine the music of her eldest daughter, Peggy Seeger, one of the eminent voices of the folk song revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Peggy's career has been shaped and defined by the constant crossing of boundaries. From her classical music training in a household filled with recordings of folk music to the two countries she has called home, and from her dedication to the folk idiom to her divergence from notions of authenticity in the service of her musical commentary on the world, Peggy crosses and recrosses numerous boundaries. The contradictions, cross-fertilizations, and tensions that arise through these border crossings have molded a career rich in musical styles and political acumen. This chapter will explore the trajectory of Peggy's career from traditional folksinger to contemporary songwriter, focusing in particular on the familial influences and musical traditions that laid the foundation for her distinctive use of folk music in her contemporary songs.

Peggy's Early Musical Training and Career

Peggy was born in 1935, just at the time that her parents, Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, were beginning to study folk song, intrigued by its possible usefulness as a resource for modernist composers who sought to develop a meaningful American musical style. At this time, Charles and Ruth were facing another difficult year of poverty when Charles took a full-time job with the Resettlement Administration in Washington, D.C., working with professional musicians who had lost their livelihood and were living in government housing in the South. The Seegers soon realized that traditional music was a vital American resource available not only to modernist composers but also to schoolchildren and their teachers. Ultimately, Ruth's work with this music resulted in a significant number folk song transcriptions, arrangements, and collections.