Talk:The Weavers

Discussion

The weavers got their real start performing for the Progressive Party 1948 campaign for Henry Wallace and Glenn Taylor. The "Same Old Merry-go-Round" "I've Got a Ballot", "Skip,,Skip,Skip to Tje Polls" and others.

Tzena, Tzena

It appears that "traditional Jewish folk song" is not correct. See (removed per WP:COPYRIGHT) though some claims were made that it was, it appears to be an actual composition in WWII. -- BRG 21:46, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

"Tzena, Tzena" was written and composed in Palestine in 1941 and was neither a traditional folk song nor Byelorussian. This is well documented in the Wikipedia article. Myron (talk) 06:27, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Confusing comment!

One line says, "They avoided the controversial songs in their repertoire," but doesn't say in what way or context they avoided them, so it makes no sense. If they avoid songs completely, on what basis do we say they were "in their repertoire" -- the fact that the members were aware the song existed?? If, as I suspect, the author means that they avoided these songs in some particular context (performances, tours, recordings), this idea should be stated clearly.

(A random moment indeed: As I was typing this, my online personal radio station picked a Weavers song out of the hundreds of artists and thousands of songs I've rated. Life is strange, albeit generally fun.) Lawikitejana 06:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

What I believe was meant from what I knew at the time of the Reunion At Carnegie Hall record (the one before the documentary) and have learned since is that each of the members of the group knew controversial songs and had performed them but the group did not perform them.

Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes were members of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell and Woody Guthrie. They were "the group that rehearsed onstage" and would entertain anywhere there was a fund-raiser for any sort of social organizing. Seeger recorded many of the labor songs and protest songs on his own albums. He and Lee Hayes wrote "If I Had A Hammer" and "Wasn't That A Time?". Those two songs are the most "controversial" songs in the group's Vanguard recordings and they are very tame. Compare the songs on the 1963 Reunion concert record with the songs on Seeger's "We Shall Overcome" concert record. Seeger's concert was only four weeks after the reunion.

In re: your random moment

What was the song?

JimCubb 05:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Why "The Weavers?"

None of the members of the group have the last name "Weaver". Shouldn't an encyclopedic article about them tell why they were called "The Weavers", when none of them carried this surname? --Schmendrick 16:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The name was inspired from from an 1892 drama of the same name, by pacifist and Nobel Prize winner for literature, Gerhart Hauptmann. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weavers. 65.255.225.44 (talk) 07:10, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

"Personal life"

Not possible to locate such material as to other members besides Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger? Historically fascinating people, all of them, as to serious discrimination after the early 1950s because of the then-panic over supposed hazard posed by leftists. Steadily dying off, alas, after the first and early death back in 1981. Deeply regrettable beside the astonishing longevity of their colleague Oscar Brand -- at one point in the 1960s their rare champion on his television program back home in Canada. Masalai (talk) 12:31, 15 January 2012 (UTC)