I’m quite sure Hari Seldon is referring to the Jewish people of New York, even if the numbers aren’t accurate and even if many American Jews did come from countries Seeger apparently mentioned.
The roots of the enmity are complicated and go a long way back, but things reached a high level in about 1984, when Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam called Judaism a “gutter religion” (he said he didn’t actually say this, or at least that it didn’t mean what it sounded like it meant, but he was not, um, widely believed.) This sparked a lot of hostility between various Jews and blacks in NYC and elsewhere–someone called Farrakhan a “black Hitler,” Jesse Jackson got slammed for not repudiating Farrakhan, there were wars of words between people like Al Sharpton and Ruth Messinger, and things were dicey between many (not all) members of the two groups for a while. My sense is that the mistrust has cooled a lot, but in 1993 things were still flaring up.
Anyway, I’d be shocked if **Hari **meant some other group.
Yes, I have heard of Seeger, actually heard him in small concerts twice. In a Q and A session after one of them I asked him what the weirdest audience he ever played for was. (He was about 90 at the time.) He said right away, “A group of button-down suits on Wall Street!”
I was music director for a play that one of Seeger’s grandsons was in when said grandson was about 13, but I didn’t meet Seeger then.
For those mystified that Pete Seeger is called Stalinist, the ridiculous claim might be based on songs like this one or this one. Supporting labor unions may be Stalinist in the diction of post-rational America.
These songs were from the Almanac Singers before W.W. II – no wonder some yung’uns have never heard of Pete Seeger. Too bad; we could use a great American like him again.
I know who he is, but I’ve really only heard a handful of his songs. I had an Arlo Guthrie* phase in college and would run across him from time to time.
*I got really lucky and Arlo did a concert at my college. Not only was I (at 19) the youngest one there, I felt like I was the youngest by an order of magnitude.
Yes, of course I know who he was. A freaking American Icon. The man who single handedly started the idea to clean up the Hudson River. The man who would go to school playgrounds unannounced and play folk music for the kiddies (one such one being Don McLean). And the man who wrote a bunch of American folk songs. A man who sang and worked for good causes and influenced several generations of singers until he was 95.
ETA: And I was amazed when he died, a lot of people asked “Who was Pete Seeger?”