As our regular readers will know, the American Folklife Center collaborates each year with Folk Alliance International to run a program we call the Archive Challenge, in which we help artists and groups learn a song from the AFC archive, arrange it, and perform it in a special showcase at the Folk Alliance conference. One of the things we love about the Archive Challenge is that sometimes the artists keep the song in their repertoire, record it for release, and send it out into the world in style. That happened a few years ago with our friend Crys Matthews, a talented performer and songwriter who has taken the challenge more than once. One of her Archive Challenge songs was “How I Long for Peace,” then a very obscure composition by Peggy Seeger, which Matthews went on to record with another longtime friend of the Library of Congress, Rhiannon Giddens.
It all began back in 2019, when Matthews was looking for a song to play at the 2020 Library of Congress/Folk Alliance International Archive Challenge in New Orleans. To find the song, Crys watched the concert associated with the Seeger family symposium, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” In connection with that event, we held two concerts on consecutive nights, co-sponsored by the Folklore Society of Greater Washington. They marked the last time that Pete, Mike, and Peggy Seeger played together before Mike died in 2009. The first night’s concert was held here at the Library of Congress on March 16, 2007. We shot it on video and placed it online, which allowed Crys to watch it more than a decade later.
The song that stuck out to Crys was “How I Long for Peace” by Peggy Seeger. It’s a song Peggy had written only a short time before the 2007 concert. She continued to sing it in her concerts in that era, but as of 2020 she had never recorded or released it. For that reason, our concert was one of the only places Crys could have heard it at that time. We consider it a great stroke of luck that Crys heard the song and noticed its remarkable lyrics:
O how I long for peace
Among the peoples and the nations
How I long to halt the plunder
Of the wonders of creation
O how I long for peace
As Crys later explained: “The words were so poignant and relevant even though the video I was watching was from 2007, which was over a decade before I had stumbled across it. I fell in love with it and adapted it to feel like how I would sing it in my family’s church, because that is where I first learned about social justice music and freedom songs.”
Of course, we think Crys did a fantastic job putting the song across. You can see her video in the player below!
Peggy Seeger agrees with Crys about the church-like quality of “How I Long for Peace.” She told Claire Levine of The Bluegrass Situation: “It’s kind of like a hymn, and it has a very singable chorus, and it ties up nations and politics with climate change and the plunder of the planet. When I sing it, I feel such a longing in my heart. I feel the violence of the world.”
Crys, too, continued to be haunted by the lyrics and melody. Eventually she thought to reach out to her friend, Rhiannon Giddens: “I carried that song with me for many years,” she said. “Then, one day, after seeing a post on Rhiannon Giddens’s Instagram about a student-led, antiwar demonstration she had witnessed while giving a commencement address, I sent it to her.”
Rhiannon Giddens, of course, is a gifted singer, instrumentalist, and composer who has received a Grammy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, among other accolades.
No stranger to the American Folklife Center, Rhiannon appeared at the Library with her band The Carolina Chocolate Drops back in 2012 (at which time I was privileged to interview her briefly on the Coolidge stage). Rhiannon was thrilled to be part of Crys’s project. “When Crys asked me to collaborate on this with her I got really excited,” she said. “I have been a longtime Peggy Seeger fan and think she has written an incredible song that says some hard but crucial things and most importantly allows space for us all to wish for a better world.”
Crys and Rhiannon’s version of the song also features the Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of women and non-binary singers who in their own words “join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance, and to uplift and center women’s voices.” Together, they produced a beautiful version of the song, which you can hear in the video at this link.
At the time of the 2007 concert, “How I long for Peace” was brand new. Peggy introduced it as “a new peace song,” and called on her family members, the Short Sisters and Sonia Cohen Cramer, to sing it with her. She even called Pete Seeger onto the stage, calling him “Pop” as she always did, but when he confessed he hadn’t learned the song, she sent him to sit in the front row! Watching it now is a poignant experience for those of us who knew Pete and Mike, and especially for those of us who knew Sonia, since all three have passed away since then. It’s also unfortunate that Peggy changed microphones just before this song, and we couldn’t adjust right away, leading to clipped vocals. Nevertheless, the quality of the song shines through. You can watch it at one hour into the video at this link.
By coincidence, at about the time Crys discovered the song in our video and arranged it, Peggy Seeger herself rediscovered the song while planning a new album with her son Calum MacColl; Calum lives in the UK and had never heard it. Soon she had recorded an official version of the song, which she had never done before. As she told Claire Levine:
“When we decided to make a new CD, [“First Farewell”], my son Calum had me sing to him any song that I hadn’t recorded. Because I lived in the United States for 16 years and wasn’t touring England, I wrote quite a number of songs that my kids never heard. ‘How I Long for Peace’ was one of those. And when Calum heard it, he loved it. So, it went on the album, and so many people are commenting on it.”
Find Peggy Seeger’s video version here.
Peggy Seeger says she’s thrilled with what Crys and Rhiannon did with her song as well: “Rhiannon, Crys, and Company have done an amazing interpretation of my song. It really works and will take this simple song to new levels.”
Through it all, Crys Matthews remains committed to the ideals of the song:
“I truly hope this song will be a balm for the folks who, like us and like Peggy, are longing for and actively striving for peace. May we all continue to envision a world where lasting peace is finally realized.”
We couldn’t agree more. We’re proud our Seeger Family concert put the song on Crys’s radar screen, and proud the Archive Challenge gave her an initial platform to showcase it. Most of all, we’re proud of Peggy for writing the song, of Crys for arranging it and promoting it, and of Rhiannon and the Resistance Revival chorus for joining her on such a memorable recording. We’re very fortunate to have worked with these remarkable women at the American Folklife Center, where helping to put great songs in the hands of talented artists is a big part of why we do what we do.
Comments (2)
So glad that this song is getting attention! Thank you for sending me this history of its provenance. Peggy
Beautiful. Wonderful.