Musical Magazine, among other publications. Her first book, Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London, analyzes popular culture and political ideology in London during World War II. She teaches at Montgomery College and George Washington University and lives in the Washington, DC area with her family.Freedman applied the “Page 99 Test” to her recent biography, Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics, and reported the following:
Page 99 of my biography, Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics, finds Peggy in Moscow as part of the American delegation to the 1957 World Youth Festival. At the age of 22, she was in the early, stormy portion of her relationship with Ewan MacColl, then married to Jean Newlove, who had accompanied him to Moscow. Peggy was a musical success at the festival, where she and Guy Carawan led the American delegation in a concert of American folk music at the Bolshoi Theater. But her youthful naïveté ran afoul of Ewan’s Marxist politics when she and Guy gave a concert of gospel music to a group of left-wing writers who believed that religion is the opiate of the masses. Ewan was so angry that he threatened to break off the relationship – a threat he could not keep – and he and Jean returned to their home in London. Peggy and the other members of the American delegation were then invited to visit China. This was a momentous decision. On page 99, I write:Visit Jean R. Freedman’s website.Traveling behind the Iron Curtain during the height of the Cold War was an unpopular choice for Americans; Life magazine reported that the festival participants “went despite State Department warning that the festival was a propaganda gimmick.” The State Department could not forbid them to go to the Soviet Union, but China was a different matter: the United States had no diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, and an American passport forbade travel there. According to Time magazine, a letter from Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter was delivered to the American delegates, advising them, “By traveling to Communist China at this time you will, in the considered view of your government, be acting as a willing tool of Communist propaganda intended, wherever possible, to subvert the foreign policy and the best interests of the U.S.”The letter went on to warn of possible consequences that the Americans would face when they returned home from China: loss of passport, fines, even prison. Most of the Americans heeded the State Department’s warning and declined the invitation.
Peggy, on the other hand, chose to go to China. This decision was a turning point in her life, though she did not yet know it and the reader does not yet realize it on page 99. Afterward, she did not return home, fearing the loss of her passport, a consequence that would keep her in the United States and effectively end her relationship with Ewan MacColl. So she continued traveling and giving concerts of American music – in Russia, in Poland, in France, until finally, in 1959, she settled in London with Ewan, her musical and personal partner until his death in 1989. American folk music remained the backbone of her career, while her politics underwent a rigorous and willing transformation under Ewan’s tutelage; a gentle American progressive became a staunch British leftist. The decisions she made on page 99 altered, irrevocably, the course of her life. But she never returned to China.
My Book, The Movie: Peggy Seeger.
--Marshal Zeringue
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