TIP/Pete Seeger

Henry Sapoznik, executive director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture, was deeply influenced by the late Pete Seeger to take up his lifelong association with the banjo. He also worked alongside him at the annual Clearwater Festival Seeger and his late wife Toshi founded in the mid-Hudson Valley in the 1980s.

Sapoznik is an award-winning author, radio and record provider and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. He can be reached at sapoznik@wisc.edu or by phone at 917-733-6267.

He also shared some thoughts on his Facebook page this morning about Seeger and his legacy:

“It was because of him I fell in love with the banjo at his annual Carnegie Hall concerts thanks to my late friend Stuie Tursky.

“It was through Pete’s ‘How To Play the Five String Banjo’ I first learned to play and through the Brooklyn Public Library that I learned they would not allow anyone to continue to borrow a book every two weeks for over six months when I kept taking it out.

“It was through Pete I fell in love with traditional American music, the best and fastest route for a child of Holocaust survivors to feel connected to the deepest strata of the new world his parents had only recently adopted.

“With the death of his half brother Mike only a few short years ago, America has lost the dynamic cornerstones of one of its greatest musical families.”