Socialist Singer Barbara Dane Was a True American Radical

In 1966, the famed communist folk musician Pete Seeger was invited by the Cuban revolutionary government to perform a series of concert dates in Cuba. Seeger was then in the early stages of organizing an environmentalist project in Beacon, New York, a small town in the Lower Hudson Valley. Seventeen years prior, however, in August 1949, Seeger had witnessed what would become known as the Peekskill Riots, in which a concert given by musicians affiliated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) outside of Peekskill, New York, only twenty miles away from Beacon, was brutally attacked by a right-wing mob made up of local citizens.

It was likely with the riot in mind that Seeger declined the invitation, fearing that such an explicit expression of his sympathy for revolutionary politics would alienate the middle-class neighbors he was trying to organize for his Hudson River environmentalist project, or worse. In his place, he recommended an old friend, someone he knew had no such taste for ever hiding her revolutionary political commitments: the singer Barbara Dane.

Dane passed away last weekend, on Sunday, October 20, 2024, at the age of ninety-seven. She was one of the most important US communist activist-musicians of the late twentieth century, yet she is little known on the contemporary US left. Her epic autobiography, This Bell Still Rings, published by Heyday Books in 2022, received almost no attention in either the mainstream or the left-wing press. This is truly a shame, as Dane’s life is an incredible testament to political commitment and a model for socialist musicians today.

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