‘The Peter Yarrow Sing-Along Special’ Airs on PBS Stations

The Peter Yarrow Sing-Along Special, featuring some of America’s favorite folk songs performed by Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul & Mary, Yarrow’s daughter Bethany and cellist Rufus Cappadocia, Grammy Award-winning artists Mary Chapin Carpenter and Keb’ Mo’, and percussionist Billy Jonas, airs on PBS stations through December 2010. Yarrow spoke with AcousticMusicScene.com recently.

Taped in August during a family-oriented performance at the Concert Hall of the New York Society of Ethical Culture, that marked Peter and Paul’s first major show since Mary Travers died last year, the Sing-Along Special opens with Yarrow singing “Weave Me the Sunshine” and closes with the audience joining all the performers on stage in singing a “This Little Light of Mine” medley. In between, there is an array of duo, trio and ensemble performances.

Bethany Yarrow joins her father for a beautiful rendition of “The Cruel War,” which he says is the first song that Peter, Paul & Mary ever sang. Keb’ Mo’ sings lead on “Lullaby Baby Blues” and joins Yarrow on “Beautiful City,” while his steel guitar resonates on “Polly Wolly Doodle.” Mary Chapin Carpenter joins Yarrow and Stookey on the classics “500 Miles” and “Stewball.” Billy Jonas, a creative percussionist (or “industrial re-percussionist”), bangs on cymbals and plastic garbage cans during “This Old Man” and sings “Some Houses” as well. Yarrow joins Bethany & Rufus, whose musical stylings fuse folk, roots and jazz, on “All Hid.” He and Stookey sing “All the Pretty Little Horses” and the Peter, Paul & Mary classic “Puff, The Magic Dragon,” that resonates today as much as it did when he wrote it some 50 years ago. The entire ensemble is joined by the audience in singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” A video of their rendition of the song can be viewed by clicking here.

Many of Yarrow’s songs and those by other songwriters that Peter, Paul & Mary covered over the past five decades have a timeless quality to them and a multigenerational appeal.

“This is a time for the resuscitation and rejuvenation of the interest in music shared – where people are feeling close and comfortable, not alienated,” said Yarrow in an interview prior to a recent performance and book signing on Long Island. “This is a music that, when sung together, brings people together. This is a music that can help heal the hearts of Americans. When people sing together, they feel part of a community and they feel very welcome,” he continued, noting that “spirit of community is what it’s about.”

“The kind of crisis that we’ve seen among people today, with kids teasing and bullying each other and being so injured and tragically hurt by this type of treatment is far less likely to occur if you’re sitting around singing together,” maintains Yarrow. Ten years ago, he established Operation Respect, a nonprofit organization and program that seeks to teach children about tolerance and respect for each other’s differences, using music, video, and conflict resolution curricula developed by Educators for Social Responsibility. During The Peter Yarrow Sing-Along Special, Noel Paul Stookey joins Yarrow in singing “Don’t Laugh at Me,” a powerfully moving song by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin, which is the anthem of and inspiration behind Operation Respect.

Don’t laugh at me. Don’t call me names. Don’t get your pleasure from my pain. In God’s eyes, we’re all the same. Someday, we’ll all have perfect wings.

Yarrow asserts that “all kids deserve to grow up accepting each other,” expressing concern that 160,000 American children refuse to go to school because of cruelty, according to the American Association of School Psychologists. Citing our “need to inherit a peaceful world,” he notes that peace education was regarded as “seditious” when the Operation Respect program came out ten years ago. It has since been incorporated into the curriculum of more than 22,000 elementary and middle schools throughout the U.S. and is being brought to hundreds of schools in the Middle East and elsewhere.

“Music can be used as a powerful force in a world where we desperately need it,” maintains Yarrow. “The genius of our country is that, despite mistakes, we have a great reservoir of decency and goodness that rescues us from being imbecilic…Once you’ve been part of changing the perspective of the country, you know it can be done,” says the longtime social and political activist, who was an active participant in the civil rights and anti-war movements, among others. “Music is something that binds the hearts and can bring us together. We have a nation with a bruised heart that it’s my task to resuscitate.”

Lamenting a “music business that has become so saturated with money and jiggle rock, [that doesn’t] have time for this kind of music anymore,” Yarrow says “but this [folk music] is what we need.” Thanks to PBS, television viewers can enjoy the music of Peter Yarrow and friends through December. Check your local TV listings or PBS station’s website for dates and times in your area.

The Peter Yarrow Sing-Along Special was directed by three-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jim Brown, who also produced and directed Peter, Paul & Mary: Carry It On; Wasn’t That a Time, the critically acclaimed 1981 documentary about The Weavers; American Roots Music, the four-part PBS series that aired in 2001; Pete Seeger: Power of Song, and other programs as part of PBS’ American Masters series of specials delving into the lives, works and creative processes of some of our cultural icons.