Over the years, I have learned how to sing, educate and protest against injustices, by following the careers and large footprints of three of my mentors, all of whom have passed away in the last two years: Pete Seeger, Guy Carawan and Theodore Bikel.

I first met Pete Seeger in 1949 at a Labour Day picnic in Toronto. I was 15 years old and had grown up listening to recordings of Seeger with Woody Guthrie and with The Almanac Singers. I was taken by him and his banjo, and, although I had no formal musical training, I knew that someday I would be emulating Seeger’s way of entertaining and educating audiences. I saw The Weavers in Toronto in 1951 at the Casino Theatre as they toured North America singing Tzena, Tzena, and Goodnight Irene. 

Several years later, Seeger was singing at Camp Naivelt, a left-wing Jewish summer camp one hour outside of Toronto. He heard of our choir of 14 people, and suggested that we whittle it down to five. Seeger returned several months later and gave me a copy of his hand-cranked mimeograph called How to play the five-string banjo, and thus The Travellers were born. 

Seeger taught us Woody Guthrie’s song This Land Is Your Land, which McCarthyism had banned from airplay in the United States, as were both Seeger and Guthrie, and many others. Seeger suggested that we adapt the song to Canada, and keep it alive until McCarthyism had run its course. With his records and his book as my template, I taught myself how to play the banjo, and over the next 10 years, The Travellers appeared with Seeger, in concerts at Massey Hall, and on many Canadian TV shows. Seeger, his songs, stories and ideals were on display and served as an early and continuing inspiration for me, and for The Travellers, and guided our song selection and philosophy for the next 60 years. 

Guy Carawan was a guitar and banjo-playing protégé of Seeger who also followed him to Camp Naivelt on several occasions. He heard our new version of This Land and highly approved of it. Seeger got Carawan to become the head of music at a pro-labour music camp in Tennessee that became the fountain-head for all the songs of the civil rights movement, as Seeger and Carawan had rewritten a song that began in churches and was sung on picket lines in the south, later transformed by them into We Shall Overcome! 

Both Seeger and Carawan were awarded the Joe Hill Lifetime Achievement Award by AFL/CIO’s Labor Heritage Group in the 1990s. Five years ago, they both nominated me, and I became the only Canadian winner of the Joe Hill Award in 2009. At the investiture concert, director Darryl Moch of the AFL, told me, “Jerry, you are amazing! Thank you for your life and artistry of giving to labour and justice. You are a living legend.” My mentors had taught me well.

Just last month we have seen the death of Theodore Bikel, in whose shadow I had grown up, and with whom I had performed many times. Theo, as many called him, was the supreme character actor on the stage and on large and small screens. He took his activism to the streets of Mississippi and Alabama with Martin Luther King in the ’60s. 

I first met Theo in Toronto following his concert in 1957 at the Eaton Auditorium. We spoke briefly, and I collected many of his recordings of Yiddish music. In the summer of 1963, he came to Toronto’s CNE and took part in the Bandshell Hootenannies (free sing-alongs) sponsored by the Toronto Star. I was the MC of those events and took great pleasure in having both Theo and Carly Simon appear as warm-up acts for The Travellers. He headed a committee in the 1980s seeking the release of Russian Jewish Refuseniks and wrote a song called Zol Zay Gayn In Drerd Aryn, dedicated to the Soviet leadership. I do that song often. His stance helped tear down the Soviet Union several years later.

One course I taught in Canadian and American universities was called, “From Shtetl, Tsu Statehood, Tsu America, a History of Yiddish Folk Song.” Bikel would appear in South Florida doing plays and concerts. He had heard about my Yiddish course and he came to the last class of the series and closed the course singing Zog Nit Keynmol, with me. At the time, he was touring with Tamara Brooks, his accompanist, arranger, muse and best friend. Over coffee afterward he told me he was still married to his second wife but had not seen her in at least 25 years. That summer in Toronto, I got an email that said, “Shoyn tsayt, (it’s about time).” He was finally divorcing his wife, giving her the house on the east coast, would live in Los Angeles, and best of all, would marry Tamara.

That year he led a class on Yiddish music at KlezKanada in the Laurentians. The next year in Florida, he invited me to help in his master class at KlezKanada, which I did about four years ago. Working with the “master of Yiddish music” was the highest honour for me. A year later, I came to Montreal to see him in the musical version of Lies My Father Told Me and he returned to Toronto the following year to play Me and Sholem Aleichem. Shortly after, Tamara took ill and died, and part of his Shoyn Tsayt was to create an autobiography of himself and his relationship with his alter ego Sholom Aleichem. It played at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival last spring, with Theo doing the Q&A from L.A. I am so glad that he had the tsayt to do this film of himself and his life, leaving a huge legacy for me and others.

So there you have the story of my musical mentors, all of whom found the tsayt to fulfil their lives and to teach me all the stories and the history by example. For myself, I see it as an opportunity for me to create the time to pass on the stories of these mentors. 

The last musical bio of Pete Seeger in 2006, was called The Power of Song. My musical lectures this season in Florida will be about the power of song, as I will lecture and sing the songs of the Civil Rights movement. The other classes will be on the Yiddish songs of Bikel, as it is shoyn tsayt to clear up past wrongs by re-singing the songs and retelling the history, using the teachings of my mentors to pass the baton to others in This Land Of Ours. 

Mentors gone but “nit fargesn” (not forgotten). 

Jerry Gray is a founding member of The Travellers.