The world is a poorer place without Pete Seeger but we shall carry on. What could the government do? Arrest a hundred thousand singers? It had been beaten by a few banjo chords and the fame of a man whose songs were on the lips of the whole world.

A hundred thousand defiant freedom singers breaking the law with Pete Seeger, filling the stadium with words their government did not want them to hear, words they all knew and had sung together, in secret circles, for years. The songs have a rich history - some are written by Woody Guthrie and The Almanac Singers, a group of folk musicians. They didn't say anything about you singing them.' He strummed his banjo to one song after another, and they all sang. Pete Seeger recorded Songs of Struggle and Protest on Folkways Records in 1964, just three years after testifying before the House of Un-American Activities Committee and during the height of his blacklist status. He held up the paper and said, 'I've been told that I'm not allowed to sing these songs.' He grinned at the crowd and said, 'So I'll just play the chords maybe you know the words. Pete took the government's list of banned songs and strolled on stage. But they insisted: he must not sing any of these songs. Pete studied it mournfully, saying it looked an awful lot like his set list. As Pete prepared to go on, government officials handed him a list of songs he was not allowed to sing. More than a hundred thousand people were in the stadium, where rock bands had played all day. A pro-democracy movement was gaining strength and to prove it, they invited America's best-known freedom singer to Spain.

Francisco Franco's fascist government, the last of the dictatorships that started World War II, was still in power but declining. In the 1970s, Pete Seeger was invited to sing in Barcelona, Spain.

Pete seeger songs list