Peggy Seeger - Folk Singer, Songmaker, Activist

Born in 1935, Peggy is Pete Seeger's half-sister and Ruth Crawford Seeger's daughter; her first life partner was the English songwriter Ewan MacColl, who wrote First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for her and to whom she bore three children. She is known for her excellent renditions of Anglo-American folksongs and for her activist songwriting, especially in the field of feminism. Her best-known pieces are Gonna Be an Engineer and The Ballad of Springhill, which latter is rapidly becoming regarded as a traditional song.

The MacColl-Seeger work was seminal - its high point was the development of the revolutionary Radio Ballad form, a tapestry of field recordings of speech and sound effects melded with new songs in the folk idiom and complementary instrumental accompaniments. One of these Radio Ballads, Singing the Fishing, took the 1960 Italia Prize in the radio documentary section. These extraordinary radio programs have now been reissued in an 8-CD set by Topic Records. 

Peggy has made 22 solo discs and has taken part in more than 100 recordings with other performers. She is considered to be among North America's finest female folksingers and took a leading role in the British folk music revival, not only as a singer and instrumentalist but also as a theorist and songwriter.