Filmed Locally - A Complete Unknown

By Bradley Towle

PHOENICIA — A Complete Unknown is the long-awaited Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothy Chalamet as the young songwriter in the early 1960s. With its detailed production and stand-out performances, the film received numerous nominations and awards, including seven Academy Award nominations. Among the film's Oscar nominations was Ed Norton for his nuanced portrayal of Pete Seeger, a figure who loomed large in upstate New York during his long life of activism and music. Aside from charting Bob Dylan's early days as a folk singer to his notorious decision to "go electric" at The Newport Folk Festival in 1965, director James Mangold's film brings Pete Seeger's vision for folk music into sharp focus, with a clear-eyed depiction of how he believed it could help tip the scales of justice. The folk world and Seeger may have lost the darling Dylan they'd wanted—and in fact, it never was Dylan's fate to remain a folkie— but that never caused Seeger to become cynical about his worldview or vision for folk music. The times may have changed, but Seeger had already become a well-established entity by the time of Dylan's artistic shift. His involvement at the famous Camp Woodland just outside Phoenicia, starting a few years earlier in the 1950s, offers a further glimpse into the musician and activist's vision.

Founded in 1939 and inspired by FDR's New Deal, its founders sought to establish a summer camp for city kids where American Democracy would be put into practice. The progressives behind the camp aimed to walk the walk and ensured the camp was racially and ethnically inclusive while also acknowledging, honoring, and preserving the local culture of the Catskills, including its rich folklore and history. Derided as "Camp Red" by conservative detractors in the 1950s (it would likely be dismissed as "Camp Woke" today), Camp Woodland has been widely acknowledged as an "incubator" for the burgeoning folk music scene of the 1950s and 1960s. Only a short distance from his home in the Hudson Valley, it's easy to see how Camp Woodland would have been an irresistible destination for Seeger.

Seeger had been blacklisted in the 1950s after refusing to respond to Senator Joseph McCarthy's accusation that he was a communist. That led to a lengthy blacklist from network television (The Smothers Brothers were the first to bring him back to national television in 1968). Seeger's status as a dangerous radical did not stop him (it likely emboldened him) but made it harder to hash out a living. He had a growing family to support with his wife Toshi and earned a living by giving guitar and banjo lessons, performing at venues brave enough to host him, and through work at Camp Woodland. It was Toshi's father, Takashi Ohta, caretaker at Camp Woodland during the late 1940s and early 1950s, who brought the camp into Seeger's orbit.

Camp Woodland has been a well-documented and studied subject over the years. Bill Horne's 2016 book The Improbable Community: Camp Woodland and the American Democratic Ideal tells the camp's story and reflects on its legacy. Folk Songs of the Catskills: A Celebration of Camp Woodland is a 2000 audio recording of songs honoring Herbert Haufrecht, Woodland's music director during the 1940s, who passed away in 1998. He had also helped collect the songs for the 1982 book Folk Songs of the Catskills. The Norman Studer Papers at the University at Albany Libraries' Department of Special Collections & Archives boasts more than 15 hours of audio recordings of Pete Seeger singing and teaching folk songs to the campers at Woodland. The collection offers a treasure trove of recordings from Woodland's heyday, including Seeger singing the Woody Guthrie classic "This Land is Your Land." A recording of counselor Hector Angula teaching Seeger "Guántanamera" stands out in the collection. There is palpable excitement from the campers as they prepare to listen to the two perform the song before settling into a hush as the song starts. Seeger is audibly taken by the beauty of the song as it concludes, and as the campers applaud, he asks Angula what the words mean in English. The Cuban folk song became a favorite of Seegers (he would later record it for an album), and one can imagine a particular verse resonating with him:

With the poor people of this earth,

I want to share my lot.

With the poor people of this earth,

I want to share my lot.

The little streams of the mountains

Please me more than the sea.

To explore the digital Camp Woodland collection at SUNY Albany, including pictures and audio recordings, visit https://archives.albany.edu/web/seeger/. A Complete Unknown is still playing in some theaters.