Music to persuade by

MONTEREY, Calif. — They're editorials set to music.

They threw in a ringer at this year's Monterey Jazz Festival. This afternoon, one of the featured performers was 90-year-old Pete Seeger, known for folk songs protesting against war and for civil rights.

I first saw Seeger about 30 years ago in Louisiana where he and a stageful of older blues artists performed the songs of Hudie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly following a fateful gunshot wound.

Seeger opened the set with Ledbetter's "Midnight Special," his grandson Tao doing most of the belting out. The frail folk master resorted to the gospel call-and-answer technique to save his voice and entice the audience.

There is something moving about music that's meant to sway and persuade, songs of conscience, whether protest or rebel songs, whether urging peace or war.

Seeger did not perform his controversial song with the lyric "waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says push on." But he did perform his version of Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Wartime Blues," with lyric "what you gonna do when they send your man to war" and "I'm gonna drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log."

The mostly graying jazz fans gave the elder statesman of folk, who refused to testify before HUAC, a standing ovation when he concluded with Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land."

(Sent via BlackBerry from the arena.)