If folk music is part of America’s written history, then Dave Sear is one of its most dedicated librarians.
“I see folk music basically as a vast body of literature that tells the story of our country,” Sear said.
Sear, a Village of Great Neck resident, has catalogued decades of America’s folk revival since the 1960s, both as a musician and the host of public radio station WNYC’s The Folk Almanac program for nearly 50 years.
And that effort is coming full circle, with WNYC’s archivists currently working to digitize Sear’s live recordings, both for the historical record and for use in future transmission over the airwaves.
“They will be made available to their broadcasters for rebroadcasts,” Sear said.
Sear, whose radio program and concert series brought folk music to New York listeners for about 50 years starting in the late 1960s, left the station about 15 years ago.
But he was approached by WNYC archivist Andy Lanset to take his recordings – performances and interviews with folk artists ranging from Pete Seeger to Mary Chapin Carpenter – and transfer them from the tapes stacked high in his Steamboat Road home to CDs and digital files.
“[Lanset] tries to preserve as much of WNYC’s history as he possibly can,” Sear said.
Those files can now be given new life on air, bringing traditional folk to a generation more familiar with Mumford and Sons than Woody Guthrie. The recordings will also be held by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s folklore program, which Sear described as one of the great repositories of folk history in the United States.
“It’s a fantastic collection because nearly all of it contains live performances and interviews either in the studio or at Spencertown and other venues,” wrote Lanset in an email. “There are also some real landmark programs that Dave did in the 60s with ethnomusicologist Henrietta Yurchenco that capture some of the period’s leading lights in their element”
Music and its paraphernalia litter Sear’s home – a guitar and banjo upright on stands in the living room, a piano with Bach resting on its music stand and pro-grade recording equipment tucked behind a sofa.
But it’s the closet packed floor-to-ceiling with CDs and tapes that drew WNYC’s attention, and that would not have existed without a few happy accidents.
“I’m basically a folk singer. I managed to inherit a radio program,” Sear said.
In the ‘60s Sear contacted then-WNYC broadcaster Yurchenco to see if he could perform on her program. She said yes, and the gig went better than expected.
“It just went very well,” Sear said. “She invited me to co-host the program.”
And when Yurchencho left broadcasting to teach full-time at a university, Sear had the show all to himself.
He renamed the program “The Folk Almanac” after The Almanac Singers, the anti-fascist New York City folk group that included Seeger and Guthrie during the 1940s. And he began recording performances and interviews with a procession of folk legends out of WNYC’s studios in the city’s municipal building.
For Sear, the performances were more than music – they were stories, telling of the particular loves, struggles and politics of mid-century America.
“Of course in the 1960s there was a whole renaissance of singer-songwriters who wrote about what was going on,” Sear said. “My focus was always on singers and folk music that fell under the parameter of being part of the great body of folk music that sings about our country.”
As folk culture changed, Sear was on the front lines. He said he was in the audience at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Bob Dylan shocked the crowd by strapping on an electric guitar.
Though Sear was loath to criticize Dylan, who he described as a genius, it is clear where his loyalties lie.
“I really like early Dylan,” he said with a laugh. “Words are very important to me. Folk music should have content.”
Sear also put on concerts at the Spencertown Academy in Austerliz, New York, where folk artists including Seeger, Odetta and Tom Paxton performed.
Sear is still an active musician. He will be performing folk songs at the Port Washington Library April 7, accompanied by his granddaughter.
“This concert is a presentation of our American folk music and history and the passing of it on to the third generation,” Sear said.
Sear also teaches music lessons to aspiring folk musicians.
Reach reporter Dan Glaun by e-mail at dglaun@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x203. Also follow us on Twitter @theislandnow1 and Facebook at facebook.com/theislandnow.
