It was easily lost in the avalanche of unconfined joy at Barack Obama's ascent to the White House, but perhaps America's most telling symbol of the long, arduous struggle preceding the new president's arrival on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was a thin, sallow figure in a bushy white beard and woolly bobble hat singing and playing banjo with a vigour extraordinary for a man in his 90th year.
Obama's inauguration party got its soul from Aretha, its glamour from Beyonce, its sex appeal from Shakira, its harmony from Stevie Wonder and its sense of theatre fro.U2 .
But it was Pete Seeger who linked this key moment in history with the hope and idealism of another age as, flanked by Bruce Springsteen and grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, and backed by a gospel choir, he sang Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land.
This was the man who stood shoulder to shoulder with Guthrie singing for many causes, energising union activity, fighting for civil rights and giving a voice to the voiceless. A man who marched proudly with Martin Luther King singing We Shall Overcome, and galvanised the folk song boom which inspired a generation of protest singers led by Bob Dylan.
A man who had No 1 hits in America with The Weavers but who was blacklisted and became a cultural pariah - and even briefly imprisoned - after refusing to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s. A man who has been a thorn in the side of the establishment for seven decades and whose sense of justice has never wilted in the face of fashion, scorn or political pressure.
They say today's rebels are tomorrow's heroes and a measure of the reverence in which Seeger is now held may be gauged by the line-up of stars tumbling over themselves to appear at the New York Madison Square Garden charity concert on May 3 to celebrate his 90th birthday ? Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Taj Mahal, Joan Baez, Ani DiFranco and Steve Earle among them.
Yet, despite his fiercely-held beliefs, Seeger himself is a far cry from the rampaging, truculent leftie of popular myth. The godfather of protest music is actually a gentle, reserved - some would say even distant - figure, devoted to Toshi, his Japanese wife of more than 60 years, and who is surprisingly sanguine about the struggles he has fought.
Politics and pacifism were always ingrained in Seeger, who inherited his social conscience from his father Charles Seeger, a musicologist and ex-communist, dismissed as professor of music at the University of California in Berkeley after making loud objections to America's involvement in the First World War.
Born in Patterson, New York, Pete dropped out of Harvard University, fell into a job at the Archives of American Music in New York and became immersed in the folk songs he discovered through encounters with figures such as Leadbelly and Aunt Molly Jackson. He was soon playing with them, inspired to take up the tenor banjo in his mid-teens after hearing it at a folk song festival in North Carolina. Seeger was struck by its rhythmic potential and devised his own idiosyncratic style to fit the songs he wanted to sing. "In jazz, all they wanted to do was go clunk clunk clunk and here was this banjo going teenk-teenka-teenk."
On March 3, 1940, he was invited to play at a migrant workers benefit concert along with Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Josh White, the Golden Gate Quartet among others. That momentous day - later described by the folklorist Alan Lomax as the birth of modern folk music - he also met Woody Guthrie.
They were unlikely companions in arms. Guthrie was a cursing, womanising, wise-cracking, hard-drinking, dishevelled maverick from Oklahoma with a ciggy permanently dangling from his mouth; Seeger was a polite, educated, clean-living, smooth-voiced kid from upstate New York. Yet they shared a common bond, both recognising the potential of folk songs as a vehicle to tell truths about the lives of ordinary folks.
Woody was already writing - or at least adapting old folk songs he'd picked up along the way - to relate real tales of hardship, especially those who had lost their homes and livelihoods in the Dust Bowl storms that swept through Texas and Oklahoma in the 1930s. Seeger began to do the same. Together they formed the Almanac Singers, a collective set up to collate, write and record union songs and remained spiritual brothers until Woody became terminally stricken by Huntington's disease.
"I must have seemed weird to Woody," reflected Seeger a couple of years ago. "He said, 'This Seeger guy is the youngest man I ever knew - he don't drink, he don't smoke, he don't chase girls'. But I had a good ear and I could accompany him on any song he played. So he allowed me to play with him and within a few months we were getting along pretty well."
It was no coincidence Seeger and Springsteen chose to perform This Land Is Your Land at the Obama inauguration, a song written by Woody in 40 as a retort to Irving Berlin's sentimentally patriotic God Bless America. Its socialist intent has often been misunderstood and Ronald Reagan even had the temerity to use it in his 1984 re-election campaign, but Seeger and Springsteen rescued a couple of the edgier verses usually omitted and restored it as a people's anthem. Seeger's own songwriting has been relatively sparse, usually confined to adaptations of existing songs to meet the specific requirements of whatever cause he was championing at the time, be it organising unions, civil rights issues, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations or environmental issues.
He'd joined the Young Communist League when he was at Harvard, but left the party in 1950 when the full horror of Stalin's dictatorship became apparent. The classic songs he wrote or helped assimilate - We Shall Overcome, Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Guantanamera, Turn Turn Turn and If I Had A Hammer - not only reflected his status as "independent leftie" but swiftly became an integral part of America's folk song heritage.
These were the songs that led a new generation into its battle to create a better world. But, having ignited the folk boom of the early 1960s, Seeger swiftly found himself discarded by it.
Its pivotal moment came at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Bob Dylan, Seeger's most gifted disciple, abandoned his acoustic guitar, recruited the raucous Paul Butterfield Blues Band to play behind him, and went on stage for a short electric set.
The myth was that Seeger, so appalled by Dylan's apparent rejection of all he stood for, tried to chop the cable with an axe. He didn't. What Seeger actually said was: "If I had an axe I'd cut the mike cable," before retreating to a field to escape the barrage. "I hated not being able to hear the words," he said. "He was singing a good song.
Maggie's Farm is a great song and later, when I saw the words, I knew it was great."
As brief as it was, Dylan's set that night transformed the musical landscape. The Beatles were already revolutionising pop and, after Dylan had plugged in, the folk movement - and with it the protest boom - was dead as a serious political and social force.
Refusing to compromise his beliefs, Seeger kept playing his banjo, never wavering in his trust in folk song as a means to unite spirits, exhorting his audiences to sing along. He was sometimes ridiculed as a result. Not that it ever bothered Pete Seeger. He kept making records and playing concerts and putting his weight behind things that mattered.
And then, ever so gradually, the mood shifted again. Dylan had never ever uttered a word against Seeger and when in 2005 he spoke of him in admiration and even awe in his autobiography Chronicles and the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home, Seeger's place in musical history began to be reassessed.
Springsteen's tribute album The Seeger Sessions the next year confirmed Seeger's new status as a bona fide American treasure, affable but defiant and unyielding to anything but his own conscience and integrity. That is why the old man in the bobble hat with the croaky voice at the Obama inauguration was one of the true heroes of the occasion.
* The National
The UN General Assembly President in quotes:
YEMEN: “The developments we have seen are promising. We really hope that the parties are going to respect the agreed ceasefire. I think that the sense of really having the political will to have a peace process is vital. There is a little bit of hope and the role that the UN has played is very important.”
PALESTINE: “There is no easy fix. We need to find the political will and comply with the resolutions that we have agreed upon.”
OMAN: “It is a very important country in our system. They have a very important role to play in terms of the balance and peace process of that particular part of the world, in that their position is neutral. That is why it is very important to have a dialogue with the Omani authorities.”
REFORM OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL: “This is complicated and it requires time. It is dependent on the effort that members want to put into the process. It is a process that has been going on for 25 years. That process is slow but the issue is huge. I really hope we will see some progress during my tenure.”
if you go
The flights
Emirates have direct flights from Dubai to Glasgow from Dh3,115. Alternatively, if you want to see a bit of Edinburgh first, then you can fly there direct with Etihad from Abu Dhabi.
The hotel
Located in the heart of Mackintosh's Glasgow, the Dakota Deluxe is perhaps the most refined hotel anywhere in the city. Doubles from Dh850
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Events and tours
There are various Mackintosh specific events throughout 2018 – for more details and to see a map of his surviving designs see glasgowmackintosh.com
For walking tours focussing on the Glasgow Style, see the website of the Glasgow School of Art.
More information
For ideas on planning a trip to Scotland, visit www.visitscotland.com
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Dust and sand storms compared
Sand storm
- Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
- Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
- Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
- Travel distance: Limited
- Source: Open desert areas with strong winds
Dust storm
- Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
- Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
- Duration: Can linger for days
- Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
- Source: Can be carried from distant regions
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
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%3Cp%3EDeveloper%3A%20Aspyr%0D%3Cbr%3EPublisher%3A%20Aspyr%0D%3Cbr%3EConsole%3A%20Nintendo%20Switch%2C%20PlayStation%204%26amp%3B5%2C%20PC%20and%20Xbox%20series%20X%2FS%0D%3Cbr%3ERating%3A%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Long Shot
Director: Jonathan Levine
Starring: Charlize Theron, Seth Rogan
Four stars
The specs: 2018 Chevrolet Trailblazer
Price, base / as tested Dh99,000 / Dh132,000
Engine 3.6L V6
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Power 275hp @ 6,000rpm
Torque 350Nm @ 3,700rpm
Fuel economy combined 12.2L / 100km
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
How to play the stock market recovery in 2021?
If you are looking to build your long-term wealth in 2021 and beyond, the stock market is still the best place to do it as equities powered on despite the pandemic.
Investing in individual stocks is not for everyone and most private investors should stick to mutual funds and ETFs, but there are some thrilling opportunities for those who understand the risks.
Peter Garnry, head of equity strategy at Saxo Bank, says the 20 best-performing US and European stocks have delivered an average return year-to-date of 148 per cent, measured in local currency terms.
Online marketplace Etsy was the best performer with a return of 330.6 per cent, followed by communications software company Sinch (315.4 per cent), online supermarket HelloFresh (232.8 per cent) and fuel cells specialist NEL (191.7 per cent).
Mr Garnry says digital companies benefited from the lockdown, while green energy firms flew as efforts to combat climate change were ramped up, helped in part by the European Union’s green deal.
Electric car company Tesla would be on the list if it had been part of the S&P 500 Index, but it only joined on December 21. “Tesla has become one of the most valuable companies in the world this year as demand for electric vehicles has grown dramatically,” Mr Garnry says.
By contrast, the 20 worst-performing European stocks fell 54 per cent on average, with European banks hit by the economic fallout from the pandemic, while cruise liners and airline stocks suffered due to travel restrictions.
As demand for energy fell, the oil and gas industry had a tough year, too.
Mr Garnry says the biggest story this year was the “absolute crunch” in so-called value stocks, companies that trade at low valuations compared to their earnings and growth potential.
He says they are “heavily tilted towards financials, miners, energy, utilities and industrials, which have all been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic”. “The last year saw these cheap stocks become cheaper and expensive stocks have become more expensive.”
This has triggered excited talk about the “great value rotation” but Mr Garnry remains sceptical. “We need to see a breakout of interest rates combined with higher inflation before we join the crowd.”
Always remember that past performance is not a guarantee of future returns. Last year’s winners often turn out to be this year’s losers, and vice-versa.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
PREMIER LEAGUE STATS
Romelu Lukaku's goalscoring statistics in the Premier League
Season/club/appearances (substitute)/goals
2011/12 Chelsea: 8(7) - 0
2012/13 West Brom (loan): 35(15) - 17
2013/14 Chelsea: 2(2) - 0
2013/14 Everton (loan): 31(2) - 15
2014/15 Everton: 36(4) - 10
2015/16 Everton: 37(1) - 18
2016/17 Everton: 37(1) - 25
Favourite things
Luxury: Enjoys window shopping for high-end bags and jewellery
Discount: She works in luxury retail, but is careful about spending, waits for sales, festivals and only buys on discount
University: The only person in her family to go to college, Jiang secured a bachelor’s degree in business management in China
Masters: Studying part-time for a master’s degree in international business marketing in Dubai
Vacation: Heads back home to see family in China
Community work: Member of the Chinese Business Women’s Association of the UAE to encourage other women entrepreneurs
The biog
Name: Shamsa Hassan Safar
Nationality: Emirati
Education: Degree in emergency medical services at Higher Colleges of Technology
Favourite book: Between two hearts- Arabic novels
Favourite music: Mohammed Abdu and modern Arabic songs
Favourite way to spend time off: Family visits and spending time with friends
The National photo project
Chris Whiteoak, a photographer at The National, spent months taking some of Jacqui Allan's props around the UAE, positioning them perfectly in front of some of the country's most recognisable landmarks. He placed a pirate on Kite Beach, in front of the Burj Al Arab, the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland at the Burj Khalifa, and brought one of Allan's snails (Freddie, which represents her grandfather) to the Dubai Frame. In Abu Dhabi, a dinosaur went to Al Ain's Jebel Hafeet. And a flamingo was taken all the way to the Hatta Mountains. This special project suitably brings to life the quirky nature of Allan's prop shop (and Allan herself!).
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Dhadak
Director: Shashank Khaitan
Starring: Janhvi Kapoor, Ishaan Khattar, Ashutosh Rana
Stars: 3
ICC Awards for 2021
MEN
Cricketer of the Year – Shaheen Afridi (Pakistan)
T20 Cricketer of the Year – Mohammad Rizwan (Pakistan)
ODI Cricketer of the Year – Babar Azam (Pakistan)
Test Cricketer of the Year – Joe Root (England)
WOMEN
Cricketer of the Year – Smriti Mandhana (India)
ODI Cricketer of the Year – Lizelle Lee (South Africa)
T20 Cricketer of the Year – Tammy Beaumont (England)
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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RACE SCHEDULE
All times UAE ( 4 GMT)
Friday, September 29
First practice: 7am - 8.30am
Second practice: 11am - 12.30pm
Saturday, September 30
Qualifying: 1pm - 2pm
Sunday, October 1
Race: 11am - 1pm