Making himself heard

For one night, Peter Yarrow was literally a screaming liberal.

That would have been Election Day. Yarrow - the Peter of the famed folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary - should have been transfixed before the TV. He wasn't.

"I lay there in bed," he said at the Sofitel Hotel in Philadelphia one day this week, between gigs. "People called and said, 'Barack is leading,' but I said, 'I don't want to hear that.' I wouldn't move until 11, when all the networks called it."

That's when this singer and activist - and Obama organizer - let out more than 45 years of frustration. "I screamed and screamed," he says, "literally screamed. And then I cried and cried."

He's 70 now, still performing, solo, with Noel "Paul" Stookey and Mary Travers, and also with daughter Bethany in the trio Peter, Bethany & Rufus. Tomorrow he'll perform solo in Cherry Hill at the Blank Rome Festival of the Arts. Peter, Paul and Mary had been scheduled to play this week in Easton and Shippensburg but had to cancel due to Travers' health issues.

Yarrow, for his part, is excited about his line of Peter Yarrow Songbooks. Two of these CD/book packages - Favorite Folk Songs and Sleepytime Songs - have just been released by Sterling Publishing.

That places Yarrow squarely within a movement in the pop world, in which everyone from Barenaked Ladies to Medeski Martin & Wood to They Might Be Giants is making a "CD for kids."

But it's a lot more than that. Via the humble vessel of folk song, Yarrow's songbooks for kids are an effort to do nothing less than change American culture.

Working with and for children is nothing new for Yarrow, who cowrote the enduring lullably "Puff the Magic Dragon." In 2000 he founded Operation Respect, a national effort working against school violence and promoting conflict resolution among children. For him, folksinging is "of one continuous thread" with his work with kids.

"Since even before the civil-rights movement," he says, "I have felt I am an American patriot who can't stand to see some of the horrible things the country is doing. Every movement I've been in - from the civil-rights movement, which worked against racism, to the gender-equality movement, which worked against discrimination against women - has been premised on respect or its absence."

Among the things not loved by this patriot - who says he draws deeply on his B.A. in experimental psychology from Cornell University - is a culture that glorifies violence and humiliation. "How do you stop these toxic preconceptions? Stop them before they start through inspiring children so they accept each other, get sensitized to each other."

Thus the songs on, for example, Favorite Folk Songs, are some of the most familiar in the American memory: "Cockles and Mussels," "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and great gospel tunes such as "Mary Don't You Weep." On the CD, Yarrow performs with daughter Bethany. There also are lyrics and chords for the child or parent who wants to play the tunes.

Yarrow has many a story of social work through music. Peter, Paul and Mary played "Blowin' in the Wind" at the foot of Abraham Lincoln's statue for the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington and heard live the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. They played at the steps of the Alabama Capitol building on March 24, 1965, after the third Selma-to-Montgomery march.

He now has new generations to serenade. In his introduction to Favorite Folk Songs, Yarrow writes that "singing these songs today allows us to experience the history and spirit of times past and also" - again, his point - "makes us feel closer to one another."

He sees the coming Obama presidency as a vindication: "He's showing the entire nation a new level of competence to which we must rise. I'm with Michelle Obama, so proud to be an American. . . .

"I'm still in the moment, continually in ecstasy."