Fifty years later, Pete Seeger returns to the scene of the folk music glory days

While there will be no shortage of young talent on view at the upcoming George Wein's Folk Festival 50, the new name for the venerable Newport Folk Festival, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary August 1-2 at Fort Adams State Park in Newport RI. But there is little doubt that the man of the hour will be the festival's 90-year-old co-founder, Pete Seeger, who has been having a summer to remember.

In May, Seeger celebrated his milestone birthday with thousands of fans and an all-star cast of musicians at Madison Square Garden in New York. Last month, he was honored again at another festival that he founded, the Clearwater Great Hudson River Revival (photos). At Newport, he will close the main stage on both nights of the festival, returning the event to its roots at least one more time.

On Saturday, Seeger and his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger will finish the day in a singalong with other festival artists, honoring Seeger's long commitment to participatory folk music. On Sunday, Pete and Tao will return for a special set with another 60s folk legend, Judy Collins, likely to be another moment to treasure. Young Rodriguez-Seeger will carry on the torch with his own solo set on Saturday.

Seeger gets credit for co-founding the festival with promoter George Wein when they produced an afternoon of folk music during the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival and followed it up with a standalone event beginning the next summer. Newport has been the scene of many signal moments in music history, including John Baez introducing Bob Dylan to the world in 1963 and Dylan's surprise electric set in 1965. In the later incident, Pete Seeger famously tried to cut off electricity to the stage to stop the unstoppable.

All these years later, Seeger has long since made his peace with folk musicians plugging in, though he himself is content with the unamplified long-neck banjo that has been his lifelong musical partner. At the festival, a new generation of young acts like The Decembrists, Fleet Foxes, The Avett Brothers, Iron & Wine, The Low Anthem, Elvis Perkins In Dearland, Brett Dennen and Deer Tick and others will demonstrate how the music Seeger spearheaded has evolved to speak to music fans without points of reference in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s.

But Seeger will also have company among contemporaries from that time. Besides Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliott will help to recreate the folk music glory days. And some of the younger acts, including Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman and Billy Bragg, have carried on the folk music tradition of political activism that is part of Seeger's legacy.

Bob Dylan will not be there, but several young singer-songwriters who have had "the next Dylan" label applied to them will perform, including Ben Kweller, Langhorne Slim, Joe Pug and Josh Ritter.

"When you speak to artists in the new generation of folk -- people like Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) and Gillian Welch and Colin Meloy (The Decemberists) – it is amazing to hear the level of respect they have for Pete Seeger,” said Jay Sweet, a producer of Folk Festival 50. These are artists very much aware of their musical roots and realize Seeger's career in many ways has allowed them the freedom to say what they want to say in their songs.

FP George Wein's Folk Festival 50 page