Goodbye Mary Travers

by Jen Nedeau · 2009-09-16 19:32:00 UTC
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This just in - Mary Travers - of Peter, Paul & Mary has passed away tonight. We don't talk that much about on Change.org about how women can bring truth to the female experience through their music, but Mary Travers was definitely one of those women who could translate the needs and wants of women through her voice and spirit.

I grew up in San Francisco. I listened to the music of the '60s in order to understand what came before me in the neighborhood I grew up in - the Haight-Ashbury. The death of Mary Travers reminds me again of how much time has passed since that revolutionary era and makes me yearn for the next cultural uprising to come - one that includes music, politics and a desire for peaceful change.

Here are the preliminary details of her death from the New York Times:

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "If I Had a Hammer" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died Wednesday night in Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and had lived in Redding, Conn.

The cause was cancer, said her spokeswoman, Heather Lylis.

Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music that resonated with mainstream listeners. With her straight blond hair and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager straight from the clubs and the coffee houses that nourished the folk-music revival.

Jen Nedeau Jen Nedeau is a media relations professional and a writer based in New York City.
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