Fans had gathered in tribute, less for Gilbert’s commercial success with the Weavers, first folk group with mass-market pop hits, than for fostering in song and deeds the progressive ideals that made the Weavers’ success so unlikely.

Gilbert gave up singing concerts eight years ago, and she sang much less than she spoke on Friday. She read from a ring-bound notebook what sounded like excerpts from a memoir. She sang some in a stilllovely voice with clarity, strength and feeling, qualities shared by the purely spoken content of her 75-minute patchwork quilt of tunes and tales.

She started with the House Un-American Committee’s (HUAC) investigation of Pete Seeger, and its condemnation of his song "Wasn’t That a Time," a hymn to the patriotism and brotherhood of the heroes of Valley Forge. In this story and her singing of the song with its coda from the writings of Thomas Paine, Gilbert portrayed the populist convictions of the Weavers and other progressives such as Paul Robeson as staunchly, essentially American.

She admitted that "songs are dangerous, songs are subversive and can change your life," describing how hearing Robeson sing changed hers at age 10. Raised by a unionist mother, Gilbert found in folksongs inspiring messages of brotherhood, equality and pacifism, and allies in the Priority Singers which included future Schenectadian Jackie Alper (longtime host of WRPI’s "Mostly Folk" program) and Pete Seeger of the Almanac Singers.

She framed the origins and message of the Weavers within history: World War II, the presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, the Cold War. She illustrated these events, in fact, all the events of the life she recounted, in song; sometimes snippets and sometimes more complete renditions. Fans first joined her in an impromptu chorus in "Same Old Merry Go Round" from the Wallace campaign; some fans seemed old enough to remember Wallace and his doomed presidential bid as they sang wistfully, without prompting.

She managed to tell without bitterness the harrowing tale of the illfated Paul Robeson Peekskill concert that turned into a police-sanctioned attack. And she recalled the Weavers’ rise and fall with equal equanamity and great amusement. Gilbert brought her listeners up to date, recalling the 1983 comeback that folksinger/fan Holly Near (who sings at WAMC next week) engineered, and her activist work protesting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories with Women in Black — and her evolution as a feminist. She finished with messages of hope and resilience, some borrowed from historian Howard Zinn. Then she retrieved her cane and swept off the stage like an armada, moving like a banner in a breeze. Voices rose in farewell: fans singing the old Weavers’ hit "Goodnight, Irene."

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