For the wannabe Beat Girls of 1963, trapped in the suburbs and scrabbling at the edges of an alternative culture, Little Boxes was a gateway song.

We heard it at the end 1963, the year in which our antennae became tuned to satire. We absorbed the lampoons on That Was The Week That Was, we laughed at political cartoons, we added our own satirical twists to gossip about the Profumo Affair.

We weren’t quite ready to satirise aspects of our own lives. Then along came Pete Seeger’s version of Malvina Reynolds’ song, and there was our ready-made indictment of the middle-class conformity which we longed to shake off.

Little Boxes

It was easy to join in and sing along with Little Boxes. The melody is simple and the lyrics are uncomplicated. In our minds the ticky-tacky, cheaply constructed houses in an area of far away California became the semi-detached houses in which many of us lived. We despised the people who were clones of each other, whose aspirations were so limited and so predictable.

They were objects of scorn, the doctors and lawyers and business executives, all leading identical lives, playing golf, drinking martinis, raising picture-perfect children who did all the right things.

The only thing which distinguished one from the other was the colour of their house, which could be pink or blue or green or yellow, like a person in business dress trying to assert non-conformity by wearing a lurid tie or a pair of inappropriate socks.

A little bit of satire, a little bit of folk. We were ready for more. It was hard to find it, but local folk clubs were a possibility. We tried Addlestone and Twickenham and Surbiton in the suburbs where Surrey and London intertwine.

We joined in a lot of choruses about sailors and maidens before discovering the political songs of Julie Felix and Buffy Saint-Marie and before appreciating the connections between folk, blues, politics and protest, and the significance of tradition.

But a new thread was revealed and we followed it to the Folk Barge at Kingston, and later to legendary London folk clubs Bunjies, Les Cousins and The Troubadour.

And we ended up in our own versions of little boxes and some of us became doctors and lawyers and business executives and had predictable aspirations for our children.

Links across generations

But the boxes didn’t close down our minds, or our sense of fellowship with Pete Seeger, his music and his activities. He kept musical traditions alive and forged links across genres and generations.

He is the chain that links Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.He stood up for justice and freedom. He stood up to the House of Un-American Activities Committee. He was on the side of real people. He led us to understand and empathise with the plight of those leading very different lives from our own.

When we sang Little Boxes in soft mocking tones as we walked through the roads and estates of our childhood we were yet to learn that the individuality and independence of thought which the song implicitly champions needs to be fought for and is hard won.

Pete Seeger fought, and it’s nice to think of people emerging from their little boxes of all shapes, colours and sizes to pause a moment and raise a hat to a musician who kept a tradition alive and whose voice will continue to ring out.