Born in 1935 into one of North America's foremost folkmusic families, Peggy was well schooled in the classic European music traditions. Between the ages of 12 and 35 she learned to play piano, guitar, five-string banjo, autoharp, Appalachian dulcimer and English concertina. She cut her first record when she was 18 and in her early twenties she became a professional touring performer. Her travels took her to the Soviet Union, China, Poland, Belgium, France, Holland and the Scandinavian countries. In 1959 she settled in London with Ewan MacColl, to whom she bore three children. The MacColl/Seeger duo was at the forefront of the British folksong revival for the ensuing three decades. Their innovative work in that revival incorporated folk techniques in songwriting and strengthened the ties between traditional and political music. The Radio Ballads, created for the BBC, were a turning point in her life, when music and politics melded together, when she learned to arrange music for radio scripts and to direct musicians and singers in the studio. She and MacColl carried the lessons learned into work with Critics Group, when she began to write songs and train singers and instrumentalists.

Considered to be one of N. America's finest revival singers of traditional songs, she has also written music for films, television and radio. She has collaborated on books of folksongs with Edith Fowke, Alan Lomax and Ewan MacColl. She has made 22 solo LPs and collaborated with other performers (Tom Paley, Mike Seeger, Guy Carawan, Ewan MacColl) on more records than she can remember. In the mid-1970s she began to concentrate on feminist and ecological issues.  Her best-known songs are The Ballad of Springhill and I'm Gonna Be an Engineer.

After Ewan's death in 1989, she joined with Irene Pyper-Scott to form the singing duo No Spring Chickens. In 1995 she and Jim Lloyd (producer of the BBC programme Folk on 2) won the Sony Silver award for a 6-part series of half-hour shows dedicated to Peggy's life. A seventh program was recorded in 1996. In 1994 she moved back to the USA. She lived in Asheville, North Carolina until 2006, when she moved to Boston to take up a teaching position at Northeastern University. She now tours solo as a singer and lecturer. In 1998 she published a collection of 149 of her own songs (The Peggy Seeger Songbook, Oak Publications, New York).  This songbook contains extended biographical materials, personal photographs, chapters on songwriting and charming drawings by Jackie Fleming. She has also completed a comprehensive anthology of Ewan's songs (The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook (Oak Publications, November 2001).

She now records exclusively for Appleseed Recordings. She produces a new album every 18 months or so, the latest being (1) Volume 3 of her HOME TRILOGY, Bring Me Home and (2) a 2-CD set, Three Score and Ten, a distillation of recordings from her 70th birthday, held on May 29 2005 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. 

She also produces modest, homemade CDs of her contemporary songs, in a series entitled TIMELY PRODUCTIONS.   Timely #4, Crazy Quilt, is due out in January 2008.

Her website, www.pegseeger.com, contains further information, a discography, details about ordering, an itinerary and interesting insights into her creative life.  She is exclusively represented by Josh Dunson (tel: 708 386 1252; email: RPMJosh@aol.com).

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